Looking for an agent

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  • Looking for an agent

    I have a television drama series pilot script and would like to get in touch with an agent to help me take it to the next level.

    Logline:

    Marcus faces struggles with juggling his school life, love life and his street life. He faces violence and gangs in his own neighborhood and faces racial conflicts at his school.

    Synopsis/Details:

    Marcus lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Him and his best friend, Jeremy, are low key drug dealers. Marcus has to come home everyday day to face his drug addict mother and help her in anyway he can. Seeing his mother like this makes him constantly rethink the life he is currently living. He knows deep down he is better than a drug dealer.

    One day while walking down the street, Marcus and his best friend Jeremy have a run in with some other gentlemen. Jeremy is gunned down and Marcus is left severely beaten. Detectives continuously question Marcus hoping he can help them solve the murder but to their bad news, someone else takes matter into his own hands.

    One day at school Marcus meets a beautiful white girl named Alecia. He plays shy until she decides to come up to him and speak eith him. They meet up a few times after school and hit it off. Alecias ex boyfriend Ricky doesn’t like that at all. Ricky is a tough shite street kid that always seems to get into trouble. He confronts Marcus a couple of times and they end up in a fight. Now Marcus has an ex boyfriend of his current girlfriend after him, peers are talking behind his and Alecias backs, Marcus is nervous knowing soon he will have to meet Alecias parents, anxiety starts building in Marcus due to these struggles.

    One night while sitting at home some people pull up in a car outside of his house and shoots the place up. Marcus survives without a scratch but doesn’t know who it was. He’s not even sure if he’ll ever find out.
    Last edited by Done Deal Pro; 10-27-2019, 05:12 PM. Reason: Spacing and layout

  • #2
    Re: Looking for an agent

    Just some thoughts:

    I'm not understanding the hook of this show. What is keeping me engaged? It is a good depiction of urban life, but I think it starts to get a little boring when the girl and her ex-boyfriend are brought into the picture.

    Originally I was getting vibes of Requiem for Dream and perhaps The Wire in your first paragraph.

    Then in the second paragraph, I thought "maybe this kid is about to be a mole now a la The Departed."

    After the next paragraph, that's when the excitement stopped for me. It did not go in either or those two directions and became more of a common story about racial conflicts, which have been getting overdone of late imo.

    I like the track you are on though. Best of luck with the agent submission. Make sure your pilot is 100% ready to go before you submit, because a first impression dictates everything. And you're going up against the best writers in the world.

    You can find agent information online or you can also cold call places and speak to assistants and can persuade them to read your work.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Looking for an agent

      Thank you for the feedback. I do need to work on my synopsis a bit. The pilot script is ready for action.

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      • #4
        Re: Looking for an agent

        IMO, this will not get an agent interested even with a more compelling logline.

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        • #5
          Re: Looking for an agent

          TV guy here. I'm not sure what makes this a series and not a movie. And even if it was a movie, what is the hook? Would also help to know what the genre is.

          I'd move this over to the logline section of the forum and get some help workshopping it.

          Also worth noting that the common wisdom for new writers is "manager before agent-. And to get a manager you should have at least 3 good scripts. Do you have two other good pieces of writing?

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          • #6
            Re: Looking for an agent

            Strong disagree on the three good scripts thing. Maybe have three good ideas ready to go. And of course this will vary from manager to manager but I had no problems getting offers to rep based off of one read.

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            • #7
              Re: Looking for an agent

              Originally posted by Satriales View Post
              Strong disagree on the three good scripts thing. Maybe have three good ideas ready to go. And of course this will vary from manager to manager but I had no problems getting offers to rep based off of one read.
              Sure, it's definitely not a hard rule. In fact, I'll slightly amend my last statement. OP should have at least 2 good script samples. They may not even need to show the second one. BUT if an agent or a manager likes the first pilot and does request one more sample, OP is gonna look really bad if they can't offer up at least one more good script.

              But I also asked that initial question because if OP doesn't have any other scripts besides this one, I personally don't think they're ready for representation yet.

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              • #8
                Re: Looking for an agent

                Thanks for the feedback. The genre is in the post. It’s a drama series about an African American teen that is involved in drugs and gangs. His friend gets gunned down and he ends up getting in a relationship with a popular preppy white girl. He struggles between his street life and wanting to go straight. His new girlfriend’s ex is jealous of his new relationship with Alecia and wants revenge. He also has to deal with his junkie mother. There’s a lot of stories involved in this series hence the title “Inner-City Tales”.

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                • #9
                  Re: Looking for an agent

                  I would upload my script but I can only post a link since I’m using an iPhone and can’t use the CODE process. Also, yes I am currently working on 2 full feature psychological thriller/horror scripts.

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                  • #10
                    Re: Looking for an agent

                    The hook is how life is and struggles with living in the Inner-City.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Looking for an agent

                      All due respect, the concept/hook/logline is not getting you read, certainly not by an agent.

                      Look, maybe you are uniquely qualified to tell this story - maybe you lived it - so including that in a query to a manager might move the needle a tiny bit. But there is nothing here that is a unique/fresh look. It's well worn ground and there's no hook, certainly not a commercial one.

                      That's the reality, as I see it.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Looking for an agent

                        Originally posted by Satriales View Post
                        All due respect, the concept/hook/logline is not getting you read, certainly not by an agent.

                        Look, maybe you are uniquely qualified to tell this story - maybe you lived it - so including that in a query to a manager might move the needle a tiny bit. But there is nothing here that is a unique/fresh look. It's well worn ground and there's no hook, certainly not a commercial one.

                        That's the reality, as I see it.
                        I mean... you haven't read any of it, so... that advice might be crap, though. Sometimes it's the way something is presented -- especially if it's sort of YA territory -- a 13 Reasons Why or Euphoria or whatever. I don't know, I'm guessing.

                        I'm not sure what the OP is posting about? If your question is HOW do you get an agent or manager, then the answer to that would be to network and query individual managers and hope to get reads, enter contests and use the leverage if you place highly to try and make connections. Agents come later, if you get a manager they can help you get an agent.

                        Though, in keeping with others' advice, it is always good to keep writing and growing as a writer.

                        info here from (me) and finalact4 is good in the 2nd and 3rd post: http://messageboard.donedealpro.com/...ad.php?t=84934

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Looking for an agent

                          There's not really a marketable "hook" in that logline. But the worlds of the story -*drugs, gangs, high school romance, race relations -*are VERY marketable.

                          If you have personal knowledge of the world of drugs and gangs, then I would lead off the query with that. Hollywood is always looking for writers who intimately know interesting worlds and can articulately explore them.

                          For a project like this, my advice is to not try to sell the story, but to sell yourself.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Looking for an agent

                            I agree with figment and Satriales at the same time.

                            first, your logline, as written, isn't compelling. i'm sorry, it's just not. there is nothing in it that makes me want to read it. i just got back from Austin and went to the pitch contest and let me tell you, all 22 pitches had a great hook and were compelling. some more than others, but all of them pretty ****ing amazing.

                            but, that doesn't mean that your pilot isn't good enough, because figment's right, you can't judge something on the logline alone. loglines are tough to write and some people just aren't good at it.

                            with that said, you have to give us a compelling character, because that's what drives TV shows. someone we want to come back and revisit every week. a character(s) where as soon as the episode is over we're cursing the fact that we have to wait another 7 days to see it again.

                            now, that compelling character has to be living a life and going along when something happens to them that irrevocably changes his life. so, he's living this old life and is thrown into a new unknown life that he has to struggle to live through.

                            for example, Breaking Bad, Walter White is a burnt out Chemistry teacher and in the pilot he finds out he's a dead man-- he's told he has terminal cancer. so this guy that works two jobs finally snaps and decides to use his unique skill (chemistry) to manufacture drugs in order to provide for his family after he dies. THAT is a compelling character and one with potentially a strong internal conflict.

                            your challenge is to find that unique situation and character drive in your story and articulate it better. the story engine has to show us in the logline that your story and character will be compelling enough to want to watch for five seasons.

                            until you do that, imo, you should NOT send this out to the industry. you want it to be undeniably your best representation of your work. your current logline is too ambiguous and vague. there isn't enough specificity.

                            for example, if this was a kid that was a gifted prodigy of some kind that was being held back by their situation, that could translate to a compelling character who is trying to rise above his situation in order to get out and have a better life, but he keeps getting dragged back down into the world of crime, drugs and supporting his mother who can't support herself. that has legs.

                            Bunker is right, the setting is marketable, you just have to articulate what makes your story special. and if your character isn't compelling, you need to rewrite it so he is.

                            you can post pages, probably up to 8, somewhere there abouts, in the "script pages feedback" forum. it can only be used by registered users and is not open to the general public per se. you can get some good feedback on pages and your logline/synopsis.

                            good luck,
                            FA4
                            "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy b/c you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." -- Edward Snowden

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                            • #15
                              Re: Looking for an agent

                              I wouldn't call that a hook, but rather, a premise.

                              Stand and Deliver has the same general premise. The difficult lives of inner-city youth. The hook is Escalante's unconventional teaching methods helping marginalized students pass AP calculus exams, giving them a better future.

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