How much would you spend to make a million dollars?

7 Responses to “How much would you spend to make a million dollars?”

1. The Moviequill on October 26th, 2006 7:19 am

   I like your honesty, upfrontness, no holds barred kick in the nuts integrity… ever think of doing some coverage and script notes yourself? Personally I’d like to be told I’m shit from you (smirk) because it’ll only make me want to get better

2. Laura Reyna on October 26th, 2006 2:54 pm

   Interesting post.

   I generally agree, paying for professional-level notes is not out of the question (if you’re ready). I’ll most likely try it.

   But i have some reservations.

   I personally wouldn’t pay over $100 for this kind of service. Anything much over that & the law of deminishing returns sets in. If you’ve put in the time & believe in your ability, i’m not sure $1000 notes is going to help you 10 more than $100 notes. Does that make sense? Like anything else, you have to weigh the value.

   And also… maybe you’d want more than 1 opinion… Paying various consultants– no matter how good– can get expensive.

   But we have to keep in mind, all this is for writers who’ve written a bunch of scripts, writers who feel confident their work is at, or close to, a professional level. This is not for rank newbies.

   Absolutely green newbies have no business shelling out big bucks for anything. You can get a basic screenwriting education w/o spending lots of money (scripts online, libraries, used books, free formatting programs). After you’ve studied & written a few scripts, and you’re pretty sure your script has a chance, that’s when you should consider spending a reasonable amount for notes & such.

   (As an aside…

   On the Wordlplay.com site there are pro writers who feel that you should never get outside notes/feedback (& i assume, never ever PAY for them). Their view is that a professional should go by their own instincts, & that part of being a professional is knowing when you’ve done good work. Pros know what’s wrong with their work & how to fix it.

   Well, i agree with this– up to a point. I do think that part of being a professional is knowing what’s wrong with your work & how to fix it. At some point, if you want to consider yourself a professional, you have to rely on your own opinion about your work. In some ways, it smacks of insecurity & amateurism to keep relying on someone else to tell you what’s wrong w/ your scripts, or that they’re not good or whatever.

   But of course, at the beginning, when you’re trying to bridge the gap btwn amateur & pro, you don’t always have the confidence & experience to know if your script is working, or if it’s at a professional level. At this juncture, an outside opinion can be useful.)

3. Unk on October 26th, 2006 5:17 pm

   Laura,

   Absolutely… I’m talking more about those individuals who don’t know anyone who can give them an honest evaluation.

   Granted, it’s a slippery slope but if you’re out there in the middle of nowhere and need some HONEST and PROFESSIONAL opinions, notes, evaluations about your screenplay, what do you do?

   I would absolutely try to exhaust as many resources as possible before hiring an analyst but in the end, if you don’t have anyone who knows what they’re doing to give you some idea of where your screenplay stands AND more importantly, YOU don’t know where you stand, an analyst is probably a good thing.

   If it were me and funds were limited, I would definitely start off with some basic notes or coverage and see where that takes me.

   I do agree that once you’ve reached a level of experience whether or not you’re a pro, you should have a VERY GOOD IDEA of where your work stands and train to those weak areas.

   I’m lucky in that I have plenty of industry types that read my stuff and let me just say that most of the time, I don’t agree with the majority of what I’m told but I do take certain suggestions and recommendations that appeal to me under consideration.

   I feel pretty confident about my knowledge of story and the craft of screenwriting so really, all I’M looking for is another pair of eyes because I’ve been so close to the work.

   On the other hand… If I wasn’t sure of my ability or any other aspect of the craft as it relates to my writing and my screenplays, I would definitely hire an analyst if for no other reason, to simply obtain a compass reading so to speak.

   I think if you’re really dedicated to the craft and your education of the craft, it probably wouldn’t take hiring an analyst more than ONCE to reap the benefits of that analyst’s experience and opinions.

   Assuming he or she was worth a shit.

   Unk

4. Joshua James on October 27th, 2006 6:40 am

   Hey Unk,

   I’ve actually done what you’ve recommended - I’ve paid a little bit for coverage, I’ve also gotten coverage on a couple scripts from small prodco’s here and there. Here’s been my experience from it.

   I’ve certainly learned from the experience, and found that there are a few things which, for whatever reason, one should never do when writing a screenplay that have nothing to do with good writing whatsoever. Analysts have their own “tells”, it seems, and those “tells” are fluid (for example, we all know that years ago having a voice-over was the kiss of death. Then it was starting with a flashback. Or maybe that’s now. I haven’t been up to date).

   On the postive side, once I got the feedback, I have picked up on things that weren’t as clear as I’d hoped, and in one case with a problem script of mine (which I used Scott the Reader, who I do like) I was able to solve one small tricky challenge.

   You learn pretty quick how readers, as a whole, work. I also used a book, 500 WAYS TO BEAT THE SCRIPT READER, not that I want to beat the reader, just learn how to succeed in our field.

   So it was a learning experience, using readers.

   For the most part, however, I’ve learned more from friends in the biz who aren’t analysts (actors, directors and other writers) and from constantly reading and writing. The last part is key. Most of the coverage I’ve had hasn’t been nearly as helpful as that. If anything, most of it was frustrating.

   I think it’s not a bad idea to pay for coverage, if only to know what to expect when you get ready to move up a rung, but you hit what I think is the key problem.

   Which analysts to use and why?

   Dramaturgy is a delicate and somewhat personal art (and it’s one reason I’m not surprised the authors you mention use private editors, probably people who “get” them) and it’s very relative. Just as that, as you mention, 98 % percent of screenwriters suck, it’s also possible that a close number of analysts, while they do not suck, just don’t get what it is to write. For every John August (who was a reader) you get a hundred McKee’s (who talks a lot about writing movies, but doesn’t seem to be about to write them well himself, or so I was told) who have the formula’s down pat, the inciting events by page ten, the arc of act two, etc.

   I think if you ever find the right reader / analyst / dramturg, the one who “gets” you and whose feedback helps you improve everything, you should hang onto him or her to the bare burger, because that person is worth their weight in gold, or silver or whatever the coin of our realm is these days.

   But finding a person like that is hard in every field. Stephen King married his.

   But one has to look and hearing from pro readers is edifying anyway, if only because the people hiring you use the same type of folks to evaluate your work, so why not jump ahead of the game.

   The weaknesses of professional readers, at least most of the one’s I’ve dealt with (most, I say, as I mention, I felt I got good stuff from Scott the Reader) in my experience has been two-fold - One, they’re judging it as a formula thing called a screenplay and not looking at it as a movie or story. So if they see that there’s a VO in it, it gets an automatic reject (not anymore, obviously, but awhile back) or any one of a number of fluid signs that have nothing to do with what the story is.

   I had a friend stop reading a script of mine (one a number of other folks liked) because I have the word ripped to describe a guys chest. He stopped when he read that at page 7. He said, “you went purple, you shouldn’t do that with a screenplay so I just stopped.”

   Bear in mind, maybe it was purple, maybe I did go a bit far - but the story should be more than one or two words and the reason I had him read it was to catch that stuff, not stop at page 7. He was a friend and doing it for free, so if I’d paid him, he probably would have finished it. But I could tell that one word had doomed the story for him. And this was a guy who liked a lot of my plays. He just couldn’t get past the tells he’d been taught should never be used in screenplays.

   And I feel for him, he’s read a shitload of bad scripts. So maybe they need that. But it hurts them when it comes to judging story, I think. Isn’t that the reason so many great scripts have been turned down (the classic example is Pulp Fiction, but I’m sure they’re are others)?

   The second weakness, in my mind, is what you’ve listed as high concept. This is the touchy one, because no one can really tell you what it is but they know it when they see it. I guess it means “how marketable is it” right? How original is it? In other words, we want something new but familiar. Something we’ve seen before but in a way we haven’t seen it, is how I’ve heard it described. Of course, the person who said that later said that there are only fourteen scripts, really, going through Hollywood.

   This is an ugly barrel of monkeys to open, the high concept debate. I’m not saying I have all the answers. I’m just going to share my thoughts.

   Readers often seem to list whether or not a movie is marketable, which is a lot of responsibility on one person who is at the beginning of a chain, and it shoots them in the foot, because what is marketable today could change tomorrow. But in much coverage (not just my own, but others I’ve seen) readers say “there isn’t a market for this film, no one wants to see “westerns / sci-fi / musicals (insert genre here).

   But that’s another thing that changes. I mean, westerns are, or were, considered non-profitable, and gay westerns? Forget about it. But we know how much money Brokeback made, right?

   I think it’s tough to have a screenplay rejected because the story hasn’t been done before and therefore there is no marketing track record for that kind of movie, yet writers are asked to write something original that hasn’t been done before. Right?

   If it sounds like I’m whining, I’m really not. It’s sort of a wonderful kind of zen riddle, in a way.

   People want to see a good story and in the end, the concept is more, in my mind, a marketing issue than it is a writing issue. That’s sacrilege, I know, but it’s my experience with the folks I know who pay to see movies.

   Personally, I don’t have a problem with movies that aren’t high concept, as long as they’re executed well.

   I think that the emphasis should be more on execution and less on ideas of concept. Not that their shouldn’t be ideas, not at all. It just seems that the ideas are the focus, in the movie biz, because so many execs can have them. They can’t write a script, but they can have an idea.

   Don’t get me wrong, I love original ideas in movies (loved, LOVED Being John Malkovich. How many companies turned that down?).

   but writing the script, and writing it WELL, is more important. Really. You can have a great idea and fuck it up. You can take a simple idea, like THE NOTEBOOK (my lady loves that movie) or RED EYE (we had a Rachel McAdam’s night in the James household) and do it so well it totally works.

   Red Eye is a good example. What’s really new about that film, in terms of ideas? If you were pitching it, it’d sound like a hundred other movies (Turbulence comes to mind). But it’s done so well it works.

   An analyst or reader might read the script and say, “you’ve got good things here, but airplane movies aren’t selling now because the snakes / planes movie” - I’ve heard that kind of feedback.

   I mean, probably writers will get that anyway, even if they get past the reader stage onto the develp exec, everyone’s looking for a reason to say no more than to say yes, but it’s dishearting to hear from a reader. It’s like they’re not seeing the forest for the trees, or some cliche’ like that which would get me an automatic pass.

   I think that a familiar story told well will feel original. I think we all sense that, at some level.

   I love the novels of Lee Child, though each one follows a familiar pattern. Reacher gets into a jam, has to solve a problem or save a girl, kicks some ass. They’re not that original, but they’re so well written it doesn’t matter.

   If the familiar was bad, why are there so many sequels? It’s an interesting zen riddle, this thing regarding concept, it really is.

   Anyway. that’s the second weakness. If a writer has a strong sense of what works, for them, as a story, and doesn’t let it take the legs out from under you, you can learn a lot from pro readers.

   But really, it’s important just to find the right one. I just had a script optioned this week, one with a very original idea, but it really came about because of a guy I know who really “got” it and “got” me and the feedback was instrumental to getting the script to the best place it could be in terms of execution. That’s what did it. But I had to go through the comments of a lot of others, friends, aquainances and pro’s, before I found him.

   Geez, sorry for the long frakkin’ comment, Unk - I need an editor to edit me, I guess.

5. MaryAn on October 27th, 2006 11:02 am

   Sometimes, ya really need somebody to tell you what you may already know… like stronger verbs.

6. Unk on October 27th, 2006 4:49 pm

   James,

   Really interesting comment there! You make a LOT of outstanding points and I think we all appreciate that…

   To me, HIGH CONCEPT is fairly simple and while I might not be able to accurately describe it, I’ll give it a shot.

   High Concept is an idea where EVERYONE can fill in the blanks before you can explain it to them.

   Of course there’s varying levels of high concept… I could describe something to you right now that sounds like DIE HARD ON SKI LIFT and while everyone that hears it could easily fill in the blanks, selling that concept to a producer could be quite difficult.

   So you’re right I think… DIFFERENT BUT FAMILIAR so when you start to explain it to me, I IMMEDIATELY GET IT and fill in the blanks on my own.

   An additional element to this however are the POSSIBILITIES. You describe your high concept to me and maybe I don’t fill in the blanks but I immediately SEE THE POSSIBILITIES for obstacles, twists and turns which I supply with my own imagination in an instant and BAM, I see the movie.

   As for analysts, I’ve never used one myself because I’ve been extremely lucky to have enough people I TRUST to read my stuff and give me feedback but having said that, I would still hire one in a heartbeat if I didn’t have that circle of trusted friends.

   The problem is definitely finding someone that GETS YOU and at the same time IS WORTH A SHIT. I see that as the ultimate problem of hiring an analyst.

   Thanks again for the comment. Good stuff!

   MaryAn,

   You’re right… LOL.

   Unk

7. Joshua James on October 27th, 2006 6:33 pm

   Thanks Unk - I love your site and thanks for hearing me out.

   At some point, I’d like to hear your thoughts on finding an agent, no, strike that, on finding the RIGHT agent.

   Maybe next week?

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