Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello everyone. My name is Jon Watts. Welcome to the second of
my screenwriting courses. This one is focused on the business side
of screenwriting. Now the reason for doing these quick course
is because I've had so many people sending
me emails and saying, okay John, I've finished writing my first script. What do I do? Who do I send it to in
order to get it made? Now, unfortunately, it
isn't quite that simple. We'd all live there to be a
magical email address like scripts at Hollywood.com that you just send it to and voila, job done, cashflows in. But unfortunately, there's not, however, don't let
that put you off. It might not be easy, but anything that's
worth getting never is. You can do it and by
following the steps we're going to go through
over the next hour or so, you will have a
much better chance of getting to where
you want to be. Why should you listen to me? Because I'd been
through it myself, from not knowing anyone in
the industry to getting scripts optioned,
sold, and produced. I've also recently
been the director of what are my own scripts and the movie got into the top
five movies on Netflix. You are in good hands. Now. I've messed up
along the way and I will tell you the
problems I face so that you don't fall into
those same traps and how I overcame them. Finally, who is this course for? Is for people who have written their movie script
and think they finished and want to sell it. If you haven't written a script yet or aren't sure how to, then why didn't you go and see my first screenwriting course called learn to write movies, where I'll walk you through it. If you're ready to
dive in, Let's do it. I look forward to seeing
you inside the course.
2. Misconceptions: [MUSIC] First of all, I think we should go through some very common misconceptions when it comes to selling
movies and being a writer. The first one is that
you need to live in LA. Now, I guess years ago, this may have been true, if you wanted to get in on
the Hollywood scene. There are undoubtedly certain benefits, if
you did live in LA, such as meeting people within
the industry and gaining all important connections that will definitely speed
up your career. But do you need to live in LA? No, or any other big
city for that matter. If you're young and carefree, with nothing holding you
back, then sure, go for it. But for a lot of people,
it just isn't an option. It certainly wasn't for me. I had a family with young kids, a mortgage that
needed to be paid. I couldn't just pack up and
move to another country. I live in a small city in
the middle of England, with no discernible
film industry. Yet I still managed to
get my scripts out there. Did it take longer
than it might have, if I was in LA or even London? Yes, probably did. But it's not the barrier
people think it is. Don't let it be an
excuse to hold you back. We live in a 24-hour
electronic world, so there are no excuses. The second misconception
is that you need an agent in order
to sell scripts. Again, this isn't true. I don't know, but
for some reason, people think they
must have an agent to get jobs, to get noticed. Like this person is
some magical wizard. I guess it's for
two reasons really. One is because the new
writer doesn't have the knowledge themselves
to promote their own work. Two is because it would be
so much easier just for someone else to do all the
hard work for you with it. You can just sit and relax, while the commissions
and money roll in. Maybe it's just another
excuse we give ourselves in order to procrastinate
rather than get stuck in, which could well be the
case in many situations. Unfortunately, this
just doesn't happen. In my experience, an agent
is very unlikely to take anyone on that hasn't already
had scripts options sold, or they have been a finalist in a prestigious competition, or show an extreme
promise through writing samples and edit
jobs, things like that. Put yourself in their shoes. An agent is there to make money, and they want the best people
who have the best chance of making that money,
simple as that. If you were them,
wouldn't you pick on a client that can do
that for you already? Because they already
got some work under their belt, wouldn't you? Someone who thought could
really get a good studio deal. Therefore, make you money. That's what an agent is for. In the beginning, odds are
you won't have an agent. I'm here to tell
you, you don't need one to get your work bought. What we're going to
talk about today, you can do it without an agent. Rather than waste
your time and become disillusioned by chasing them, in the hope that they will
give you your big break, you'll make it
happen for yourself. Don't waste time. Finally, on our list of misconceptions, when you sell your script, it will be made into a movie. Now, I can feel you
all staring at me, and saying, "What are
you talking about?" Well, the fact is a large
percentage of scripts that are bought don't actually make it into production.
They're optioned. Now, if you don't
know optioning is, it's where a film company
pays you, the writer, a specific amount
of money to have the option of making your script in a
certain time period, whether that be one year, two years, whatever it is in
the contract that you sign. It's like a first dibs,
like we say to kids. You've given them the first chance of making your scripts, and no one else can have it. Whilst it's under
option to that company, you can't sell it
to another company. Say, you sold the
option for $10,000. Then the next week, someone
offers you $50,000. Well, that's just tough
luck, I'm afraid. You have to sign with the
company you think will have the best chance of getting
the script into production. However, that doesn't
mean it will get made. The production company who optioned your
script might not be able to secure financing
during that period, or the actor they
wanted now can't do it, or 1000 other reasons. At the end of the period, it
goes back onto the market, and someone else
might option it. Now, the good news
is that every time your script gets
option, you get paid. The bad news, it may never be
made into an actual movie. By the way, when it does
go into production, you'll be paid a production
fee for the script as well. So that's more
money, good for us. Bizarre, as it seems, you can make money from
this continued optioning, even if your script
never gets made. The other thing I wanted to just quickly point out
is that there are other ways you can also make money is living as
a screenwriter. You can work as part of a writer's group on lots
things like TV shows. You can be hired
as a ghostwriter, where you're hired to come in, and write on behalf
of someone else. You can be a script editor, who is brought in to polish a script before it
goes into production. For example, if say, you
are amazing at dialogue. The producers might hire you to give their scripts
a dialogue pass. Remember, movies costs an
awful lot of money to make. They need to make sure
their script is the very best it can be before
principal photography. If you're the best in a certain
aspect of screenwriting, like dialogue or action scenes, you can get paid a small
fortune for just doing a few days work to as spruce up a script to make it
the best it can be. Now, before we go any further, let's move on and talk
about your script. What we can start to do to get you on that
marketing journey.
3. First Steps: First things first, if you want to get your script, and by extension,
yourself noticed, you need a top script, and it needs to be marketable. Now, this sounds very
obvious, doesn't it? But you'd be
surprised the number of people who were churning out the most poorly
written screenplays ever and expect them
to be bought and made, or they've had a movie which
has such a limited audience. No investor, in
their right mind, is going to put in millions
of dollars in funding, because it just wouldn't make a return on their investment, and no businessman
wants to do that. As a writer, we have to write something that is entertaining, says what you want
to tell the world, but also one that
others will want to see and pay their
hard-earned money for. Now you'd be amazed
the amount of rubbish that's floating
around in the script world. I was talking to a producer friend of mine
actually the other day who's produced a
movie I've just made, and he said that for
a lot of companies, it's actually extremely hard to find a good
marketable script, so much so that sometimes they really struggle to get a
movie into production, even though they already have funding sitting there waiting. It's absolutely crazy. A well-written, well-crafted script
is number 1 priority. Now, obviously, if you've
watched my previous class, you'll have an
amazing head-start over everyone else, won't you? Now, getting the basics
right is so important, and that's why we need to
step up our level from here. Now you've written
your first draft, and what you have to
remember is that it is just that, a first draft. I always hate to be the
bearer of bad news, but you haven't actually
finished your script yet; I know it's painful to hear. It's time to start the rewrites. Now I know that's the last thing people want to hear when they've slaved over the laptop for hours on end to get
the script finished; you type, fade out, and go, I'm done, excellent. Then someone like me
tells you, you're not. As the old adage goes,
writing is rewriting. But you don't want
to hear that. I know I would say exactly the same. Little story of mine, I remember finishing with, I think my second
script, and thought, I don't need to do anything, it doesn't need a
rewrite, it's all good. I had been talking to
a producer that was introduced to me off the
back of my first script, and he was asking to see my work or to get
together for a coffee, etc. I was really excited. Now this was a guy
who was well-known and had access to
lots of investment. He was certainly
the highest figure I had ever spoken
to in the industry. So naturally, I wanted
to get my script over to him ASAP, so I did. I sent it over by email the next week, and
the days went by, the weeks went by and nothing, I didn't hear anything back. I didn't let it worry me, I thought he's probably busy. I know we had a couple of movies coming up and everything. So I waited some
more, still nothing. Eventually, I wrote
an email saying that, I hope you got my script okay, we would still be great
to meet up, but nothing. It wasn't until I
wrote to the guy who'd first introduced us and
got him to read my script, did I realize the truth. It was my first draft, and to be honest, it sucked. Now some of it was okay and it had the
potential in there, but it just wasn't up to standard at the
point I'd sent it. So for me, I well and truly
burnt my bridge there. I've never had any contact
with that producer since. So don't you fall into that trap. What
does all this mean? It means one draft
is not enough, and it doesn't matter if
you're a great writer, it still will never
be your best, most polished piece
after the first draft, it just can't be. That is our starting point. Like sculptors do,
they block out the rough first, don't they? Then they go within,
they start sculpting the details and refining
and making it perfect, that's what we're going to do. If you followed my other course, you should have a good form, like a sculptor would. We've just got to
now make it perfect. Now I hear what you're
saying, but John, if I knew how to
make it perfect, I'd have just done that
in the first place. Well, that is a very good point, and one which we will
address in the next section. So I will see you there.
4. Making Your Good Script Great: [MUSIC] Like any innovation, iteration is the key to success; produce feedback,
learn, and adapt. In order to do this without
being completely overwhelmed, it's best to do it in small bite-sized chunks
because like anything in life, if we try to do
too much at once, we're going to get confused
and before we know it, the whole thing is going
to be a big tangled mess. You'll get discouraged
and things will start to quickly fall apart and won't
want to do it anymore. Also, it seems less
daunting when you do it in small steps,
at least for me. I'm a huge procrastinator and I know if I have a
huge amount to do, I would usually end
up watching YouTube or something rather than doing anything else and getting knocking
down to work. To do this, we're going to take one aspect of the
script at a time and concentrate purely on this before moving on to
the next aspect. I usually take it in
the following order, but you can do it
any way you like. I do it with plot, theme, character and dialogue,
individual scenes, and then writing style. For example, the first run-through
will be purely focused on the script's plot and making sure that it's
the best it can be. What could you change to
make it more memorable? Are there any little
twists you could add? This is the point where you
can experiment a little and see where your
creativity takes you. Then the next run-through may be theme and how it
relates to the plot. Do you have different size
to your thematic question? Are you asking the audience to think about your
theme rather than preaching to them because no one wants to be preached
at during a movie? How did the protagonist
question the theme? Does it help them
overcome their problem and thereby achieve their goal? Then our next part will be
character and maybe dialogue. Did your main
character have an arc? Do they overcome an inner
problem in order to succeed? Do they have relationships with others that enable this rather than just random people
who we meet along the way? Do your characters
have individual dialogue that distinguishes them from other characters and tells the reader more about
them as people? Is it rich and subtextual rather than being on
the nose dialogue? Is it extraneous dialogue
no one cares about? Does it not have any
purpose in your script? After that, I'd move on
to individual scenes. Do you need to have every single scene that you've
written in your script? If not, take it out. Does each one moves the
story on or tell the reader of important information
they need to know? Can you make the scenes more interesting,
compelling, or tense? Finally, I'd finished with
the writing style pass. Is your description
as best it can be? Is it concise and vivid? Could you use a
metaphor instead of a long-winded fall
line description? Are your action paragraph style? Is there plenty of
whitespace on the page? Now, we discussed a lot of this in the
screenwriting course. I won't go over all
that again here. If you need a refresher, go and have a look
at the course. But there is plenty
that you should take the time to go through and really try to make
it the best you can. It was so important. Now that sounds like
a lot of passes, but each time you do one, you will be making your
writing better, trust me. Little by little,
your script will become rich and
before you know it, you will surprise yourself with a difference you have made. Also, side note. I know that when you
start to go through it, other things might
pop into your mind to change like maybe you're on your
character paths and some great plot
idea might come up. In that case, just jot
those ideas down for now, concentrate just on
the part you're doing, and then come back
at the end and add the new plot ideas afterwards with maybe another plot pass. I hope that all makes sense. We're just going
through it pass by pass and then making those
ones the best we can. Take one topic at a
time, plot, theme, character and dialogue, individual scenes,
run writing style. Concentrate on one of those
at a time and go through your script making changes you think will enhance your work, then repeat for
each of the topics. It's really that simple. Finally, it is much easier
to add than take away. All too often you find
after your first rewrite, you have an extra 10 pages
than you did originally. The goal is to keep the
same amount of pages, so chip away anything
extraneous, be it a word, a phrase, or a piece of action, it really does add up actually. Do not be too protective
of your original material. Change is important and it will make your final script
that much better. You can do incremental
saving as well, so save your new draft as
Version 2 and then Version 3, etc, so you don't
lose things before. That way you can see the changes you've made at earlier date and compare your new ones
to an earlier version. You can always revert back to certain things
if you need to. Once you've done all
those past changes, that's your second
draft complete. Now it's the best that
you think you can do. We go into our feedback loop
to see what others think, then we'll take that
feedback and iterate again. Yey, I hear you
say, more rewrites. Anyway, I'll see you
in the next one.
5. Getting Feedback: [MUSIC] We've gone through
our script ourselves, made all the changes and
got a solid second draft, now we enter our
feedback loop stage. They're what I like
to think of as four tiers of feedback
for your script, which in my opinion, give progressively better and more reliable feedback
for your work, the higher the tier we go. Let's go through
each of these four one-by-one so you
understand what I mean. The four tiers are; friends and family, writers groups/ film groups, screenwriting services,
and people in the industry like producers, directors, other screenwriters. The first and usually
least productive tier is number 1, family and friends. Now we've all been there, I know I have. Your mum offers to read
your script or one of your mates who likes
film and says, "They'll give it a go, give it to me I'll
have a read of it." But while they can
give you a yeah, that was good because they love you and they
aren't likely to say, sorry, that was total crap. They're not likely to know the intricacies of screenwriting, like understanding
if the structure is working and where
you could fix it, or weaving in theme
and playing with the character arcs,
for these reasons, I'd say this tier 1 group is something I would try
to avoid if I were you. Number 2 is writers
groups and film groups, this is a step-up
from tier 1 because this group of
people usually have a grasp of the script basics, they're into film and
can tell you if it has an intriguing idea and you can gauge how marketable
your script is, and your idea is here, it's going to be
likely felt producer would want to read it
in the first place. However, although there may be some good working
professionals in this group, there will be plenty
of people who aren't, and this will lead
us back into tier 1 territory where we don't
really want to be. You have to be cautious, be selective to those
you give your script to, and who you trust to give
your productive feedback. If you're in one
of these groups, then see if there's someone
who has some film experience, strike up a conversation,
feel them out, see if they could be
a good fit before asking if they'd like
to read your scripts. I mean you never know, you might find one or two people who you will develop a
working relationship with, and as we'll talk about later, the film and TV industry
is all about contexts. People hire from people, once that they meet and
once that they like, the chance to start
forging these contacts, it's always a good thing and you can never do
it early enough. Tier 3 is screenwriting
services, and while I think most new
writers will start here. I mean I did for
myself, for instance, it can also be quite a
polarizing category for some of the people, and if
you don't know what it is, a script service is where
you send your work, you send your script
to this company, usually online, they read it and write notes for you on how to make your
script better. You can then use these
notes to start your revise, which now it always
sounds pretty good, and these people do
it for a living, so they can judge
more accurately your faults and where
you could improve, certainly better
than the lower tiers we've covered so far, but there are also
some problems or considerations at least with the services that you
should be aware of. First of all, whether
we like it or not, there are lots of scripts
services out there and they are all vying for
a slice of your money, I mean it's big
business after all, and not all are equally
as good as each other. I mean I remember the most I paid to someone for
feedback that was, I think it was $900, now that's a lot of cash which I didn't really
have at the time. I did get good
feedback to work with, but was it really worth
that amount? I'm not sure. Afterwards, in my early days, I used host of different
services, some were good, some were not so
good, you have to find the ones which
works well for you, which can take time and money. The other main problem
is criticism is subjective and this is true for both for the
reader and writer. What one person may deem as total rubbish and not
worth the ink on the page, another might see it as highly entertaining
and well-written. Also, constructive
criticism might be great for one writer, but the same criticism
maybe useless to another who just doesn't agree with
what the reader suggested. You could therefore end up
spending a lot of money, but not really getting back the information you
wanted in return. I can also tell you that
some scripts services are overly enthusiastic
about your script, because like all businesses, they won't repeat customers. I mean think about it, if they tell you your
script really sucks and you're hopeless and you
should never be writing, will you go back to them
with your next draft? Doubtful. Whereas
if they say, "Yeah, your script is
really pretty great, it just needs a few
tweaks here and there." You're much more likely to make those changes and
then send it back, so they can praise
you even more. Now we all like praise and screenwriters are
naturally self doubting, I know I still am, if someone says we
are fab writers, we liked them, naturally we do. What you need to do is
find someone who offers constructive but
truthful feedback, you need to trust
their judgment, and this leads me on
to my next point. Scripts services hire readers to read your script
and write notes, now while some of these readers have read for big film studios, they are not studio execs
or agents or producers, they usually have a really good understanding of screenwriting, and they will offer suggestions based on what they think you could do to make your work better and what's
selling at the moment. That does not mean that
they are always right, this is just what they would do, not what you would
necessarily want to do. Again this can be quite radically different from
one reader to another, so it's a luck of the draw of who was
assigned your scripts. Whether they like your
genre or not really, and what they are going to
give you are suggestions, I mean if it was David S. Goyer, Aaron Sorkin telling
you these things, then you'd better
down well listen, but the readers suggestions are not the key to getting a sale, which at the end of the day
is what we're all after. Take on board what they say, but don't blindly copy, they are not oracles of film. If you're going to
use a script service, be careful what you pay for. Some of these service offer two or even three pricing
structures as well. One part is for the basic
coverage and one for the super-duper
you've got to have this coverage is the
best in the world, this means that the price
can vary from a couple of $100 all the way up
to 1,000 or more. Look closely at the
different types and the differences that you
will get for your money, because the paying more isn't
always the better option. For example, some services
might say you get eight pages of notes for
the super-duper coverage, but only four for
the basic coverage, what they don't shout about is the fact that one or two of these pages of the
super-duper coverage may be taken up by a
synopsis of your script. A synopsis for anyone
who doesn't know is a short description of
what happens in the film, now why do you need this
from a script service? You wrote the **** thing,
you know what it's about. A lot will also tease you with a tick box chart at the end where there is a scale of how good different aspects
of your script is, such as characters,
plot, dialogue, etc. People liked to see
these things visually, they usually pay extra
just to get this, where it's probably
covered in the notes, anyways you don't
really need it. The other big thing that
they try to push is the past considered
recommend rating. This is how the reader feels the production
company would rate your script with a pass
and shove it in the bin, would they consider and
have it as a maybe, or would they recommend
and send the script up the chain of command
to their bosses. I'm going to be honest with you, if a script services is charging
you more just for this, do not pay the extra, again the view of a
reader is subjective, like we've just talked about, they have no idea what the
plethora of producers and production companies are looking
for at any given moment. They cannot say if
your script would be a past considerable
recommend, I mean if your scripts sucks, you'll find this
out in the notes, so you can pretty much
assume it would be a pass, and if they rave about it, you may be onto something, so just keep on working. There are so many contributing
factors to a script sale that it's impossible to judge
based on a reader's view. The other reason I
don't really like this scale is that if you
don't get a recommend, most usually they put
consider any way to be safe, you may become disheartened and think you
aren't good enough, do not listen to that. Keep pushing forward and like the heroes in our
amazing stories, you will get there in the end, you just need to go step-by-step and keep pushing forward. It seems like I may be bashing on the script
services here, but I'm not really, I do think they have their
place and as I said, I've used them myself and
found them a benefit, just make sure you take what
they say with a pinch of salt and be careful
what you're paying for, don't spend more
than you can afford, and presume that by doing so, you'll be guaranteed to
get your work service, it's not a magic pill, so just take that on board. They're all also of course more well-known
script doctors, who will read and offer notes, but these can be really
quite expensive, and although I would
have more trust in the person if I'd read their book or knew
more about them, you really have to
weigh up whether it's really worth the large outlay. These are usually
people who have written quite a number of things
and more academic, apparent story experts,
but just again, be careful, don't spend all your money,
please just don't. Finally, the more
experienced you get, you will be able to use the best tier for
feedback, which is tier 4. Now tier 4 consists of people currently working
in the industry, whether that's
producers, directors, other writers, things like that. Now this is undoubtedly
the hardest tier to get, because you need to make these contacts in the first place, and they have to be people
that you know and trust, you can't just send it to
a decision-maker you've just met or doesn't really
see you as a friend, that they're given a
professional feedback to, or you will end up in
the chat like I did previously with the
producer I told you about. Now these tier 4
contacts of yours will understand that this
is your first draft, they can give you good feedback, they'd know that you're
not trying to sell it to them, and if they like it, they can also help with you selling it or getting the
script into production as well. It's a two-way street,
you see they want a good movie that they can make money from and you want a
good movie to sell or make, or else they can tell
you that there isn't a market for that kind
of script at the moment. They even sometimes tell you
what they are looking for in terms of story type in
the next year or so, and have you got anything like that? This has
happened to me. I personally have a
writing partner as well, and it's definitely
something I'd recommend, most writers are better at
certain things than others, for example you may be
amazing at dialogue, but not quite as good at coming up with
action set pieces. Whereas your writing partner
could be the opposite, and so you can balance
things between you and go over each other's work, and it really does work for me, and so it's definitely something that you should
maybe think about. Anyway, as I've said, you won't have these contacts
to start off with, no one does, it will take time, there are a few ways to get
them and although it may seem daunting and you aren't getting anywhere to start off with, if you stick with it, it will pay dividends in the long run. For example, one of the
easiest ways is to get into a working role first to
start building contacts, then the compound
effect of knowing people in the industry
propagates along. That is that old saying that you are within
seven people of anyone in the world
through the people that you meet,
something like that. Start using that power
rather than sitting alone in your office hoping to
get a break, get onset, even if it says a
runner, meet people, go to networking in
your area and yes, I absolutely hate them to. You never know who
you will end up chatting to in these situations, and it could be people
that actually end up changing your life. In my mind, you have to try all the avenues and one
will eventually work, let's go into more depth in
that now in the next chapter.
6. Marketing Preparations: So far we've spent a lot
of time talking about script development and not
about selling your work, but it is actually a huge part
of getting the sale done. A great script has
so much more chance to get bored and is worth doing. Not jumping straight
ahead, however, tempting it might
be, and believe me, I know how tempting it can be. But if you do, you're
likely to crash and burn. Let's try and do the
prep work first. There's also a couple
of other things we might need in our
setting journeys. Let just quickly cover that. That way we are
ready for anything. What else will we need? Well, first thing is a logline. Anyone who has taken my
screenwriting course here on Skill-share will
know the importance of having a good logline. We use this to make sure we have an interesting story
with a good protagonist. We can test it out on people to see if it's potentially
marketable. All this is actually before
we write the scripts, we do not want to be
wasting our time. However, that logline is very important in
the marketing as well when we get to our
finished work into the world. You might be having
a conversation with some potential
decision-maker who says, well, tell me about what
your script is about, and then rather than some
long-winded explanation of about how your
character does this, then there's this other thing and boring the person to death. You can give your logline a more conversational
quick 22nd synopsis. Some people call this
actually the elevator pitch. It should only take as
long as it would to ride an elevator into the
office to tell the story. That's the whole idea of it. I also liked to do a
quick written synopsis, anything from half a page
up to a couple of pages. This is that if someone
asked to know a bit more, you have something
to send them via email or whatever with
a bit more depth. There isn't a huge
long treatment for them to wade through which they're just not
going to bother. It's the extended information
of your film if you like. If they liked that, then they cannot receive
this full script afterwards. That's it. I've never been
asked for anything else, so we are now good to go.
7. Marketing Your Script: We've got to the stage where our script is the
best we can make it. We got feedback at whatever
level we can at the moment than our rewrites are finally ready to get
this thing out there. We've got our logline
and a couple of patient offices. Now what? Well, as a bit of an
introvert myself, I know how scary this
car park can be. Now, you're worried that people might not like your work, you think that if
the first-person you send it to doesn't like it
then you are a failure. It's never going
to happen for you. You're not confident in
putting yourself out into the big scary market
and prefer to just sit behind your
laptop writing. But the truth is, you've got
to stop thinking like that. Believe in yourself
and your ability. Fake it till you make
it if you have to. The people are not
going to come to you and you have to go to them, take action and
get what you want. There's no other way to do it. Now, we have a few choices when it comes to how we
get our script out. In days gone by, I guess some people still do this
to a certain degree today, you'd get a list of all
the production companies, managers, producers, things
like that from a book. I think it was called the
writers and artists yearbook, if I'm not mistaken, and send them a query lead to
all these people. You'd put something like, Hi, my name is such and such. You put any experience
you've already had and then I've written a new feature
called a bumble fly, which is a cross between
transformers in the matrix. You then give you
a little log line, which we've just done. Finally adding, if you'd
like to read the copy, I'll be delighted
to send it to you. You then mail all these
letters out manually. This can still work and
they certainly an option. It doesn't cost a huge
amount other than the postage and it doesn't
take too much effort, so it is worth a shot. You're not going to lose
anything by doing this. It may be wanted
to give it a go. Probably not the best, but you can always try it. One of the most
well-known ways to get your script notice is through
screenwriting competitions. There are lots and
lots of these, and I wouldn't recommend
entering them all as it will start to cost you an awful lot of money and be a waste of time. If you want to
enter competitions, I would stick with the big
ones such as the final draft, big break or the
Nicholl's fellowship. Now these are very prestigious and have different
genre categories. If you get to the finals, you are likely to get
some interests and start making those vital contexts
we talked about earlier. They only happen once
a year, however, and I wouldn't just use this
method as your only method. It's like putting all your eggs in one basket and we
don't want to do that. We want to maximize
our chances here. Now, from my personal
experience, I have done this, one of my scripts got
into the finals of the big break a
number of years ago. I didn't make a few
contexts from it. Not amazing, but it
was worthwhile to do. I wouldn't pin all my
hopes on this method, but it's certainly worth
ago in my opinion. Another method is through online services such as ink tip, virtual pitch fest,
and the black list. I'm sure there's others. But before I go any further,
I'd just like to clarify, I'm not affiliated with any of these companies and this is
my own personal view of them. What these are, are a bit like the old-style query letter
we talked about before, but brought into
the digital age. Once again, though,
this costs unlike the more manual method and it can actually cause quite a lot. But let's go through some
of the most well-known ones and you can see what
they're all about. Ink tip. This is
basically a listing site. You with the aspiring white
to pay $30 a month to list your script along
with everyone else's hoping someone will
like the sound of it, read it and get in touch through the logline that they can see. It seems that they list
hundreds of log lines, and you can request
the full script based on that logline. Well, at least this
proves the importance of the good logline.
Like we've said before. They say they have lots
of production companies, producers, etc., reading them
and have lots of success. However, if you look at
their movies main page, it's not exactly crawling with well-known movies and there don't seem to be many of them, which is claimed on
the About Us page. I haven't heard myself of
any success with this side. But if you want to give
it a go, maybe do it for a month and see if
you get any bytes. It doesn't seem
overly expensive, so it could be worth ago. I'll just see how we get on. The blacklist. This is similar to inked it. You pay $30 prescript per month to have it
hosted on their site, produces [inaudible] filter
by genre and budget, and then vitro script. Now, here's where I don't like this site and this
is a personal thing. On their site, it says we
also encourage but do not require the purchase of at least one pay devaluation
from our readers, which is $100 per read for features and one of hour pilot, $70 per read for half
hour or less pilot. Only hosted scripts can
receive evaluations. Now, what this means is that
they are trying to say, you don't need it, but you'll be much
better if you've got it. To get one of our readers to evaluate your scripts and they will recommend it or not to the producers,
etc., on the site. I've seen this on
this slide before and I can tell you that
you may need to buy a few evaluations to get
your script to stand out a bit more at a $100
a time remember. Then if one of the
evaluations is bad, remember that a reader is giving a highly personal subjective
evaluation of your script. But if one of these
evaluations is bad, your score drops
like lead balloon and you then feel like you've got to buy more evaluations
to make up for it. Personally, I don't like
this kind of tactic. I think it's wrong and I wouldn't recommend
you guys do it. Of course, have a
look for yourself. Make up your own minds. I don't know everything. You're the one in control your destiny and if you think it's the right fit for you
and you are happy to spend the money, your choice. This one, however, is
certainly not for me. Virtual Pitch Fest. Now, this side is a bit different
from the other two. It's very much the
digital query letter where you will sign up, there is a whole list of reps, producers, and companies that you can send
a query attitude. It goes straight to their
email through the site. What is good is
you get to choose who you want to send it to, who you think will be
the most receptive to your type of film and you're
guaranteed a response. It could just be a no, we're not interested with
no further information, which is unhelpful. Who knows if these people are
receiving hundreds of these a day and they
just press node to get rid of them. I don't know. The price ranges from
$55 per seven pitches up to a $185 for 25 pitches. I'm a bit torn on this one. Out of them all
this seems the most proactive and you're not just hanging around hoping someone somewhere will pick up
your script to read it. You send your pitch
email to who you want and you get an answer
within a day or so saying, yes enters the script. No, we're not interested or
whatever the case may be. The bad side is, you will probably very quickly
burn through the money. I mean, there's hundreds of listed people and
companies to send it to. It looks like you'll
have to really dig down into who you want to send
your pitches to whom, why? Or else you may be tempted to send more and more
and more and more, hoping that the next
one will say yes. It also doesn't say who in the companies that you're
actually getting through to. It could be the lowest rank in the office for all you know. Again, I don't know, I'm not involved with them. But again, you can give it a
try and see what you think. Surrounded them
all, I think if I were to give one myself ago, I'd give it to virtual pitch fest because I can target who I think would give me
my best chance bit of research on my part. However, overall, all of these methods seem
like the lazy person, which in my experience
just doesn't tend to work. It's very impersonal. It doesn't build
your connections. I can't discern
whether it is much of a success rate other than draining your bank
account, which worries me. It also seems like the
get rich quick scheme of the screenwriting
world where these companies that are going
to preying on your dreams, setting aspiring
writers a shot of hope human and breaking Hollywood
in exchange for cash. I'm sure they probably used the odd one or two
people who have had the hit lucky with it
and it's worked great, but I would advise
caution and not really rely on these things. Remember nothing and I repeat
nothing beats hard work. We can do better. So onto the things which I think do work though these do
require some effort. I've just actually been reading
a book which was talking about how often in life
we do all this hard work, but it doesn't seem to
be getting us anywhere. We get disillusioned
and we quit. Now the author said this
is the biggest shame and worst thing we can do because all this hard work
we've been doing isn't wasted. Is often not seen
hidden underneath the surface like a
plant growing its roots until all of a sudden
burst into existence and we're rewarded with what we wanted in the first place. Another thing I
like, which is in similar vein is that
definition of luck. You've heard about when people make it big and then others say, "You're lucky because you met the right
person," or "You're lucky for winning this
competition," or whatever. Well, I like that phrase that, "Luck is where opportunity
meets preparation." You need to have
done the hard work, the preparations so
that when you are presented with the opportunity, either the meeting or the pitch, you can grasp it with both hands and make the most out of it. Now if you hadn't done the prep, you'd fall flat on your face. They may seem like
overnight success or luck to those on the outside who haven't seen the
graft you've put in, but it is what this
will make you succeed. This is hard work and then getting the opportunity
will make you succeed. Now the number one on the things that require
effort and can give the most reward is make
your own marketing. I actually did this
with my first script to really great success. I tried sending
out query letters, but it wasn't really
getting anywhere and at the time I didn't know
anyone in the film industry. I had come from TV. I did
an MA in screenwriting, was doing low budget commercials and corporate video
to make some money. I wanted to be a writer, director in film,
but didn't know how. I decided to write my first script with
my writing partner Thomas after I'd
been to China with my wife and got an idea for a movie while I was over there. We wrote a script and as I said, more query letters
but got nowhere. We decided to make
a fake trailer for the movie we've written. We gathered together
our friends, got some hired kit
or what our friends had and made a two minute long
trailer as best we could. We spent about a year
adding visual effects, learning to color grade it
properly and things like that. We didn't have any monies,
so we did it all ourselves. It was an incredible
learning experience and when I'll always actually
be very thankful for. Anyway, finally we
put it on YouTube. We spread the word
through friends, etc. We got a local PR company on board and pay them
a small amount which is less than
I would've paid to those online services
we just spoke about. Through their media contexts, we got international newspapers, got an interview on the TV and radio news and so much stuff. Before we knew what we had
1 million views on YouTube, but more importantly,
a couple of agents and producers were
contacting us to chat. We weren't contacted
them, they came straight to us and through this we made those all
important contexts once we didn't have a
clue how to get before. In the end, that specific
film didn't go anywhere, but one set of
producers we met on that very first marketing
effort actually produced my last movie which has
just been on Netflix. That's over 10 years later, but it goes to show the power of actually meeting and talking to real people rather than doing things through
faceless online ways. That effort doesn't
go unnoticed. Now if you don't film yourself, join a local film group or reach out over the Internet
to others locally to see if they would like to band
together with you to make a short trailer
about your script. Or make concept art if you're
good at art and get it on Instagram or another
platform to drum up interest. You could do as
geographic novels. I mean, something
visual is always going to be better than just
reading something. If you can get
people excited about the concept of your
film visually, they're much more
likely to say gone then send it over so I can have
a look, I've read of it. You then started the
conversation as well. I mean, maybe your script
won't be right for them, but they might know someone who would be interested
in and pass it on to them or they might like
one of your other ideas. If they like you as a person, they are much more
likely to want to help you and work with
you in the future. It's this meeting real
live people that is the secret to getting your
film sold or optioned. It works better than
anything else and it is a matter of just how
to meet those people. Like we've just said, you
can market your work in the social media sphere if
you're uncomfortable with that and hope some come to you. You can also be more
active at the same time by contacting people
directly and by this, I don't mean trying to sell
them your script over email, which I know is what
we're trying to do and now I'm telling
you not to do it, but just hear me out. What I mean is try and
find producers agents, sales agents, contacts
with their website or IMDB Pro and I'm not
talking Steven Spg here. I think you get the idea. You can then contact them, tell them a little
about yourself. They are extremely busy, but if they could spare
30 minutes one day, you'd love to buy them a coffee and talk more about
getting into the industry. Send them the link to
some of your materials, if you've done the YouTube
video thing or artwork. I know it doesn't sound
like it will work, but weirdly it does and if you can't find their
email and actually, lots from my experience, even more successful than doing this via email is doing it by
old-fashioned letter, which I know is weird. The thing is when was the
last time you got a letter? Emails are ready to avoid, but a letter makes you
stand out these days. You can put in a business card, your contact details, whatever. You can then follow it up via email further down the
road if you need to. They will make people
remember you and by saying you would like to get their expertise over
coffee rather than trying to make a sale
is much more effective. People generally like to help
nice people if they can. This is a great way to meet
and get to know someone leading to work or a sail
further down the line. You can also reset
before we get on a set, you're on a film set, either locally or on a low
budget feature may be. You might be just making tea and you might not
get paid very much, but you'll be gaining
experience and meeting people. Connections, that's
what leads to sales. I didn't know, as a
real life person, you are your greatest
marketing tool. Get out there and let people see you and get to know you and then they'll
want to see your work. In summary, I would say, save your cash when it
comes to buying exposure or access or at least just
double in the other methods, if you want to give it
a go online as well. Don't spend all your
hard-earned cash please, it's not the best way. Save your money
and get out there in front of people in person, talk to them, make friends, build alliances, do favors, work on films, eventually your
material will be read. You just need to keep going
write more and don't give up. If you're serious about
this as a career, you need to get into
the film world, not just sitting
behind your laptop. Even better, all these
real-world experience will make you a
stronger screenwriter, boosting your chances
even further, your material will get read, there will be light and
your career will lift off. So get out there in
person and meet people, that's the best way to
do it, I promise you.
8. Thoughts, Tips and Ideas: [MUSIC] In this final chapter, I just want to go through
some final thoughts, tips, and ideas with you
before you charge off, do those rewrites and
make your connections. Firstly, it is important to
have more than one script written before you try to
find producers or whoever, I know this is painful
to hear sometimes, but this is for
number of reasons. Your first ever script is
unlikely to be your best. I know like anything in
life, it takes practice. When I look back on
my first script, I know it wasn't great, so keep on writing, do more and more. You can always come back and
tweak them later as well. Remember, this is what
you're supposed to enjoy doing, so get it lit. Another reason is
because producers, agents, etc, often
asked the question. Okay, that's great. I liked what I read but
have you got anything else? Didn't know, they'd
like you're writing but they want to see more of it. Maybe your original script isn't quite right for
them budget-wise, genre wise, or
some other reason. What's marketable at the
moment, for example, whatever. If you've got
something else that may work better they
want to see it. It shows you a not a newbie. It's not good enough for you to say and this has happened to me, I know this well, Well, I haven't gotten any other
scripts at the moment. I haven't done
anymore, but I do have some ideas for them. They'll just say, okay, let me know when
you've finished that up to give them read some time. You've lost your opportunity. Strike while the iron
is hot and get more in the fire for if the first
one doesn't hit quite right. As we've been talking,
you might have realized that to succeed
in this industry, you need to be
passionate about it. You need to put in the effort, be comfortable being uncomfortable
by going networking, putting yourself out there, not worrying that you
aren't good enough or fitting depressed if
someone rejects your script. The thoughts and behaviors of others are not in your control. If you get a 100 positive
things said in one negative, you will latch onto
that one negative, we all do its natural. You need to push through that. You will never ever get
the approval of everyone, so don't waste your time trying. If you don't succeed the first time do another and another, and then you will succeed. Everything takes time,
just keep going. Your passion will drive you
forward and believe me, you will get there in the end. If this is your chosen career, think of yourself as a writer, not an aspiring writer, not hopefully one day
I'll be a writer. Say you are a writer, now. How you view yourself is very important and actually it
changes the way you behave, your habits, and
your work ethic. If you believe yourself
to be a writer, you will adopt that
as a core belief and it'll become true. As I say, it sounds a bit weird, but it does work,
so give it a go. Lastly, I get asked this a lot. Should you give yourself a timetable or set
hours you write in? This is very personal and will
be different for everyone. I don't like that myself. I don't like giving
myself some quota. Because if I don't
manage that one day I'll feel like I've
let myself down and then I will get
stressed and then worry about double the next day
to catch up or something. It's just not going to work, it just won't work for me. I do quote like a
deadline though. Otherwise to me, I'd probably
procrastinate a lot, I go on YouTube a lot, so giving myself a
realistic deadline is much easier when you have
a writing partner as well for accountability, as you're both pushing in
the same direction and date but giving myself this
deadline I do find helpful. I know some people
are very disciplined. They're like robots.
They do 9:00-5:00 purely writing and
I good like that. If there isn't a
one-size-fits-all solution, find the one that
works for you and just tweak it if you're
getting nothing done.
9. Thanks: Thank you so much for
watching this course. I really, really
do appreciate it. I love making them and I
hope you found something useful during this that you can use to kick off your own career. I'm sure I'll be
doing some more, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, get those scripts to their
absolute greatest, write down what actions
you're going to take to get it out
there, and hopefully, you guys can come
back and tell me you got some of your work
auctioned or sold. If there's anything
you need to know, then I'm always here in the comments and
questions as well. If you want to know anymore, just let me know. Good luck. Stay in touch and speak
soon. Thanks for watching.