The format was such that we would see a handful of the contestants compete against each other with a short film, usually around two minutes and all in the same chosen genre. Then America would have a two hour or so window to vote and the next week one person would be eliminated based on the vote. The eventual winner would get a one million dollar development deal with Dreamworks Pictures and work under (presumably far under) Spielberg himself!

I wanted to love it. I loved the notion of filmmakers getting the same shot that people who can karaoke have been getting for years. I wanted it to work.

That desire just made my eventual distaste for this show all the stronger.

Let me count the ways in which this show failed.

The host was atrocious. She would flub about five lines a night. She looked good and had energy but there was something just not right about her presence. The show started out with over fifty contestants which is far too much. In a one hour format there was no time to develop any of them and everything felt rushed.

The show soon moved to a format of showing no behind the scenes action and the shorts only. I liked this idea but of course that leaves the quality of the show entirely up to the shorts themselves.

I think a huge problem with this concept was that the directors had to come up with their own material. Directors hardly ever write their own material. Most of the greats such as Spielberg-whose name was attached to the show and never mentioned after the second episode, I presume on request-never write their own scripts. So why should we expect these people to do what even their idols do not?

It became obvious quickly that even if some of these people had talent behind the camera that none of them were strong from a writing perspective. And that of course made it hard to tell when a film was well directed as the script influences what a director can do…

I think the element of judging a director on writing should have been eliminated entirely. There would be two ways of doing this. One, by giving each of the contestants a professional script and having them film it. But then