This is a topic for the older screenwriting crowd. It seems to me that screenwriting has enterred a new, brutal age. So many agents have gone under; Indies and Hollywood have cut back on project after project. Based on what I've read -- 15 or 25 years ago it was a lot easier to break into this market.
I know that many producers/agents are looking for a good story, but many promising stories are not getting a fair chance. Yes, I know that it may take years for the right story to fit in, or catch an Ex. or studio's attention. To me, anyways, a screenwriter would best be served by exploring other writing projects -- and come back to screenplays at a later time. All comments welcome.
It's always been hard to make a living at any kind of writing. You shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that some other kind of writing is necessarily going to be easy.
I write a lot in the horror field and I know a lot of people who write horror fiction who are, in the field, well respected novelists who've been writing for decades, have many, many novel published, have big reputations in the field -- and who have still have their day jobs. That is, they still work as full time lawyers or teachers or what have you -- because despite their "success" as novelists -- what they earn writing simply can't pay their bills.
The number of people who reach that point where their writing can do that, unfortunately, is very small.
People can talk about "e-publishing" and all the rest, but to me it sounds a lot like people who talk about making movies and releasing them on-line. I keep asking them -- how do they expect to break even, never mind make money doing it? The financial formula just isn't in place.
Likewise for making a living writing and selling books on line. How do you market them? How do you find an audience? How do you make a living doing it?
So whichever way you go at it, it's tough. It's an uphill climb. There's no question but that things are tougher now in the movie business than it was -- not that it was easy before.
Fewer specs are selling. They're selling for less. Fewer movies are being made. At the heart of the matter is the same credit crunch that hit everybody else, because, though you may not be aware of it, movies are largely financed on credit -- and the credit market, as you may be aware, essentially disappeared. And that meant that the money available to make movies and to finance development -- as well to finance the big debt burden that a lot of studios operated under as a matter of course, also disappeared.
MGM is still hovering on the brink of bankruptcy. A lot of other studios are in deep financial trouble and are pulling back on the number of movies they're making, what they're spending on development, the kinds of independent movies they'e buying, and what they're spending overall.
As to when it's going to improve -- it's hard to say. Everybody is always in the business of touting the internet and New Technology as the future of something or other. Hell, I remember when they invented the porta-pak and everybody was saying how people were going to go out with those things and shoot their own movies and it was going to democratize the making of movies.
That's a prediction that people made them and have kept on making (like the imminent arrival of cheap fusion power) with predictable regularity, and now with youtube and broad band and cheap HD cameras, of course, you hear it all again, even louder.
But you never hear the key question answered. So you go out and shoot a movie. Let's say, out of the ten thousand people who do it, one actually manages to have the talent to come up with something that's good.
What does he do with it? How do people find out about it? Does he show it on youtube? Post it on line? Release it through netflix?
How does he get his investment back? How does he make a profit? How does he make a *living* doing it?
If he can make it for ten thousand bucks and get a million people to watch it for a buck each -- great. If he can get ten million people to watch it for a buck each -- he's succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.
But if he ends up with some deal where he gets reimbursed through advertising at a tenth of penny per view -- then those ten million views literally won't even pay his rent.
Those deals seem to work fine -- for advertisers and for people who put links to clips of their babies giggling who aren't looking to make any money and videos designed to market something else (like music videos) -- but for end user products?
Who's made any money off of this?
So all in all, we have, once again, just found ourselves in tough times. It's a recession. It's always a buyer's market -- and now more than ever.
That means that everything that everybody says about how hard it is to sell a spec and how hard it is to break in -- and everything that you have to do in order to do it -- all of that applies all the more.
Because they are still making movies. They are still buying scripts. They are still buying spec scripts.
They are even still buying spec scripts from new writers.
The trick is the same as it's always been. You just have to write a spec script that is better than anything else that's out there. Better than any spec script written by any of those other writers.
You write a script that is so good that nobody has any excuse not to want to make it.
Write the spec that you can describe in a couple sentences and when someone hears it they can instantly see the movie in their heads *and* not only can they see it -- they *want* to see it.
Write the spec that is immediately star castable. That is, that handful of people who, when they are attached to a movie -- that movie is greenlit -- those people, when they (and their agents) when they read the script, will want to be in this movie.
And more than that -- when they read the script, they will say to themselves -- when we make this movie, with that big bankable star -- it will make us a lot of money. And that's good, because we like to make lots of money.
That is -- it doesn't have any problems, like everybody dying in the end, or controversial subject matter or anything that might stand between it and it making a lot of money.
Those three things -- immediately graspable concept -- they see the movie and want to see it. Star castable. Will make a lot of money.
Just write that script.
Of course, if everybody knew how to do that, Hollywood wouldn't be in financial trouble.
NMS
Some people are adventurous consumers, but they are a rare breed and should be encouraged at all costs. Not making movies that suck is a step in the right direction.