UPRISING: Injustice always has a witness UPRISING is a dramatic marriage thriler TV & E-Book series starting with the five Arab uprisings. Set against the global luxury hotel design industry, UPRISING is 50 hours of intrigue, romance, civil unrest and high stakes international affairs.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
SUSAN STANDFIELD'S PHOTOGRAPHY
I created UPRISING' after living all over Africa for eleven years and rescuing my huband from a prison cell in Tripoli. Before that I studied international politics at one of Canada's top universities with a focus on war and other social justice photography done by Magnum Collective photojournalists Frank Capa and James Nachtwey. I moved from Cape Town to Tripoli in August 2010 so my husband could oversee the development of a luxury beach resort for a Pakistani-based hospitality group in partnership with the Libyan government and a Turkish construction copmany. Having lost our homes in the 2008 mortgage scandal we needed income fast and jumped at the opportunity to live in North Africa, have a fresh start and begin a family. The moment I stepped off the plane I began photographing Muhammar Gadaffi's 'Jamahiriya', a world very few Westerners will ever visit. Within days I saw the signs of growing civil unrest that ignited into the five Arab Uprisings starting in Tunisia in a few months later. This photograph was taken from my Al Wadan luxury hotel bathroom window with a 3-story mural of Gadaffi facing our building.
CREATING A 'WORLD' FOR AUDIENCES
THE UPRISING WORLD
Creating a successful TV series is based on imagining and building a highly compelling 'world' audiences want to spend time in and often have never seen. Whether it's an emergency room, secret agent office or the kitchen of wealthy housewives, the WORLD is everything.
UPRISING's world is the breathtaking view from a luxury resort and the chaos of a North African market. It's the exquisite world of travel, architecture and high stakes crime rings of human traffickers. It's cultures stolen and embraced, languages broken and revived, new empires rising and old ones in decay. Focusing on one region each season, UPRISING is the fascinating and complicated world of global business and foreign affairs driven by the most intense expressions of humanity. UPRISING is being created for international women who understand and all these issues and long to experience them authentically through story and entertainment.
THE CAST
LEAD CHARACTERS
Stepanie Lemieux / Canadian archtectural photographer
Jack Logan / British luxury property financier
Aditi Khan / Pakistani finance controller
Abu Sidra / Libyan banker
Kahima Azim / Berber falconer
Zara Abacar / Chadian human trafficker
Bill Knight / washed up British fashion editor
Francois Lemieux / retired Canadian RCMP officer
Season One introduces the four main characters based on my true story of being a photographer married to a luxury property development manager. The four African characters feature in Season One only. Bill is Stephanie's publisher and Francois is her father who lives in Canada.
50 HOURS ACROSS 5 SEASONS
THE 5 SEASONS
There is no limit to the number of seasons that can be made but for industry norms, the first five seasons are set in Africa, Europe, India and Asia to appeal to the growing Eurasian entertainment market.
SEASON ONE / JAMAHIRIYA
Cape Town, Libya, London and Vancouver
SEASON TWO / CAUCUSUS
Aizerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Southern Russia
SEASON THREE / SUMERIA
Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan
SEASON FOUR / PARTITION
India & Pakistan
SEASON FIVE / INDOCHINE
Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia
INVESTMENT STAGES
5 STAGES OF INVESTMENT
Developing successful TV series franchises is a 5-step process each with its own unique investment and sales model. Be it small independent productions or large dramatic productions like UPRISING, all series go through these five stages. Producing TV is like manufacturing and selling a line of products internationally using licensing deals that determine 'usage' based on market size and duration of broadcast. It's exactly like designing, buying or leasing a piece of equipment to generate sales. If you patented that equipment (Coca-Cola), you could sell the patent or the rights of usage. The highest return is always purchasing a TV franchise at an early low-cost stage of it's development and then reselling it in perpetuity. A few of the most lucrative TV dramatic series franchises are MASH, DALLAS and GREY'S ANATOMY. Trading a franchise is referred to as buying and selling part of a 'library' of projects.
Stage 1 / Pilot Script Investment
The first owners of a series invest in what's called The Pilot Script to explain the story to buyers. If a project is based on a literary work, the rights to the book are also purchased and a screenwriter adapts it into the Pilot Script and/or full season of episodes so buyers will know what takes places across the whole season of 6-10 episodes. Acquistions and Commissions teams inside broadcasters negotiate deals based on revenue they predict the series will generate for them across their platforms, duration and geographical reach.
Stage 2 / Production Partner Investment
The pilot script is used to present to bigger investors and/or distributors to finance the pilot, Season One or multiple seasons. UPRISING is five seasons of ten hours each totaling fifty hours of programming. The stories will be filmed in English with subtitling costs factored into distribution deals because the franchise reflects and appeals to all international markets. Just like in property, financing is obtained using a long-established 'pre-sales' model so there is minimal investment risk. Film financiers, insurers and lenders are all common in the investment model.
Stage 3 / Pilot Show Investment
Based on interest from distributors, the Pilot or all of Season One gets produced (manufactured) using this round of investment. The Pilot investor may have a 'first look' deal giving them first offer of investment into more episodes.
Stage 4 / Seasons Pre-Sales to Distributors
A popular franchise easily sells to interntional buyers who then provide the necessary financing for multiple seasons. This is called 'ordering seasons' with 5-10 key markets to sell into often sales fairs like MIPTV in Cannes, see link.
MIPTV - The 59th Spring International Television Market
Stage 5 / Franchise Expansion
A series that can get to multiple seasons can license across ancillary revenue such as travel, education and hospitality. Disneyland is an example of this as well as Dora Explorer one of the most successful entertainment products in history.
IP RIGHTS
CURRENT OWNERSHIP
Because UPRISING is based on a 'true personal story' in it's earliest stage of development, 100% of TV and all other IP rights are owned by Susan Standfield and Rob Spooner who are currently seeking their earliest investor to get the pilot script and marketing materials produced to sell the series. Our second-stage investor will finance JAMAHIRIYA / Season One and its accompanying E-Book thriller to sell to UPRISING's first distributor. The full investment of five seasons/fifty hours of programming is estimated to be $50 Million USD, $1M per episode above and below the line costs. Sales goals are a ten-fold return of $500M on all international broadcast, E-Book, merchandise and future ancillary revenue.