Do You Have A Story To Tell?
When you’re an undiscovered screenwriter with a script sitting somewhere in the crowded piles of dreams such as the ones shown below from this year’s Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, finding additional ways to measure how your story stacks up can be a challenge.
If only there were a source of wisdom that could reveal without a doubt whether you’ve simply gone a little Katherine Harris crazy with your story telling ambition, or if yours is a voice worthy of wide release.
Unfortunately precogs are found only in the movies, which means the only way to find out for sure what the future may hold is to take that leap and see where you land. In that spirit, if there’s a story percolating inside you that’s intensified to the point where you must find a way to tell it but you’re not quite sure how to get started, here’s some feedback on a few things that have helped me along the way during the first leg of my own journey to write and market a screenplay.
Movie Magic
As a screenplay newb I decided right away to seek out script writing software to help me quickly get up to speed with how to format a script to fit industry standards.
When I did my search for the right tool it looked like there were two real heavyweights dominating the screenplay software market, MovieMagic and Final Draft. This was a few years ago when I first researched the market but a recent quick look around suggests that these two packages still remain at or near the top.
I chose to go with Movie Magic. Why? I did have some experience with Final Draft’s sister product Final Draft AV from my day job. Final Draft AV differs from Final Draft in that AV is designed more for writing scripts for commercials. I still use Final Draft AV today for some projects and am ok with it, but my overall experience with AV led me to give Movie Magic a try. And, I like it. I found the software to be easy to learn and once you understand the basic industry standard conventions and terminology for screenplay format Movie Magic pretty much handles it from there to help make sure your script at least looks professional, allowing you to concentrate on telling your best story.
The Screenwriter’s Bible
The ScreenWriters Bible is something I’ve turned to many times when wondering how exactly do you format things like showing video on a television screen within the movie or a telephone conversation. This book really came in handy.
Acco Brass Fasteners #5 - 1 1/4″
You’ll need these. They can be hard to find in some cities, like San Antonio for instance. I ordered a box from The Writer’s Store.
WGAw
The Writer’s Guild of America, west is a union for writers who live west of the Mississippi. There’s also the Writer’s Guild of America, East for writers who live east of the Mississippi. (Organizing based on geography seems a little strange in our The World is Flat world, but that is a discussion for another time.)
Though you need to have had some professional success as a writer in order to qualify to join either of the Guilds, they do offer many tools and resources for the undiscovered writer. I found one of the more valuable among these tools to be The Writer’s Guild Registry which allows you a way to easily register your treatment, script or other intellectual property online. Should a question of true ownership of material arise in the future this service helps establish a timeline of when your work was completed.
If you prefer you can also copyright your work through the US Copyright Office.
Inktip
Inktip is a service that posts your logline, synopsis, treatment and screenplay in a subscription based online database so that producers can search and find material that closely matches what they might be interested in making.
Inktip also offers a preferred newsletter. The newsletter is emailed to you every week and works just the opposite as the Inktip site. In the newsletter producers list a profile of material they are looking for - NY based Production Company seeks paranormal thriller screenplay with strong early 20’s female lead for $4 million budget indie feature - something like that. When you see a lead in the newsletter that matches your story you can send the producer your logline and synopsis through special contact info included with the listing. If your pitch sparks something in the producer, they will contact you directly and request your full screenplay or treatment.
Having a dialogue (though many times electronic) with someone who actually has an imdb profile and has made movies that got theatrical distribution or at the least you can find walking through Blockbuster or browsing your Netflix queue is a big step forward, at least for someone like me starting with zero professional contacts or background in the film industry. Don’t get me wrong, Spielberg and Zemeckis likely won’t be lining up to take a meeting with you based on your Inktip listing, but if your Inktip experience is anything like mine you will make contact with industry professionals who earn their living bringing films to the public. And that alone is worth the price of admission for those geographically and professionally outside that community.
How has Inktip performed so far? When you have an Inktip listing you are able to track how many times your logline shows up in producer searches. So far my logline has been returned on searches and viewed about 100 times. Not sure that is good or bad, it simply is what it is and gives us an easy number to work with.
Out of that pool of 100, 11 producers found enough in the logline to read the synopsis. From that 11, 3 asked for the script to read. On the surface 3 out of 100 may strike you as somewhat disappointing, but in some advertising circles a 3% response rate might be thought of as pretty decent.
The Inktip preferred newsletter has proven to be much more limited in the overall opportunities presented but much higher in response rate. Over the last year I’ve sent my logline and synopsis to probably about 9 producer listings that appeared in the newsletter and from that 3 have contacted me back and asked for the script to read. A much improved response rate of 33%.
Whether you choose to use Inktip or other similar screenplay services as part of the overall marketing strategy for your script, be sure and invest the time to create an effective logline and synopsis. Many times they will be your story’s calling card, in a blink creating that all important and tough to shake first impression.
In closing it’s important to point out that the accumulation of this knowledge has not resulted in the sale, option or financing of my own script, so be sure to digest all this with the proper dose of skepticism it deserves. For now though let’s end on a note of optimism by wishing the best of luck to those undiscovered writers with their sweat sitting in those stacks at the Austin Film Festival. Notification letters were sent out last week, so for a talented and fortunate few your mailbox may already contain news that you are one step closer to being undiscovered no more.
tags: screenplays; film festivals;
Recently realized I left Without A Box off the list of useful tools and services here concerning screenplays.
WAB does a nice job of, among other things, making electronic submission of screenplays and films to festivals possible.
Also a good source for tracking upcoming opportunitites at festivals.