What Should You Worry About

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  • #31
    Re: What Should You Worry About

    There is a self-limiting belief among a majority of screenwriters that jamming brads and sending out queries is final step in the writing process. 'My work is done.'

    This is why 99% (my own stat) of all scripts will never be produced, regardless of how good the story and formatting may be, and 99% of writers will never become a produced writer, regardless of how good a writer they may be. You are asking to be hit by lighting twice in the same day.

    The post-writing options are plenty, even if you are not a filmmaker with the capabilities to produce your own work, even on a shoestring budget, if any budget at all. Good films are made with 30 million, and good films are made for 100g, and even 10g or less. Just as true, there are bad films made for 30 milion, and bad films made for a fraction of that. It isn't the money that makes the film (though it sure helps), but what shows up at the table come time to roll cameras.

    If you are writing with an end goal of a big production company to snap up your screenplay for big bucks and cast it with A talent, and give you big backpoints when all is done, then you really are in for a long and lonely career in company with a milion other good writers sitting on good scripts, and sharing angst with a million bad writers sitting on bad scrits, all waiting for their name to called.

    Stuffing brads and quering till you're numb is all well and good, and not at all discouraged. Just be ready and willing to look at other options to get your work produced. The day you see your script translated into film, even a crappy film, is the day you shift your paradighm and get a bigger and better grip on the craft, and its place in the process whole.

    Quit worring about whether to put BOY #1 or CHUBBY BOY. Or whether to write 'twelve cars zip by', or '12 cars zip by'. These are not decisions that will get your screenplay produced. Seriously, so pick what makes you happy and move on.

    If you know how to tell a compelling yarn, and are willing to get in the fray beyond the brad to see it produced, then you are a step closer to becoming a produced writer.

    a

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    • #32
      Re: What Should You Worry About

      Originally posted by alex whitmer View Post
      Stuffing brads and quering till you're numb is all well and good, and not at all discouraged. Just be ready and willing to look at other options to get your work produced. The day you see your script translated into film, even a crappy film, is the day you shift your paradighm and get a bigger and better grip on the craft, and its place in the process whole.
      Doesn't that depend on the writer's whole motivation?

      Does the writer who just writes for the paycheck and the next job really care about seeing his film on screen? Several screenwriters here and elsewhere have said that their whole point is getting the next job, and the one after that, and the one after that. Art is secondary to a fat paycheck.

      Does the writer who sees himself as some kind of artist who needs to see his vision brought to life really worry about the money? And what happens when his vision is sullied by the collaborative process that Hollywood is?

      Does the hobbyist writer who writes just to write and never even tries breaking into Hollywood really care about the process after he types "The End"?

      If anything, I'm the third type. I write for myself. I write really bad horror and action films because that's what I enjoy. But I've also shot two of them, self-financed, and once I'm done editing them will never be seen outside of copies given to my friends and family. Obviously, the starving artist type who labors away in anonymity while working a day job in the hopes that someday maybe possibly could conceivably get their shot is somehow more noble than the guy who writes amd makes crappy movies for fun, but where does that leave guys like me, or even guys like Kevin Smith who use that method in the hopes of doing something in movies?

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