Let’s Get Visual: Getting Creative to Sell Your Script

If you are reading the “trades” or deadlinehollywood.com you will see that the recession isn’t quite over for studios.  Because yes, while movie attendance is up, studios are still taking the stance that they don’t have money and might never have money again.  In fact, Universal said today that the studio is out of money this year to fund development.

But there will always be money for great material - in fact, I just sold a script to a buyer -  you just have to get more creative with how you excite people about your project and help give them the motivation to buy it.

How did I sell the script in this climate? Here is my secret:

Get visual! Today is the age of immediate gratification and executives want to see exactly what it is they are buying. Help them! Be creative and give them something visual that will get them excited about your project.

I almost always provide a visual aid to go with whatever project I am selling. Sometimes it is simply a visual aid with pictures and graphs of movies that have done well in that genre. Sometimes it is a sample poster.
Sometimes it is a page depicting possible merchandising opportunities for the project. Sometimes it is character and scene sketches.  For an animation project, I will often have my clients put together a 30-second clip.

Whatever the project is, I always try to pair a visual presentation with it because this gives buyers something to look at.

For the script I just sold I put together a packet of graphs, posters and merchandising opportunities and this got everyone excited — enough so that they bought the project and are looking towards a spring shoot.

So get visual to help sell your project!

Help Yourself and Others by Writing the Best Screenplay Ever

The following Village Voice article by Josh Olson (screenwriter of Academy Award nominee A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) has been making the rounds among Hollywood.

If you haven’t read it, click on the link and read it before you go on reading my blog post:
http://tinyurl.com/m8a5u

And while the article is pretty harsh I do understand his point. EVERYONE in the world wants to be a screenwriter. No really. I have traveled all over the world and no matter where I am or who I am talking with — people all have a great story that they swear would be an amazing movie.

True story: My business partner and I were staying at a friend’s apartment in New York.  And after a week we were on a friendly nod basis with the night doorman. Somehow he found out that we repped writers, and lo and behold he sent us his script — something about an Estonian kidnapping (or some other Slavic country).

This brings me to my point: As managers our time is our most valuable resource.  There are only so many hours in the day, and with 25 clients …. there is very little free time.

Or think about it this way: I have to read all the scripts my clients send me, plus the scripts that are sent to them for their writing and directing consideration, plus scripts from all my friends who have possible clients for me.

If you saw the stacks and stacks of scripts next to my bed you would understand why it’s very hard to read scripts from people I don’t know.  However, sometimes I will agree to read a script from someone who I have just met.

But do yourself a favor — MAKE IT THE BEST SCRIPT EVER.  Take the time to really give yourself the best shot. Have your friends read it and give you notes. And when they are satisfied with it, take it to a professional reader to get it an unbiased opinion.

Your script can always improve, and if you are going to give it to someone who works in the industry, first make sure it is up to professional standards.

Because not only are you hurting yourself, but you are hurting the next person.  I promise you, if the treatment Josh Olson read was AMAZING, he would be more inclined to read the next person’s treatment. Instead, he is now not going to read anyone’s.

Which is exactly why we have a strict submission policy that scripts have to get covered first by the coverage service we know and trust.  And if a script gets a recommend, the coverage services will pass it on to me. But if the script doesn’t get a recommend, I have saved myself valuable time by not reading a bad script.

If you want to be a working writer in Hollywood and are going to ask someone to read your script, it is your job to make it the best possible script in the world.

Are you protected? Why Everyone Needs A Lawyer.

As it’s the day after Labor Day, after which the town (typically) swings back to action, I thought this would be a good opportunity to talk about why everyone — even managers and producers — need a lawyer.

Now I know this might sound shocking, but not everyone in this town wants to play nice. Especially these days, the sole goal of buyers is to get the most they can out of a project/writer or producer and pay as little as possible.  In fact, buyers are using the current economic situation to take a very hard stance against paying what was once customary fees and they are getting to pay next to nothing.

This is why you must have a good lawyer to represent you.  Let your lawyer be the bad guy, let him/her fight back for you, so you can remain neutral and just work on the creative side of the project while your lawyer fights it out with the buyer.

In fact, this just happened to me.

As a manager, I work every day with an agent and a lawyer on deals for my clients, fighting the good fight on behalf of my clients.  But recently I was negotiating a feature deal for a project we are producing when I realized the buyer was taking an incredibly hard stance.  I needed to stay on the creative side and remain on good terms with the executive on the project.

Thus I got my fabulous lawyers involved and let them fight it out with the buyer. This way I was able to stay friendly with the executive while our lawyers duked it out.

And once we had reached an acceptable compromise where everyone was more or less happy, we were able to move smoothly forward to working on the project since there was no bad blood between us.

IMPORTANT NOTE: While there are a lot of great lawyers, there are some shady ones as well.  So make sure you are hiring a lawyer who has a good reputation and will fight for you. Never be afraid to ask for references! And if you need some references, just email me and I will be happy to provide some.