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Encounter Party: From Idea to Television in Under 5 Years
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The show is currently available in the US-only so non US viewers will need to use a VPN.
“I have an idea.”
- Brian David Judkins
When Brian David Judkins says those words to you, it’s always worth listening. It’s December of 2018, and I’m standing on the street outside my day job, where I’ve taken 30 minutes off work to take a call with a friend. For the next 15 minutes, Brian pitched me on an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons TV show he’d been mulling over. I got very excited. You see , separately I had spent multiple years developing an idea for a Dungeons & Dragons TV show that I hadn’t yet figured out the hook for.
Brian’s pitch proposed an answer to a problem I’d been stuck on for a long time. Excitedly, I set a followup call with him for after work.
That night, Brian and I had a call that lasted many hours where we bandied about ideas, debated aspects in the macro and micro, and when the dust settled we had a very defined outline of an idea. An epic fantasy TV show, with hour-long episodes, improvised for the audience in real-time through playing Dungeons & Dragons, captured using the visual stylings of a single-set unscripted/reality tv show.
As two actors with no clout in this industry, getting from idea to TV show was going to be nearly impossible at that point. Luckily…