Just Effing Entertain Me

What Producers Want

In the past few days, I have had long conversations with five producers about the landscape of the film market today, the labyrinthine new (and old) methods of distribution and how they seek to create “product” for less money and expect to make less than in any other generation of filmmaking. The Big Why is that distribution streams have changed.

I wish I could go on intelligently about distribution, about Miramax and the way the company created a business model that worked then burst, about the similarities between the impact Napster had on music industry in the 1990s and the way streaming entertainment is impacting movies today. But I am smart enough not to profess to be an expert on this topic. Far from it. Rather, much of this is blah blah Ginger to me. And it might be a bit blah blah Ginger to you as well, you writers sitting out there reading this.

Do we have to care about the way the film business works? Well, just like eating our vegetables, yes, we do. Because this rapidly changing landscape is eroding the way the entertainment business worked for over 100 years. This is the third major seismic change in the business of film since its inception, the others being the advent of sound and the break up of the studio system.

Development, production, distribution, exhibition, those are the four stages your script must traverse. However, production is often contingent upon a distribution deal and exhibition, i.e., box office is the hill upon which your script (now film) will live or die. So the distribution deal a film gets is crucial to the success of the film. Which is crucial to your career. It used to be, during the studio days, that every single step was taken care of by the studio – everything. So there were Warner Bros. theaters and Paramount theaters and RKO theaters and these studio-owned theaters exhibited films that they thought would do well in that particular region. The studio system was very efficient. It was also a monopoly and the government busted it up in the 1950s.

Now the issue at hand is that while studios no longer control theaters (about three major corporations do), they handle only development (which is also increasingly outsourced) and production. Distribution companies have sprung up both as independents and as satellites of studios. Which worked for some time as well. Until online streaming became possible. So if you imagine something shaped like a pyramid (the studio system) which then became shaped like one of those alien invaders in an Atari game (the current and fading-fast climate), now imagine something shaped like a very low hill with a very, very wide base. The top of each shape is talent and development and the bottom is distribution.  In today’s landscape, the top of the shape has dropped to a lower level, which means that more people can break in with fresh material because the base (distribution) is much wider than ever before.

So the bottom line is that there are more opportunities for writers today than ever before. And lower paychecks. And some confusion. These days, development companies might manage writers as well as produce. And form partnerships with distribution companies. It’s all getting mixed together so that the process can be done more cheaply and efficiently.

For as many more opportunities as this is presenting, the marketplace of today also creates a confusing situation in which writers can get taken advantage of very quickly all the while thinking they are being wined and dined. Make no mistake, and I HATE to say this, but writers are still the absolute bottom of the totem pole in entertainment and if there’s a way to make money off your script or idea and pay you the bare minimum, that is going to be the way it plays out.

I have a friend who was hired to write and direct a straight-to-DVD action movie a couple of years ago, for 50K. He managed to pull it off, and I can vouch for the quality of the film (in no small part due to the limited budget and the creative choices it forced). He was paid 6K to write and direct the film and he did it because it was sure to be produced (and it was) and distributed (and it was) and he’d have it as a credit (and he does). He actually pumped the 6K right back into the budget. The movie has since earned 700K on DVD sales. Zero of which my friend has seen a dime of nor will he. But he has a produced credit. While that scenario seems particularly egregious, there’s nothing illegal about it whatsoever. Yes, studios and larger production companies have higher budgets and more cash around but the days of the million dollar spec sales are headed toward the horizon very quickly – now more writers have the possibility of being produced than ever, but the paycheck has gone way, way down. There will always be rock star writers and actors who command a higher salary but as distribution (legal and illegal) makes more content available to more people in a fractionalized market, risk aversion is no longer a conservative precaution but a prudent reality.

So writers – it’s not your job to worry about how things are shaping up as much as it is to know that fresh, new content is absolutely the priority for producers and they are looking for YOU. In the years I have been consulting with writers on scripts and running script competitions, the number of requests for scripts has increased exponentially. Part of that is that I have become a known entity in the industry and that my offices are located on a working studio lot populated by tons of producers, that’s true. But it’s not just that, it’s emails and phone calls that I receive almost daily. Producers are looking for well written genre scripts.

For those of you who love writing and would consider life GREAT if your words were on a screen no matter what you were paid, times just got a whole lot more exciting for you. For those of you who are wanting your writing to pay for your kids’ college tuition or that new house in the Caymans – you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Words Into Pictures

Hello everybody! Had fun teaching to a full room at Warner Bros today! Our topic was Words Into Pictures: Writing Cinematically for the Silver Screen. It seems obvious that script writing should be colorful, sensory and cinematic but many writers, fearing that they don’t have license to write anything more elaborate than a blueprint, err on the side of writing dull, dry pages.

We talked today about the Three S’s: sight, sound, smell. So that if we have a scene set in a forest, we engage the reader’s senses wholly by using evocative words to describe the sharp smell of pine needles on the forest floor, or the way the sun looks peeking through the branches, or the muffled footsteps of a shadowy deer.

We also talked about establishing an intention, on page one, for how you want the reader to FEEL when reading the script and in particular, when reading each scene. Know your genre and set your agenda very early. If this is a thriller, we want to set up dread on evey page. So that forest might not be so sun-dappled, right? And perhaps the pine needles are rotting and black. And wind blows the branches.

So we manipulate the world we describe in action lines, slug lines and in dialogue to literally hypnotize the reader into feeling the way we intend them to. If Muzak is playing in a deserted convenience store late at night, if it’s totally generic elevator music, that’s creepy. But if it’s “Dancing Queen” or “The Hustle,” that’s a little funny. You can indicate music if there’s a source for it in the scene. A radio, boom box, CD player or radio. Otherwise, indicating music is NOT done.

We use modifiers and adjectives in the same way a painter uses paint in a pointillist painting. Little dots flecked with color take on a complete picture when you stand back.

Don’t worry about these details so much in your first draft – this is polish work. But do bear in mind, even in the early drafts, that your job is to seduce the reader into feeling the way you want them to feel about the story.

So set your intention on page one by knowing your genre and paying homage to it on every page. Bear in the mind the Three S’s (sight, sound, smell) and dig deep into your vocabulary for descriptors that turn the red apple into a blood red apple into a scarlet apple into a blushing apple into a crimson apple and back again.

That is all. Now get back to work.