So...
Falling Flat started life as a ten-minute short, written for a national sitcom writing competition in 2016. It beat hundreds of scripts and was performed in front of an audience at the Midlands Arts Centre.
Then...
In 2019, a group of sitcom people got together to workshop their projects. Falling Flat got a fresh airing and was a hit.
First production meeting
Karl Rooney
Karl: Let's make this!
Peter: Sure! The script should only take one or two drafts. Three tops.
Karl: Great!
Peter Etherington
Twenty-three drafts later
What started as a fifteen-page short became a twenty-four-page pilot script that was ready to shoot! Now all we needed was absolutely everything else.
Casting
We met a lot of interesting characters during the casting process. Wowee! But, after some tough calls, we finally had our cast.
Costume
Costumes were carefully selected to match each character. Lisa clearly enjoyed getting into hers. In fact, she still wears the cardigan (to weddings mostly).
Set up
Our set was one of the many Karl-made miracles the team would witness. Karl even drove to Wales to nab flats from a Netflix production. They were very surprised when they turned up to shoot the next day.
Rigging
From flats to furniture (and chicken buckets to Dicasso paintings), everything you see on screen was painstakingly built from the ground up. Now, roll camera!
Rolling
With a lot of hard work and expertise, we filmed a sitcom pilot and went home tired but happy with our efforts. And now Falling Flat is ready for the world to enjoy... Well, almost. We needed to hold a screening.
Screening
We filmed our pilot during Lockdown 2, so we couldn't have an audience. When the dust settled, we organised a screening to capture a laugh track. You can find out more about it here.
You know our story. Now watch our show.
