Writing for the Green Light

How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices

Scott Kirkpatrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138856455
• eBook ISBN: 9781317704195
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film Screenwriting

Tailor your screenplay to sell. Find out what Hollywood script readers, producers, and studio executives want in a screenplay (and why) from someone who's been there. Discover what it takes to begin a lasting career as a screenwriter.

Peppered with interviews from established professionals, Writing for the Green Light: How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices gives you a sharp competitive edge by showcasing dozens of everyday events that go on at the studios but are rarely if ever discussed in most screenwriting books. With his behind-the-scenes perspective, Scott Kirkpatrick shows you why the system works the way it does and how you can use its unwritten rules to your advantage. He answers such questions as:

• Who actually reads your script?
• How do you pique the interest of studios and decision makers?
• What do agents, producers, and production companies need in a script?
• How much is a script worth?
• What are the best genres for new writers and why?
• What are real steps you can take to 'break in' to television writing?
• How do you best present or pitch a project without looking desparate?
• How do you negotiate a contract without an agent?
• How do you exude confidence and seal your first deal?

These and other insights are sure to give you and your screenplay a leg-up for success in this competitive landscape!

One
A Crazy Little Thing Called “Hollywood Logic”

In this first chapter we’ll lay out the ground rules on why the Hollywood system works the way it does and how distribution and production companies develop their projects from the inside out. From there we’ll go into how these companies decide which scripts—or, rather, which writers—make the cut, as well as what steps you’ll need to take to get yourself positioned at the top of a development executive’s list of writing candidates.

Last Things First

Far too many screenwriting books spend the bulk of their pages yammering on about format and structure and then, at the very end, cram in a shoddily written chapter on what to do with your script after it’s completed. This used to bug me to no end. They take the most important aspect of screenwriting (earning money from your efforts by selling your script and seeing your work produced) and skim over it like it’s not really relevant to becoming a working professional. Of course, writing a quality script that’s well-structured and “fresh” is important, but if it just sits on your desk collecting dust, what’s the point? Even more shameful, some of the best “how-to-write-a-screenplay” books out there still attribute selling your script to “pure luck.”

Your success being a screenwriter has nothing to do with luck… . Your ability to go from a hopeful novice with a great idea knocking around between your ears and transform yourself into a professionally working Hollywood screenwriter has everything to do with only one thing: understanding the business of the film industry.

Hollywood Hierarchy

When people think “Hollywood,” they picture red-carpet premieres, big studio productions, and A-list celebrities… . But while all eyes continually stay fixated on this flashy (and closed-off) studio-dominated corner of the industry, few books or resources ever discuss the area of Hollywood that I work in—which happens to be most open and accommodating to new writers: Independent Hollywood.

‘Indie Hollywood’ includes everything outside of the traditional studio system. Although independent theatrical titles (including art-house Sundance dramas) technically classify as Indie Hollywood, they represent only a small fraction of the real commercial bulk. The best examples of real Indie Hollywood in action include things like original TV movies (not for premium channels like HBO, but for basic cable feeds like SyFy, Lifetime, or Hallmark) and even “Direct-to” entertainment (such as Direct-to-DVD or Direct-to-VOD level titles).

Despite the fact that Independent Hollywood is often disregarded as a small subset of the industry, it actually supplies the majority of Hollywood’s overall content—well over 80 percent! Studio Hollywood might get most of the attention for their mega-budgeted reboots, but behind the scenes Indie Hollywood is really the engine that keeps the whole entertainment machine in motion. Want proof? Hop on Netflix… . Sure, you’ll see a big studio film listed up top, but augmenting those titles are several movies you’ve probably never heard of—that’s Independent Hollywood at work (and you’ll notice there are four to five “indie” titles for every one studio film out there). You’ll see this same ratio everywhere, whether flipping through channels on TV, skimming available films at a Red Box kiosk, or scrolling through titles on iTunes, Amazon, or Vudu.

For you—as a newbie novice writer—it’s not the closed-off studio corner of Hollywood where you’ll find your most direct entry point to screenwriting success; it’s in the independent zone. And not only is this space the most wide-open to novices in terms of “breaking in” and opportunity, it’s also the fastest way of putting together the necessary building blocks you’ll need to eventually breach the fortified walls of those big studios later on.

A Walk on the Indie Side

Let me first give you a quick overview of what I do within Independent Hollywood—that way I can better explain not just the types of scripts distributors and development executives (like myself) need from writers, but also how we actually look for those scripts and later commission work from newbie writers just like you.

Above I mention Netflix and those four to five “other movies” that augment the one studio title… . I’m the guy that gets those “other” movies placed there. What I mean to say is that I have discussions with acquisitions executives at Netflix (employees tasked with finding and buying movies) and I broker deals with them directly. I’m also the guy who secures those same titles a place on TV channels, in Red Box kiosks, or gets them placed as physical DVDs on shelves at retail stores. This doesn’t mean I drive around Los Angeles with a trunk full of DVD screeners trying to hawk the actual units; I simply present my available titles to the appropriate buyers at each respective company (in person, over lunch, by phone, or by email), negotiate a few terms, and then enter into a contract with them.

I don’t do this work as an individual; I work as a salaried employee for a distribution and production company. And none of these outlet companies (like Netflix, Red Box, or TV channels) pay me anything directly; they pay my employer. After each deal is closed and the money is paid, the outlet companies get to sell our movies and my employer pays me a commission (on top of my salary) for a job well done.

This commission then incentivizes me to go back into the marketplace to find more movies so that I can close more deals and keep the process in motion. Before I list out where I go search for those new other movies, let’s first be completely transparent that none of these outlet companies are required to buy anything from me… . They only buy what they need. So when I’m out in the marketplace looking for new movies to add to our company’s catalogue of available films, I use the buying interests and patterns of each of these companies as my filter.

Most consumers out there (meaning the average movie-goers who are simply looking for a piece of evening entertainment, not the “movie obsessed,” like you and me) simply want easy access to the big studio titles. They want the latest [Fill-in-the-Blank Hollywood Blockbuster]. In order for outlet companies to drive consumers to their services, their buying teams will pay top dollar to acquire high-end studio titles so that they can display them front and center. The problem is that only a handful (between six to ten) legit studio films get released to these outlet companies each month. That’s far too few to keep the average customer engaged.

And here’s the real kicker: Studio movies are so expensive for these companies to acquire and place on their platforms that they’d actually be losing money if they only offered those six to ten rotating titles. So to counter this loss, they expand their offerings by picking up add-on “filler” movies and TV programs from Indie Hollywood; that way each customer has more titles to skim through, screen, and/or transact upon—and this is exactly where a company like the one I work for enters the picture. We help these outlet companies and channels fill in the gaps so that they can continue to acquire those big-time studio movies—which keeps their customers engaged, therefore keeping them in business… . As long as they’re in business, they’ll need people like me to continue supplying them with all those other movies to augment their studio offerings.

But the concept of a filler movie is a bit of a misnomer. As already stated, these outlet companies don’t have to buy anything just because I’m selling it. However, if I want to keep my job (and keep earning my commissions), I need to make sure that my employers are making money. In order to do this, I need to ensure I’m able to consistently and reliably present my acquisitions contacts with a steady flow of “other movies” that serve their company’s needs best (that is, films that are well produced, based on quality scripts, and that meet specific genre conventions). Otherwise, there’d be no deals for me to close. And given my close proximity to each of these companies’ acquisitions agents—who tell me in extreme detail what they need—I literally have a recipe mapped out in my head for exactly what types of films move the needle.

Most of those outside the distribution business assume we find these “other movies” at film festivals or that they’re based on scripts submitted to us from agents—true, but those films only account for about 35 percent of our overall catalogue. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: Because the needs of our outlet companies (with whom we’re trying to do business) are very specific, it makes our exact content needs very specific—and it’s really hard to find available movies or spec scripts that perfectly fit into the mold.

So, rather than spending a great deal of time sifting through endless feature-film submissions looking for that perfect gem or reading the bottomless stacks of spec script submissions, we simply cut out the excess workload and develop what we’re on the hunt for ourselves. In other words, we “invent” the content we need on our own (within our company walls), then we move forward to develop and produce it.

Where You Fit In

So if distribution and development executives (like me) working within the indie space simply invent the movies and TV content we need, why would we schedule pitch meetings with writers and spend time reading your spec script submissions?

Even though we’re predetermining and developing the movies we need, very few of us have the required skillsets (or the time) to put these ideas into a quality script… . But you do. We might know what sells (and how to sell it), but we need you to take those ideas and build a script around them. So when Hollywood’s readers and creative executives take time to read your script submissions, they’re not actually focused on whether or not they’d buy your script; they’re focused on how well you write and what upcoming projects of ours that you might be a good fit for. In other words, your spec scripts are more about showcasing who you are and what talents you can bring to the table.

So the first step towards getting Hollywood to pay attention to you (and your work) is by proving you’re a writer that can deliver scripts the system needs and can work with, meaning your scripts will be considered ones that potentially help companies make more money and beat out their competition—those are the scripts that move forward in the system. Scripts that don’t help distribution companies get rejected and go nowhere. Understanding and embracing this key concept is a crucial first step for a novice writer to fully transform into a professional working Hollywood screenwriter.

Don’t take this to mean you have to dumb down your ideas or that our side of the business doesn’t fully appreciate the skills required to write a quality script (quite the contrary)… . We just need to ensure that your creativity and talents are getting applied towards the projects that gain traction with our outlet clients.

A professional screenwriter is not simply dishing out scripts he or she thinks are great ideas, and they don’t chase the latest big studio trends or fads; instead, they’re carefully crafting their scripts to meet the real-world supply-and-demand needs of Indie Hollywood. And they are writing them specifically for companies, like the ones I work for, that are open to working with their content—meaning they’re purposely writing for mid-level independent producers and production companies, not studios.

Therefore, your job as a novice screenwriter is to write spec scripts that show you have the talent and the understanding to become a professional. That’s the real trick in standing out to managers, producers, and development executives.

The Hollywood “Hedge” Effect

As already mentioned, just because we distributors very carefully engineer movies we think would be perfect for our U.S.-based outlet companies doesn’t mean they’ll buy them. And no matter how great of friends I might become with my acquisitions contacts, none of them will close a deal with me until they can screen the movies I’m selling in full. That means the distribution and production company I work for must fully produce these films before I can sell them domestically. This is a major dilemma because that means someone must foot the bill to kick-start the whole project—and despite common belief, it’s not us … if a project tanks, we do not want to be left holding the bag.

So who pays for all this stuff?

I’m going to introduce you to the only fancy finance word you’ll ever need to know: “hedge.” To hedge something simply means to reduce its level of risk. The phrase “hedge your bets” basically translates into “reduce the amount of damage losing those bets will cost you.” Therefore, if one were to “hedge his/her investment,” he or she would be insuring against a level of loss if the investment turns out to be a poor one.

How does hedging apply to the real world of screenwriting and filmmaking? Producing a movie is a very high-risk investment because all the funds pooled into a film’s budget need to be spent (in full) for the film to reach completion. If the film cannot be completed, then it cannot be sold and there’s zero potential for profit. That means the closer a film gets toward its own completion, the more money has been spent and the more liability (hot water) the investors are in should the project fall apart.

To add fuel to the fire, movies take a really long time to finish; during that time there’s no guarantee that any number of variables won’t go wrong, causing the film’s budget to run out midway through. Actors get sick, locations change, crews go on strike, and natural disasters can happen anywhere. Without proper management and oversight during each phase of the movie- making process, it’s very easy to see how a project could spiral out of control in no time, causing a sinkhole of financial ruin in the process.

If a big studio wants to produce a $100 million film, it’s not doing so for the love of cinema or the expectation of making an amazing vision come to life; that studio is producing it because it expects to make that $100 million back plus a major profit margin. But $100 million is a heck of a lot of money to spend solo. So, that studio hedges its investment by basing that film off a book or other proven “audience-grabbing idea,” like a franchise or an earlier film (a reboot); they then place money-securing well-known A-list actors in the leading roles (such as Denzel Washington or Angelina Jolie) and hire on a director with a proven track record to manage the production effectively (like Michael Bay or Zack Snyder)—which, in reality, means a director who will follow orders from the producers and executives telling him or her to work harder, faster, and cheaper (far from the film school fantasy of “authorship”).

But studios don’t just produce and release one film per year; they hedge their overall annual investments by producing a multitude of productions (twenty to thirty annually), each with a very clear and identifiable genre for a predictable audience. That way, if one film bombs, another might soar at the box office, and the difference evens out.

Still, dishing out $100 million on potentially several films at once puts a studio into a major cash deficit—which is why they refuse to do it. Can you blame them? Imagine a life where each January you had to pay your entire year’s worth of bills (including car payments, insurance premiums, and rent) all at once… . Even for a staunch penny-pinching saver, this would put you in a tough spot at the grocery store come February (and hopefully you wouldn’t have any auto-trouble in the near future). Studios don’t like that scenario either, so they further hedge their investments by bringing in other studios or outside firms to help share the risk by coproducing/cofinancing films together—meaning they each earn smaller profits if the film is successful but also hold a smaller level of risk if that film tanks.

This is why when some movies begin you’ll see the studio logo followed by the logos of three or four other companies, all of whom are collectively “presenting” the title… . Each of them “secured” money from their respective sources. But where does all this money come from and how to these companies secure it?

Guaranteed Placement: Output Deals and Foreign Presales

Just as our U.S.-based outlet companies use big studio movies to garner attention from consumers in order to keep dollars flowing towards their platforms, the same principle holds true globally.

So, if a top TV channel in Australia or DVD distributor in Korea wants to keep ahead of their own respective competition (within their own country’s borders), they’d want to find a way to gain “first access” to the content that sells the best—Hollywood studio films. However, contract negotiations on a per-title basis can be horrendously slow and could put the Aussie TV channel or Korean DVD distributor into a price war with their competitors (which is good for the studio, but bad for long term business in the region—as well as their bank accounts). To counter this, both sides have devised a very smart way to simplify the whole process… . They enter into an output deal.

An output deal is a long term agreement (ranging anywhere from three to fifteen years) where the buying client agrees to purchase a minimum number of films from the selling client—for a pre-negotiated and fixed price that’s fair to the seller, but also reasonable for the buyer. There can be subtle nuances in these agreements (for example, the buyer may get “first look” at the movies just in case one or two of them won’t work for hi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• List of Images
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One A Crazy Little Thing Called “Hollywood Logic”
• Two “So, What's It About?”
• Three Writing Your Feature-Length Spec Script
• Four How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write for Television
• Five Close Encounters of the L.A. Kind
• Six To Live and Write in L.A.
• Seven “Gold-Mine” Genres … Now and Forever
• Appendices
• Glossary
• Index
• About The Author