Franklin Leonard

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  • finalact4
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    Originally posted by Strangerthanfiction View Post
    The cost of hosting has gone up to $30 per month per script. Personally, as someone who has used this service for several years, I think that is too much. If you have several scripts to host, it becomes a very expensive game. Surely a membership fee for writers at $30 per month, regardless of the number of scripts hosted would be fairer. So instead of paying $120 to host four scripts, the cost would remain at $30. At the end of the day, unless you hit the 8s and above, you are incredibly lucky to get a view or download anyway. Talking of views, I hate the fact that they have now consolidated the views, so you have no idea if it's an industry member or another writer viewing your script...
    I apologize if this post sounds like a bitching session, that is not my intention... Just voicing my opinion as a long time loyal customer struggling to pay the fees.
    are you sure? i'm still getting billed at $25 per script per month. they average about 3200 scripts hosted a month. yeah, $80,000 revenue a month. that doesn't include paid reviews.

    you have the ability to have a privacy setting where a writer cannot download your script unless you authorize it. when i give permission, i do not receive an email notification that someone has downloaded my script, which i do receive when an industry pro downloads it.

    what i dislike is that you don't even know "who" is downloading your script. i don't need a name, but since i pay to host my scripts there, i think i have the right to know who's downloading my script.

    it's clear there's a reason behind not providing that kind of transparency, and it bothers me.

    not to mention the industry actually uses the site. it's not like industry professionals have never heard of The Black List website, they all know it. it has value in that sense. BUT you have to have the scores, right?

    catcon mentions scriptrevolution, which i've never heard of it before. script hosting sites ONLY help a writer IF the INDUSTRY uses it. if they don't, it's better, imo, that you have your own website and host your own scripts.

    you can also leave your script on the site in "listed status" at no monthly fee. with that, your script page is still visible to the industry as are your reviews. the indutry pro, if interested in your script cannot download it, but they can email you and ask you to send it to them.

    you can search and sort by "most popular" but it's not always working. Tracker hovers around the #12 and #13 most popular script. sometimes it drops off and it doesn't make sense at all, because then my other script pops up and it has far fewer downloads/views. it's irritating.

    i will usually wait a day and if it doesn't pop back up to the top, i'll email them to have them look at it-- appears their programming doesn't always work.

    and although they are good at responding to writer's questions, they also have an attitude that their system works fine without digging into it. i'm like a pit bull with an old sock, i will not let them dismiss me because they think their system is infallible. sometimes you really have to push hard. you have to understand how numbers work and stand your ground-- "no, you're wrong. that doesn't make sense and this is why..."

    i wish it was more writer friendly.

    Leave a comment:


  • catcon
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    Originally posted by barh View Post
    Why doesn't Franklin Leonard post here anymore?...
    I thought I answered this in one of my other epic posts in this thread, but now I can't see it.

    Anyway, in one of his last posts on DDPro, he laments that "this place is going to be archived soon" (there was such a threat, a couple of years ago). So it's understandable that he'd feel that time spent here is a waste. Unfortunate, but unsurprising.

    "See Redditt", he mentions. I've never been there, so have no clue.

    Leave a comment:


  • catcon
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    Originally posted by Strangerthanfiction View Post
    The cost of hosting has gone up to $30 per month per script. Personally, as someone who has used this service for several years, I think that is too much. If you have several scripts to host, it becomes a very expensive game. Surely a membership fee for writers at $30 per month, regardless of the number of scripts hosted would be fairer. So instead of paying $120 to host four scripts, the cost would remain at $30...
    Hope you've checked out the totally free ScriptRevolution, then. If you have some positive results from BL, there'd be no reason you couldn't post them there as a salesy thing, on your script definitions.

    All SR needs is enough great scripts (there're nearly 5000 now), and the search tools ought to attract more professional visitors/buyers. After all, if BL were totally good enough, there wouldn't need to be any other, similar sites, but there are plenty. In the never-ending quest for material, producers et al are always looking. They need to check out ScriptRevolution - hey, it's free for them, too, though that's always been a bit of a bug to me since ours is one of the few industries where the seller pays for the marketing! I guess these sites use the paradigm of the old newspaper ads; well, look how that paradigm is doing these days, given Craig's, Kijiji, etc.

    And speaking of...
    Originally posted by Strangerthanfiction View Post
    ...a bitching session...
    Damn, I haven't spent much time on the BL, but this FAQ kind of blew me away when I saw it today:
    My Script Is Already On The Site And I Didn't Put It There! What Do I Do Now?
    ANSWER:
    In all probability, your script is not on the site, just its logline and information. We prepopulated the database with information about scripts that have circulated around Hollywood over the last few years.
    Holy crap!!!

    If I knew that even one of my loglines, from some past submission to a prodco, were up on this BL, I'd be pretty sore about it.

    First of all, everything I've written is being polished continually, and then marketed anew. I want and expect control over the access to my stuff. Secondly, my absence from the BL is not just because it's generally unaffordable for me but because, all factors considered, I choose not to be there.

    Oddly enough, I did try to register once (way way back), but backed out when I saw that there wasn't a place for me to enter my website URL. Sheesh. I queried the place but was told "we're looking at it", but to my knowledge there's still no place for it (just the usual Twitter, maybe FB, LinkedIn, etc.)

    Well, what's going on there: Are we the most stupid people in the world that we don't see the value in a website, so why would they need a box for it on that site? Or are they just trying to hide it so the pro members don't try to deal with us outside of the BL?

    Anyway, if I do have any (old) loglines on the BL, I sure would be sore about it. Yet, without joining I suppose I have no way of telling. After a fairly good flurry of read requests in my early years, I have wondered sometimes if I've been "blacklisted" somehow, somewhere.

    I guess not, though. I still get the occasional out-of-the-blue breakthrough read request from major prodcos that I pitch, along with regular requests from newer/smaller companies. But reads from the bigs sure are harder to come by these days, in spite of tighter/better writing gained from all my practice and experience.

    Leave a comment:


  • Strangerthanfiction
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    The cost of hosting has gone up to $30 per month per script. Personally, as someone who has used this service numerous times over the years, I think that is too much. If you have several scripts to host, it becomes a very expensive game. Surely a membership fee for writers at $30 per month, regardless of the number of scripts they host would be fairer. So instead of paying $120 to host four scripts, the cost would remain at $30. Or at least offer a substantial discount on any subsequent scripts the writer may host. At the end of the day, unless you hit the 8s and above, you are incredibly lucky to get a view or download anyway. Talking of views, I hate the fact that they have now consolidated the views, so you have no idea if it's an industry member or another writer viewing your script info.
    I apologize if this post sounds like a bitching session, that is not my intention... Just voicing an opinion as a long time customer struggling to pay the hosting fees.
    Last edited by Strangerthanfiction; 05-03-2019, 08:56 AM.

    Leave a comment:


  • catcon
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    He came. He posted. He built his coverage empire to make his BL essentially the go-to place for judging scripts. And then he left - monopoly complete.

    That's entrepreneurship, folks!

    Note, however, he's never made a penny off of me. Still waiting for one of his 'diversity' measures - for poor folks. Like, some sort of discount?

    And I'm talking a discount for his coverage. After all, we're not getting that much for those grades, are we? Remember my earlier post about finding all of those 'readers' on LinkedIn: "I read 3-5 scripts per day!"

    As for the other (genuinely lucrative) side of the BL biz - the script hosting - well, let me see here: He's asking for (what is it now?) $40 or something for three months, to host a PDF that's maybe 200 or 300 kilobytes. To host all of my own website content, I pay $60 a YEAR for a gigabyte, and I know you can find better deals than that.

    Somewhere on this very site, we figured he might be raking in over $2 million a year in total, based on usage statistics he'd reported on other matters.

    Meanwhile, for essentially the same service (granted, at this stage not the same pro clientele), CJ Walley's ScriptRevolution is completely free. I'm sure CJ would love to monetize it some day, but except for a bit of optional Patreon patronage to cover his own hosting costs for the site, that's probably out of the question. Why? Because there really is no way to monetize such a service... except the way Franklin's done it: To be first out of the gate, and most importantly to know people, to make the whole thing "seem" - as he says in the speech - like it's part of an accidental change to the way movies are made.

    But it only "seems" accidental, and it only "seems" like BL is now the go-to way to get scripts noticed.

    As they say, there's a sxxxxxr born every minute. Apparently $2 million a year worth of 'em.

    But as I say, God bless the entrepreneurs! Somebody has to make money in this movie biz!

    But the opposite side is also true: You don't have to spend much money at all, if any, to make a dent, if you're as smart, hard-working, and entrepreneurial as somebody like Franklin Leonard - but from the screenwriting side. You just need a lot of patience.

    Leave a comment:


  • Bono
    replied
    Re: Franklin Leonard

    No one does. Cc twitter

    Leave a comment:


  • barh
    started a topic Franklin Leonard

    Franklin Leonard

    Why doesn't Franklin Leonard post here anymore?

    Here's his great Ted talk.

    https://youtu.be/sh-38scdO5A

    .
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