I'm a mature postgraduate student. I was really enjoying the module on screenwriting and thinking I wouldn't mind working in this industry. It suits me I have an acute visual sense and strong visual imagination. "Enjoying it", that was until a panel of agents showed up. They told us that we couldn't just sell a screenplay, we would have to visit London and work with them. We couldn't nail them down to the point at which we got paid. After that, they said, we would have to work with other screenwriters and members of a production crew. They couldn't understand why anyone wouldn't want to do that.
I am in my fifties, I've had hearing loss all my life. I'm mostly asocial and I certainly don't want to travel to a city, work with agents or anyone else in an office or a team. Is there any way I could sell a screenplay without all the follow through? I'll quite happily redraft it from home, if they send my written instructions and pay me for the work. I must be the only screenwriter who doesn't dream of going to LA, but it's the last thing I'd ever want to do.
No. Spec script is a tiny market and these movie contracts are shit, don't pay in full.
Write books if you can't work with people. (still gotta work with an editor/publisher.)
That's exactly what I thought. So no one, anywhere, will pay you for a screenplay and understand they have to leave you alone afterwards?
I wouldn't mind interacting with and editor and publisher. I don't want to be chicken-couped in a room for weeks on end, away from home, working on a project with other screenwriters.
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Wow. I'm totally opposite. I WANT to work on the production for my script, and for the most part, that's the only way I'm rocking in terms of selling.
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Chances are if some studio buys your script, you’ll have to meet them in person. There was an exec in Cali who liked my script, and he told me if his team approved the script, he wanted to fly me out to discuss it.
So yeah, nothing is ever 100% online. Because the process isn’t as simple as sell-rewrite-done.
It's great to read ( note I didn't write "hear") that most of you have carved out these fantastic jobs in the industry. Even though I'm not completely deaf and I can follow spoken conversation , it exhausts me. I've worked on my own for the last fifteen years. When I had to work with other people it was always under duress, and I was relieved when I no longer had to and I could strike out my own.
My university has invited me to play with leggo bricks, not kidding. I've signed up for a session later this month where I will have to work with other people on a shared construction project. I've never shared Leggo before and I'm not sure if I can do this or not, but I'll give will it try.
They fly you out to LA and pay you real money? Hmm. Enough money to buy/rent a motorcycle? ( It's minus 4 degrees in the UK at the moment.)
Andrew Barnett Jobs? Who here is a working full-time writer making WGA union salary and writing for a studio?
Careers? Is that a better term? From what everyone has written it looks like you all have good paid work and enjoy what you do.
Justin, did they pay for your flight? Because it's expensive from a different country... probably more than you could ever sell your screenplay for...:))
Victor, I haven't owned a passport for years. I'm not going anywhere. We're under six inches of snow. It's fun thinking about a hot climate, getting paid (enough )for writing, heat haze, and motorcycle chrome glinting in the California sunshine.
All I have to say about this topic is stop or my mom will shoot.
So what's it like collaborating with other writers? Do you have to go into an office, or perhaps some kind of room with flip charts and whiteboards. What do you do in there all day? How much do they pay you? At our university college, we get mailed regular offers of £25.00 to £50.00ph for ESOL teaching, that's conversational and written English sessions with visiting overseas students . Do you earn more or less than that if you take on an assignment with one of these screenwriting agents?--they were a little 'obtuse' when asked about the pay and conditions, and I couldn't nail them down to anything concrete.
Well, it´s obviously all about the cashflow for you, right? That´s why I say there is a difference, a huge difference, between a dream and a fantasy. And in my late father´s words... "To get something in life, you have to be able to offer and give something first". Some people get it some don´t.
Zlatan, thankfully for me , my dream is not of being a screenwriter. I would like learn more about screenwriting because I've got a screenwriting assignment. It's a mandatory part of the course. I enjoy the writing part because due my lack of hearing I've adapted and I'm good at visualizing. Also, I love poetry and screenwriting is similar to poetry in some ways. I rather make a few quid selling a book of poetry and subsidising myself through tutoring, than being hyper-busy/social and, in all but name, employee of a screenwriting agent.
I applaude you for your independence, in all aspects of your life, Andrew. Respectfully, though, you can´t learn about screenwriting or any other sort of art-form in a very short period of time. I mean, I dare guess that you´ve never sat down and written one screenplay and please correct me if I am wrong but you go directly to talking about selling one??? And as far as your assignment goes, I presume it´s a class you´re taking? Read a few scripts then give it a go yourself. There´s no magic button to creativity my friend.
I'm a postgraduate student, we have agents who come and visit us. They encourage the most suitable students to think about submitting work to them. I told these agents, politely, I wasn't interested because due to a lifetime of hearing loss, I'm mostly asocial. It's not that I don't like being around people, it's easier for me to interact online or through email.
I was just checking what I'd been told by the screenwriting agents, because I genuinely enjoy screenwriting, but I as I said to them, straight, I wouldn't want to work in their industry due to its social demands.
No - in the USA, it illegal to sell a script.
Andrew. It is hard to sell a screenplay with or without an agent but harder without one.
I never heard of agents telling anyone you couldn't just sell a screenplay and would have to visit and work with them. You couldn't nail them down because they were full of crap. They were probably just looking for interns to work for free. I would have told them to shove it.
If you sell a screenplay half the time they will want to hire someone else to work on the rewrites and if they want you bad enough you can do it from your house. I own property in the Hollywood Hills but I only go there when I need to be there. My Agent has offices in New York, Florida and London so they do make movies in other places besides LA.
@Victor: The exec's team passed on my script (due to them looking for scripts to start production with as soon as possible), but yes, they would have paid for everything.
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I just put mine on Craigslist. “Exciting Sci-Fi script for sale. $100,000 or best offer.”
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Andrew Barnett I was just lamenting about this!!
I'm currently physically disabled and can't get around so I can't go to events and stuff like my agent keeps wanting me to and I also live in an area where there are practically no events to go to. I don't do the whole socializing scene anymore since I've become disabled because I do not want to tell my story, I'd just rather sell the script and get it over with.
In these days it seems like a lot of the schmoozing could be done online since we have enough technology to be able to do so. It seems like a waste to have to go out and actually rub elbows with people when you can do almost everything you could do IRL online. I want to know what the actual difference is? We have video chat now if you're that concerned about the people not being who they say they are, geeze.
And while I'd love to work on a production team, I seriously don't think that one member being on a conference call on skype is going to make that big of a difference in the film as long as they're not the actors starring in it.
-G.R.B.
Hi G.R.B., when people meet me in RL, at first, they'll assume that I'm simple-minded. That's because I have the manner of a quiet tradesperson who's worked outdoors for the last thirty years. Actually, in some genres, I'm in the top ten percentile of students in the highest ranked university in the UK. I'll probably stay for a PhD, there's so many things that I want to think about and explore.
If I'm not saying anything, I'm thinking, and I have a quick, incisive mind. I don't have anything to lose and I'm not desperate for work, so I can afford to be up-front. I don't want anyone to have undue financial or employment-related leverage over me. Once they've got you in this position, what's to stop them turning the screw? I've heard RL stories where professional writers have sold a TV series and they've worked with team only to have their story wrestled off them mid-series by the company and other writers. If you watch children at play, they are all trying to grab the best toys in the room and keep them for themselves. Human nature doesn't change, it becomes more sophisticated and honed in adults.
Like you, I don't want spend my time explaining to anyone why I am this way. Many professional people react with incredulity, assume that I'm joking, when I tell them, straight, that I couldn't work with them because I'd be scratching the paint off their office walls if I had to sit in room with other people day-in, day-out.
Thinking about this networking, chasing around and pitching your screenplay, to me, doesn't seem worth the reward-- we all want different things out of life. It's a lot of energy to expend, and it puts put me in mind of professional poker players, who take the risks but only a tiny percentile will make a living from it. There's got be a mile-high carnage heap of broken dreams and families around anything with this kind of risk-reward ratio. In Call of the Wild, Jack London noted,the ones making fistfuls of guaranteed money were selling shovels and supplies, not (all but a few of) the prospectors. I've already been offered decent money to edit a novel, also to tutor 1-1, hours to suit. I didn't have to ask or pitch, they came to me. I imagined there might be similar peripheral jobs, (that don't involve travel and too much interaction) around the screenwriting industry, but I'm not working on spec, hot air, or for nothing. I don't need to.
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Andrew. Only about one in 5,000 screenwriters will ever make any money writing screenplays so you are right it is a risky business. I consider it a tournament career. Most people write screenplays because they love writing them. If they are doing it only to make money are doing it for the wrong reason because when it doesn't happen they will quit and do something else. It really sounds like you aren't even willing to pay your dues so you might be better off doing something else because I don't see you sticking with it long enough to even have a slight chance of success.
I don't mind the pitching and stuff so long as it can be done in virtual reality. I mean, I get that you have to sit down and talk story with people sometime, it's just I don't get why it all has to be face to face.
I'm an author too so I'd like to know where my fistfuls of guaranteed money ran off to... lol. ;)
-G.R.B.
Dan, I'm asking these questions because I have to write a screenplay for a university assignment. It's has to be to a high standard. Sometimes, it helps to write the creative part of an assignment with the intention of publishing, like my short stories and poems and explain about the successful submission and editing processes. I can't see this happening for me with screenwriting because it's a totally different industry . The moment those agents said, "you have to work with us and a team of other screenwriters, travel, and act like an employee", I flipped out of any connection with idea. Simple as that. Who knows if I could write and sell a screenplay? If those are attached conditions , I'm not interested. So the assignment is going to be a technical exercise. I enjoy screenwriting but I wouldn't enjoy the rest of it.
GRB, "fistfuls of money"; don't ask me. I was paid $20.00 for a short story that took weeks of spare-time editing and much worrying. I decided I wanted write because I love writing and it seemed a reasonably asocial occupation. Screenwriting means you have work with groups of other people in face-to-face conditions, which one reason I took up writing-- to avoid. I enjoy working 1-1 and online but not in RL groups.