New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

[LighterD]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Hi Franklin. Do the readers know anything about my script when they get it? I know you don't read blind when it comes to the title page, but do the readers know/see my logline or any other info that's on my script listing?

[pabloamigo]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

It's been Labor Day too so I imagine that could have impacted the workload. I'm over three weeks now (the reader has downloaded my script twice in the meantime).

[sky777]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

I've written to them over my own reads, and they said they have been slammed lately, so it's taking longer than normal, and that includes when a reader downloads the script. I have a review coming where the reader downloaded the script over a week ago. But the customer service there is fantastic. They'll get right back to you and help you out. (No, not a shill, just a satisfied customer.)

one week!! What genre is that script?? Have you gotten your review back yet or are you still waiting?

I agree customer service is fast.

[LRic54]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Say the blacklist 3.0.

How should we specify that our script is on this part of the Blacklist, and not the actual Blacklist?

I let someone know to see if his connections would want to take a look, and he said 'Congrats, what an accomplishment,' and I right away knew he thought I meant my script made the Blacklist, so I apologized for the confusion and corrected him.

Any advice for avoiding this confusion?

[happywash]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

I've written to them over my own reads, and they said they have been slammed lately, so it's taking longer than normal, and that includes when a reader downloads the script. I have a review coming where the reader downloaded the script over a week ago. But the customer service there is fantastic. They'll get right back to you and help you out. (No, not a shill, just a satisfied customer.)

[sky777]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Franklin,

A reader downloaded my script 3 days ago and my review still hasn't come in. Is it normal to take over 72 hours once a reader downloads it?

Thanks.

[Anointed]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

I don't see a reason to mention it unless you got at least an overall 8 or you're including a link/location for them to download and read the script.

[stainjm]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

How should we specify that our script is on this part of the Blacklist, and not the actual Blacklist?

I let someone know to see if his connections would want to take a look, and he said 'Congrats, what an accomplishment,' and I right away knew he thought I meant my script made the Blacklist, so I apologized for the confusion and corrected him.

Any advice for avoiding this confusion?

[stainjm]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

I don't think so, I'll have to go back and check the emails for that.

UPDATE:
I emailed them and it seems it was a glitch Oh well.

[CColoredClown]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Did you get an email indicating that you had a paid review up? BL will notify you when your paid review comes in, but I don't think they'll tell you anything if it's a non-paid review.

[stainjm]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

I wonder if I was dumb here - I paid for my review, it wasn't great, and so I pulled the script. Today I went back to look at it (because I posted another script) and saw 2 pro views, but zero reader downloads and 1 review, thus leading me to assume it was the pro review, not the reader review, and I pulled it before I ever received the reader review! Does that sound right?


Ratings
1

Reviews
1

Pro Views
2

Peer Views
13

Pro Downloads
1

Reader Downloads
0

Non-unique Downloads
1

Status
Offline

Next Bill Date
NA

[FranklinLeonard]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Generally higher.

Mean for all premise ratings has been 5.53.
Mean for all overall ratings has been 5.08.

46.2% of evaluations have a premise score higher than its overall score.
37.4% of evaluations have a premise score equal to its overall score.
16.4% of evaluations have a premise score lower than its overall score.

And as for variance,

the average difference between the premise and overall score for evaluations where the premise > overall = 1.39
Average difference between the premise and overall score for evaluations where the premise < overall = 1.19.

[FranklinLeonard]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Franklin, thanks for that info. And that makes complete sense - that Premise would have the lowest correlation to the overall score.

But is Premise generally higher or lower? And is the variation on the down-side greater than that on the up-side?

If at the outset people don't buy your premise, I can see them not caring about the story. But if a reader does like your premise, the score for that shouldn't be pulled down if it turns out the execution is horrible.

My buddy and I may be wrong, but seems to us that even guys who don't yet know how to write can still come up with great premises. And we're wondering if the scores show that. If at some point you can run those numbers, at least the two of us would be interested.

Generally higher.

Mean for all premise ratings has been 5.53.
Mean for all overall ratings has been 5.08.

46.2% of evaluations have a premise score higher than its overall score.
37.4% of evaluations have a premise score equal to its overall score.
16.4% of evaluations have a premise score lower than its overall score.

[Manchester]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

Doing some VERY rough calculations in a very short amount of time (long story), it turns out that through over 8000 evaluations, Premise is actually the least correlated to the Overall rating of the component ratings.

Character is most closely correlated, followed by Dialogue and Plot closely behind it (Dialogue with an extraordinarily slight edge there), and Premise is quite a bit further back.

Don't know what to make of that - and wouldn't want to draw any conclusions having given it such little consideration - but the data itself is pretty clear.

Franklin, thanks for that info. And that makes complete sense - that Premise would have the lowest correlation to the overall score.

But is Premise generally higher or lower? And is the variation on the down-side greater than that on the up-side?

If at the outset people don't buy your premise, I can see them not caring about the story. But if a reader does like your premise, the score for that shouldn't be pulled down if it turns out the execution is horrible.

My buddy and I may be wrong, but seems to us that even guys who don't yet know how to write can still come up with great premises. And we're wondering if the scores show that. If at some point you can run those numbers, at least the two of us would be interested.

[FranklinLeonard]

Re: New Black List Thread - Franklin Leonard answers your questions

This post is about premise.

I was going post it separately in some other section here at DD, because the topic goes beyond BL. But BL inspired it so I thought I'd start here.

A few weeks ago, a writing friend and I decided to skim a bunch of script listings at BL to look at the scores. For a number of reasons, our look wasn't truly random. For starters, we could only see scores of writers who allow their scores to be seen, and for obvious reasons that usually limits the visible scores to good scores. But (for whatever reason) a fair number of people with low scores did make them public.

And here's something we noticed, among all the ones we saw, regardless of the overall score - Rarely was the Premise score more than 1 point or so above the average of the other scores. Sometimes it was lower a point or two - which makes sense, since sometimes a writer takes an unexceptional premise and executes it really well.

But this puzzled us: Why didn't we see any/many scripts with Premise scores well above the rest?

I mean, we've all read loglines of scripts that present a great/cool/amazing premise, or we get that sense from reading the first 15 pages, but then read the scripts and they're disappointing. Or worse. (And I don't just mean my scripts.)

So, Franklin - Any stats on Premise scores relative to the other scores? And IF that score really is almost always close to the average of the rest, you have a theory as to why?

Readers don't see the loglines people post, so a reader's sense of the premise only comes from what's on the page. But it just seems there should be a fair number of scripts with Premise scores of 7-10, despite the other scores being in the 1-6 range...

Unless, I don't know what a BL Premise score means.

Doing some VERY rough calculations in a very short amount of time (long story), it turns out that through over 8000 evaluations, Premise is actually the least correlated to the Overall rating of the component ratings.

Character is most closely correlated, followed by Dialogue and Plot closely behind it (Dialogue with an extraordinarily slight edge there), and Premise is quite a bit further back.

Don't know what to make of that - and wouldn't want to draw any conclusions having given it such little consideration - but the data itself is pretty clear.