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I am interested in starting a talent agency. I would appreciate it if someone could list the steps in doing so?
Starting a Talent Agency
- Thread starter Hobbledehoy
- Start date
I don't really know how. But I do have some questions that might help:
1) New York or LA? (or elsewhere)
2) Film? TV? Stage? Music?
3) Do you already have several strong relationships with producers and production companies in the target industry?
4) Do you know how to network effectively/diplomatically/strategically in the target industry?
5) Have you any experiences yourself in that target industry? (ie, have you personally ever been talent?)
1) New York or LA? (or elsewhere)
2) Film? TV? Stage? Music?
3) Do you already have several strong relationships with producers and production companies in the target industry?
4) Do you know how to network effectively/diplomatically/strategically in the target industry?
5) Have you any experiences yourself in that target industry? (ie, have you personally ever been talent?)
A relation owns a talent/casting agency in London. It's been up and running now for over a year, and she's doing quite well. She was originally an actor, and then went to work for a talent agency. After a year or so of learning the ropes, making contacts, etc, she struck out on her own.
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1.) LA
2.) Film/Screenwriting for Newbie Writers.
3. No contacts, how would i go about doing that?
4) Degree in Business/Accounting; should be able to pull it off.
5.) I have unsold scripts that I want sold.
Basically, I want to circumvent the God complexes of the current and already established talent agencies. And since production companies only accept material from incorporated agencies, I thought why not start one. but it seems like the only issue will be establishing rapport with the production companies after my company is installed and ready to go.
I think the thing you really, really need to be an agent is contacts. I think that's pretty much a deal-breaker, and I think you need to have that before you start your company.
I'd say obviously you need to spend some time in LA making contacts. Unless you have something to offer potential clients, why would they bother with you.
I'm not completely sure, but I think it's illegal for you to be a script agent and to simultaneously attempt to sell your own scripts. It's my understanding that you can't sit on both sides of the table at once. So you need to choose one position or the other, and once you have chosen you can't look back. (Without a haitus period of some kind where you are neither one nor the other.)
Maybe someone here would have a better grasp of that than me.
Is it illegal?
Absolutely. A degree means little in this arena. People skills are where it's at. A high school drop-out could become an agent if he's been amazingly endowed with an extraordinary aptitude for making and keeping contacts.
BTW--I don't believe the correct designation for your business would be "Talent Agency." I think it would more properly be called a "Script Agency."
And (naturally) you wouldn't be a talent agent, you would be a script agent.
And (naturally) you wouldn't be a talent agent, you would be a script agent.
I wouldn't call it illegal, at least not in the UK.
Anyone can call set themselves up as an agent; it's whether the industry regards you as such.
But I would say that it's a surefire way to get taken even less seriously than had you simply sent a prodco an unsolicited spec script.
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Technically, it would be Literary Agent, but that is neither here nor there.
To deal in L.A. and NYC, you would need to be licensed through the state(s) to be able to call yourself that and charge for it.
Realistically, unless you have worked as an agent for an agency, working your way up the ranks from the mail room, the chances of becoming an agent on your own is slim to none.
Now you could become a Manager since there is no licenses or such to hurdle across.
But whether you want to be a manager or agent or Entertainment Lawyer (if you hold such a degree) the most important thing YOU MUST HAVE is contacts in the industry.
If you can't call up your Thursday night Poker buddy who works in development over at Fox or make a cold call from your rolodex of several hundred producers, actors, directors, etc... and say you just read this awesome script by your new client that (your contact) has got to read now because Warner Brothers is ready to make a deal, then you are worthless to your client and to your career.
And not so sound snippy, but if you want to sell a script, then pound the pavement everyday. Make cold calls to every production company, agency and manager you can find. send letters, send scripts, talk up your work to anyone, even the guy in front of you at Starbucks. Enter competitions. If your good it will reward you. If you suck, you won't get anywhere.
And not so sound snippy - part 2, but if you want to become an agent, then pound the pavement everyday. Make cold calls to every agency and get a job as an intern, mail clerk, cofee maker, janitor, etc... Make friends, show devotion and interest and maybe you can run up the ladder to becoming an agent. Afer doing that for a few years and having made a lot of contacts, then open up your own shop.
To deal in L.A. and NYC, you would need to be licensed through the state(s) to be able to call yourself that and charge for it.
Realistically, unless you have worked as an agent for an agency, working your way up the ranks from the mail room, the chances of becoming an agent on your own is slim to none.
Now you could become a Manager since there is no licenses or such to hurdle across.
But whether you want to be a manager or agent or Entertainment Lawyer (if you hold such a degree) the most important thing YOU MUST HAVE is contacts in the industry.
If you can't call up your Thursday night Poker buddy who works in development over at Fox or make a cold call from your rolodex of several hundred producers, actors, directors, etc... and say you just read this awesome script by your new client that (your contact) has got to read now because Warner Brothers is ready to make a deal, then you are worthless to your client and to your career.
And not so sound snippy, but if you want to sell a script, then pound the pavement everyday. Make cold calls to every production company, agency and manager you can find. send letters, send scripts, talk up your work to anyone, even the guy in front of you at Starbucks. Enter competitions. If your good it will reward you. If you suck, you won't get anywhere.
And not so sound snippy - part 2, but if you want to become an agent, then pound the pavement everyday. Make cold calls to every agency and get a job as an intern, mail clerk, cofee maker, janitor, etc... Make friends, show devotion and interest and maybe you can run up the ladder to becoming an agent. Afer doing that for a few years and having made a lot of contacts, then open up your own shop.
If one needs a license to be an agent, does that license also mandate that you are legally forbidden to sell your own scripts?
No one has answered the illegal-or-not-question. xhouseboy said "no" for the UK, but what about the US? or at least California?
No one has answered the illegal-or-not-question. xhouseboy said "no" for the UK, but what about the US? or at least California?
Please don't.
So far:
1. You haven't had any success at selling your own script
2. You have no contacts in the industry.
3. You want to specialise in 'Newbie Writers' .. the exact group who is likely to have the least to offer the production companies when you do contact them.
4. You have no understanding at what a talent agency does, or how to be one. (eg: ".. the only issue will be establishing rapport with the production companies after my company is installed and ready to go.")
5. You don't know how to get the one script you have now to production companies.
(eg: "I have a script that needs to be seen by a production company, preferably one interested in CGI based story lines. How should I go about pimping my script? ... It is really, really, awesome. So who do I Query?")
Good luck, but I hope you change your mind.
Mac
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I do not believe that there is any regulations prohibiting an agent from pitching and selling his or her own screenplays. There may be something that they cannot negotiate for themselves though. Also their contacts may be wary of those who do since it's like "hey, you should be sending me your client's work, not yours."
Your other clients might be a little peeved if they hear you're pitching your own stuff: 'but what about mine?' they will legitimately cry, along with 'conflict of interest!' and 'you're fired!'. 
I had the whacky idea of becoming an agent myself a few years back. There's a lot more to it than it seems.
If you're serious about wanting to do it, start with an established agency, work there, work up your contacts list, then start your own.
An agent without contacts and know-how is like the coast guard without boats.
If you're serious about wanting to do it, start with an established agency, work there, work up your contacts list, then start your own.
An agent without contacts and know-how is like the coast guard without boats.
You won't be the first person to have considered this.
It's basically a hare-brained idea for a zillion reasons.
If you think people will read your work or return your phone calls simply because you're an "agent," think again. Junior agents (with no street rep) at CAA (and elsewhere) can't get their phone calls returned.
In order to get the big boys to accept material from you, your "agency" has to be WGA signatory - which means you have to be bonded and franchised.
Furthermore, without any business acumen (or a law degree), you'd be swimming with sharks.
I could go on and one (but I won't). Although I can appreciate the tenacity of the idea, overall, it's pretty dumb.
Not too long ago, a screenwriter was exposed (by himself) as being manager "ROB LANDERS" - a creation to hock his own work. He perpetrated the charade for many years and NEVER sold one of his scripts. (Never even landed an option.) I wrote about it somewhere in the forum of TWOADVERBS.
You'd be better off expending energy on your writing and networking.
I agree with the creative exec above this post, except for a slight modification of the end of his/her post: Just try to make the movie yourself, your own movie, your own script, and get some credibility that way first. If you think starting a talent agency or literary agency is a way to get your script sold you aren't going to have any luck with your screenplay, either. Screenplays are worthless, as I write here so often, but screenplays from people who have no idea how the industry works have NO CHANCE IN H*** of being read by anybody. Even people with credibility -- published writers, nominated screenplay writers -- are ridden by producers anxious to move up in Holywood, and get stabbed in the back with frightening frequency.
Don't start the agency because you don't what you're doing. If you have an actual screenplay, don't bother sending it anywhere because your lack of cunning or sophistication will show through immediately. But if you have an ACTUAL screenplay, make the movie. Raise the cash yourself. Get 20 people excited about working with you. Shoot the thing. Maybe it's good, or maybe it's noticeable, maybe miraculously the writing is actually noteworthy. That's the tried and true way into Hollywood wherein you maintain a small degree of control.
And by making your movie, you'll actually learn . . . how to make a movie. That, potentially, gives you credibility and worth.
IMO.
Don't start the agency because you don't what you're doing. If you have an actual screenplay, don't bother sending it anywhere because your lack of cunning or sophistication will show through immediately. But if you have an ACTUAL screenplay, make the movie. Raise the cash yourself. Get 20 people excited about working with you. Shoot the thing. Maybe it's good, or maybe it's noticeable, maybe miraculously the writing is actually noteworthy. That's the tried and true way into Hollywood wherein you maintain a small degree of control.
And by making your movie, you'll actually learn . . . how to make a movie. That, potentially, gives you credibility and worth.
IMO.
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If you have a few million dollars to waste , then by all means make the movie yourself.
I say millions, because anything less is just not going to make it on screen. Sure you have your Blair Witch, Desperado and Clerks, but they are the rare exception and not the rule.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of ultralow to micro budget films made each year for under 50K that never see the light of day or even the inside of a dvd box.
The odds of a new, first time filmmaker making a film that is good enough to be sold is astronomical and the odds of getting even a good film picked up by a distributor are even slimmer. A friend of mine wrote the script for Altered which was made by one of the Blair Witch guys. The studio sent it right to DVD and this was from a filmmaker with a proven track record of making money theatrically.
Seanie. You giving fantasy advice here.
Telling a newbie to make a movie from their script is like telling someone with a heart condition to operate on themselves.
Realistically, Hobbledehoy, and not to sound cold and callous, but this is the reality. Your script is probably not as good as you think. You being an agent will most likely never happen for so many reasons and your reasons are the wrong ones. You making a film from your script would be a suicide inducing endevour.
My advice is to keep writing and pitch your work to anyone and everyone you can. You may never sell this script but you may sell something someday. It is a numbers game. The more scripts you have, the better you become, the better the chances of finding that one producer looking for something you have. The more people who read your work, the more likely your name will be known and your work will garner attention.
Don't give up, keep writing and pitching and be real.
I say millions, because anything less is just not going to make it on screen. Sure you have your Blair Witch, Desperado and Clerks, but they are the rare exception and not the rule.
There are hundreds upon hundreds of ultralow to micro budget films made each year for under 50K that never see the light of day or even the inside of a dvd box.
The odds of a new, first time filmmaker making a film that is good enough to be sold is astronomical and the odds of getting even a good film picked up by a distributor are even slimmer. A friend of mine wrote the script for Altered which was made by one of the Blair Witch guys. The studio sent it right to DVD and this was from a filmmaker with a proven track record of making money theatrically.
Seanie. You giving fantasy advice here.
Telling a newbie to make a movie from their script is like telling someone with a heart condition to operate on themselves.
Realistically, Hobbledehoy, and not to sound cold and callous, but this is the reality. Your script is probably not as good as you think. You being an agent will most likely never happen for so many reasons and your reasons are the wrong ones. You making a film from your script would be a suicide inducing endevour.
My advice is to keep writing and pitch your work to anyone and everyone you can. You may never sell this script but you may sell something someday. It is a numbers game. The more scripts you have, the better you become, the better the chances of finding that one producer looking for something you have. The more people who read your work, the more likely your name will be known and your work will garner attention.
Don't give up, keep writing and pitching and be real.
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Hey Joe, with all due respect . . .
Hollywood's hottest properties (directors, writers and even actors) usually break their teeth on movies made for reasonable amounts of money. Let's say less than $100,000. Cannes this year was an enormous slap at the bloated Hollywood float.
I don't think the starter of this thread and his dreams for a talent agency would be a particularly good investment, but almost any movie started, shot, edited and distributed for less than $100,000 is a great investment for everyone involved. The real waste of time and energy are the writers laboring over 125-page scripts which are then sailed off into the haze; might as well throw the pages from an airplane.
But the DIY route is full of evidence.
Tarnation.
Dig.
Japon.
Noi.
The Inheritance.
Celebration.
Rhythm Thieves.
The Following.
Bise Moi.
Pie (or the mathematical symbol).
Laws of Gravity.
Kontroll.
These are all movies made on ultra-low budget movies, most of which the majority of the readers here will not know. There are also the more famous examples, like Blair Witch, She's Gotta Have It, El Mariachi, etc., which everyone thinks they know about. Reading RR's account of making Mariachi ("Rebel Without a Crew") would wake a lot writers to the overwhelming uselessness of writing a script to sell.
A movie can be made on credit cards for less than $25K, and it will launch the career of the director if it is any good. Ditto the writer, with a handful of reviews. The producer doesn't even need good reviews. The Mexican revolution in Europe and Hollywood of the past three years has been fueled by people who made sub-$100,000 movies, with "Japon" being the best example of the lot. The director's third feature blew away Cannes, will make millions, and he has successfully warded off the advances from Madonna who flat out offered him millions after seeing "Japon."
I've written about it elsewhere here before, but "Laws of Gravity" is the best example, I think, of how to approach Hollywood. Nick Gomez does whatever he wants now (usually TV), pulls in an easy million annually, and all because he had the balls to spend $32,000 on credit cards to make one of the best American movies ever made. Even a little research will show how precisely he calculated his costs and opportunities and followed Spike Lee in the charge-it school of filmmaking.
My own experience involved a movie made for $9,000, and for a brief time I was courted by Christine Vachon and Ted Hope and Circle Releasing as the next hot thing. Our movie grossed $15K in one week in DC, which popped a lot of eyebrows, and has since allowed me to do whatever I want wherever I want with instant financing up to $50K. I wrote a musical, and got it straight to Galt McDermott, who wrote "Hair," and he was kind enough to call it genius, and I've coasted off that, too, which came directly as a result of making a feature movie for $9k. I brought an Indian singer to Hollywood and she signed for more than a million with Sony, and I can knock on any door because of that and pitch whatever I want. I've got Oscar pals who will push whatever I make whenever I want it pushed; all because I spent nine grand making a small-time movie. Which just happened to get killer reviews, with the dialog quoted in the reviews. I've got a half-dozen projects up right now, all of them maddeningly delayed by my own control issues, but all mine, all financed, all coming to life. I've written about all this before, and I don't want to belabor it, but my opportunities are there because everyone believes I will do what I say, since the evidence is at hand. I've got the reviews, the reputation, the connections, even a movie I'm too ashamed to admit to on the shelves of every Blockbuster in the country, and I never submitted a screenplay anywhere, to anyone, without making sure it was understood that I was the producer, period. I sent the script actually to George Pelecanos, the thriller writer, before we started shooting the first feature, and he called up the next day and asked "What are you going to do with it?" I told him we were already planning to shoot ourselves, and I'll never forget his response: "Good move, man." We shot the movie in nine days, on video. It was in theatres two months later, and would be widely distributed today except for the fact that I ripped off a 20-second segment from a bad Bergman movie and my co-producer is now a bigwig at Buena Vista (also as a result of making the movie) who doesn't want anyone seeing her in see-through lingerie. My third feature was made for $4000 in two wonderful months with talent from everywhere; reviews galore, with the critic chain going all the way up to Pauline Kael, and everyone from Vachon to Johh Pierson inviting me to lunch, and that movie does NOT EXIST physically anymore because of more legal wrangling with the production house. Who cares? The rep goes on and on.
In the same time, I've known dozens of people who got "signed" in Hollywood to huge deals which mysteriously never panned out. Especially writers with "insider" status like the mailroom guy in the other thread on AW. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are bandied about, but that mailroom guy will be lucky if a) his movie gets produced, and b) he makes or clears more than $40 grand in the next year trying to babysit it to fruition. A lawyer, a manager, and an agent and the IRS will reduce any bonus signing to very reasonable amounts of money; writers here constantly complain about their lack of money compared to producers. Another reason to make your own movie.
There are bored dentists and doctors and financiers dying to "make it" to Hollywood. If you have a script and make a movie and get reviews and get it distributed, you can ask these people to spend tens of thousands of dollars without them blinking an eyelash. What writer can claim this from submitting an endless stream of Hollywood junk scripts?
I've written about all this ad nauseum elsewhere here, but I guarantee you half of the serious writers on this forum and on this segment of script writing on this forum would be better advised to make a movie than write one. There are two million screenplays in Hollywood unproduced, clogging the drains, and the producers control the money. Why add to the blockage?
The win of the Romanian movie about abortion at Cannes has loosened up a lot of attitudes in Universal City and Santa Monica. The embarrassing crash of crapflicks like "King" with William Hurt and idiotic cowboy valley movie with Ed Norton ave people more wary than ever about spending millions. And on unknown commodities, like writers? Universal and NBC canned 700 people here last summer. People are still in shock.
I look forward to a rebuttal from Joe Calabrese, and I'd like to read about some success stories about neophytes sending in scripts to make millions or at least to have several movies made from their efforts, but these stories are very very very rare, and suffer greatly from diligent inspection. Even for "insiders" Hollywood is tough to crack without spending sveral years making friends. And that route does work. I just had dinner on Friday night with the designer of a huge kids' TV show, and I'm loaning her a n HD camera for her own short which has a production team of people who have worked with Nicole Kidman. that;'s the kind of language people use here. And my friend understands the value of writing the piece herself, producing it alone, and actually shooting it herself. I've known her since 2001, and she's been listening to my silly exhortations and is now moving quickly through her Hollywood peers to a status of being somebody who gets things done. She's been in Hollywood four years, starting as a graphic designer at Guess Jeans. She has two or three more shorts to make, and they will look good (because of her skills at design), and then there will be fifty grand waiting for her to pluck for a feature, no sweat. To tell her to write a lot or submit a screenplay would be met with a howl of scorn. The opportunity is right there, palpable.
The biggest problem with doing it yourself as the producer is the crippling effect of having you also be the writer. Every gunshot, every murder or explosion or crash or public location (airport, library, highway, forget them all) which was so easy to write suddenly makes your script worse than worthless; it's now impossible to make. Write a story that takes place in three apartments and an elevator, with no CGI BS, and make the characters seem like actual people with problems, get the movie done, and you're off.
See David Holzman's Diary or Coming Apart as two other examples of movies made on a shoestring that launched a dozen careers. Better yet, check out Marti Scorsese's "Who's That Knocking on My Door" with Harvey Keitel made for less than five grand instead of the ferociously ugly and bloated "Departed" to see the steps a writer takes to making a name for himself or herself. Instead, everyone is writing "Departed IV," and that movie will never be made, unless you're the Capo yourself and can speak from experience. And even better yet, how about Almodovar's first movie with a young Banderas jerking off in public; that was made for less than $25K cash.
And there's video technology. The camera is three grand. What are you waiting for? It' cheaper than ever to make a movie. And harder thn ever to sell a script. How many got sold last month? A dozen? 20? I'm not talking about options privately between lawyers and writers; those are easy to get but hardly a way to make a living. Read the trades. More wannabes make movies than sell scripts. And very few people who sell scripts have much of a shelf life. But a producer of a movie can do anything he wants for a long time, o somebody else's dime.
Hollywood's hottest properties (directors, writers and even actors) usually break their teeth on movies made for reasonable amounts of money. Let's say less than $100,000. Cannes this year was an enormous slap at the bloated Hollywood float.
I don't think the starter of this thread and his dreams for a talent agency would be a particularly good investment, but almost any movie started, shot, edited and distributed for less than $100,000 is a great investment for everyone involved. The real waste of time and energy are the writers laboring over 125-page scripts which are then sailed off into the haze; might as well throw the pages from an airplane.
But the DIY route is full of evidence.
Tarnation.
Dig.
Japon.
Noi.
The Inheritance.
Celebration.
Rhythm Thieves.
The Following.
Bise Moi.
Pie (or the mathematical symbol).
Laws of Gravity.
Kontroll.
These are all movies made on ultra-low budget movies, most of which the majority of the readers here will not know. There are also the more famous examples, like Blair Witch, She's Gotta Have It, El Mariachi, etc., which everyone thinks they know about. Reading RR's account of making Mariachi ("Rebel Without a Crew") would wake a lot writers to the overwhelming uselessness of writing a script to sell.
A movie can be made on credit cards for less than $25K, and it will launch the career of the director if it is any good. Ditto the writer, with a handful of reviews. The producer doesn't even need good reviews. The Mexican revolution in Europe and Hollywood of the past three years has been fueled by people who made sub-$100,000 movies, with "Japon" being the best example of the lot. The director's third feature blew away Cannes, will make millions, and he has successfully warded off the advances from Madonna who flat out offered him millions after seeing "Japon."
I've written about it elsewhere here before, but "Laws of Gravity" is the best example, I think, of how to approach Hollywood. Nick Gomez does whatever he wants now (usually TV), pulls in an easy million annually, and all because he had the balls to spend $32,000 on credit cards to make one of the best American movies ever made. Even a little research will show how precisely he calculated his costs and opportunities and followed Spike Lee in the charge-it school of filmmaking.
My own experience involved a movie made for $9,000, and for a brief time I was courted by Christine Vachon and Ted Hope and Circle Releasing as the next hot thing. Our movie grossed $15K in one week in DC, which popped a lot of eyebrows, and has since allowed me to do whatever I want wherever I want with instant financing up to $50K. I wrote a musical, and got it straight to Galt McDermott, who wrote "Hair," and he was kind enough to call it genius, and I've coasted off that, too, which came directly as a result of making a feature movie for $9k. I brought an Indian singer to Hollywood and she signed for more than a million with Sony, and I can knock on any door because of that and pitch whatever I want. I've got Oscar pals who will push whatever I make whenever I want it pushed; all because I spent nine grand making a small-time movie. Which just happened to get killer reviews, with the dialog quoted in the reviews. I've got a half-dozen projects up right now, all of them maddeningly delayed by my own control issues, but all mine, all financed, all coming to life. I've written about all this before, and I don't want to belabor it, but my opportunities are there because everyone believes I will do what I say, since the evidence is at hand. I've got the reviews, the reputation, the connections, even a movie I'm too ashamed to admit to on the shelves of every Blockbuster in the country, and I never submitted a screenplay anywhere, to anyone, without making sure it was understood that I was the producer, period. I sent the script actually to George Pelecanos, the thriller writer, before we started shooting the first feature, and he called up the next day and asked "What are you going to do with it?" I told him we were already planning to shoot ourselves, and I'll never forget his response: "Good move, man." We shot the movie in nine days, on video. It was in theatres two months later, and would be widely distributed today except for the fact that I ripped off a 20-second segment from a bad Bergman movie and my co-producer is now a bigwig at Buena Vista (also as a result of making the movie) who doesn't want anyone seeing her in see-through lingerie. My third feature was made for $4000 in two wonderful months with talent from everywhere; reviews galore, with the critic chain going all the way up to Pauline Kael, and everyone from Vachon to Johh Pierson inviting me to lunch, and that movie does NOT EXIST physically anymore because of more legal wrangling with the production house. Who cares? The rep goes on and on.
In the same time, I've known dozens of people who got "signed" in Hollywood to huge deals which mysteriously never panned out. Especially writers with "insider" status like the mailroom guy in the other thread on AW. Hundreds of thousands of dollars are bandied about, but that mailroom guy will be lucky if a) his movie gets produced, and b) he makes or clears more than $40 grand in the next year trying to babysit it to fruition. A lawyer, a manager, and an agent and the IRS will reduce any bonus signing to very reasonable amounts of money; writers here constantly complain about their lack of money compared to producers. Another reason to make your own movie.
There are bored dentists and doctors and financiers dying to "make it" to Hollywood. If you have a script and make a movie and get reviews and get it distributed, you can ask these people to spend tens of thousands of dollars without them blinking an eyelash. What writer can claim this from submitting an endless stream of Hollywood junk scripts?
I've written about all this ad nauseum elsewhere here, but I guarantee you half of the serious writers on this forum and on this segment of script writing on this forum would be better advised to make a movie than write one. There are two million screenplays in Hollywood unproduced, clogging the drains, and the producers control the money. Why add to the blockage?
The win of the Romanian movie about abortion at Cannes has loosened up a lot of attitudes in Universal City and Santa Monica. The embarrassing crash of crapflicks like "King" with William Hurt and idiotic cowboy valley movie with Ed Norton ave people more wary than ever about spending millions. And on unknown commodities, like writers? Universal and NBC canned 700 people here last summer. People are still in shock.
I look forward to a rebuttal from Joe Calabrese, and I'd like to read about some success stories about neophytes sending in scripts to make millions or at least to have several movies made from their efforts, but these stories are very very very rare, and suffer greatly from diligent inspection. Even for "insiders" Hollywood is tough to crack without spending sveral years making friends. And that route does work. I just had dinner on Friday night with the designer of a huge kids' TV show, and I'm loaning her a n HD camera for her own short which has a production team of people who have worked with Nicole Kidman. that;'s the kind of language people use here. And my friend understands the value of writing the piece herself, producing it alone, and actually shooting it herself. I've known her since 2001, and she's been listening to my silly exhortations and is now moving quickly through her Hollywood peers to a status of being somebody who gets things done. She's been in Hollywood four years, starting as a graphic designer at Guess Jeans. She has two or three more shorts to make, and they will look good (because of her skills at design), and then there will be fifty grand waiting for her to pluck for a feature, no sweat. To tell her to write a lot or submit a screenplay would be met with a howl of scorn. The opportunity is right there, palpable.
The biggest problem with doing it yourself as the producer is the crippling effect of having you also be the writer. Every gunshot, every murder or explosion or crash or public location (airport, library, highway, forget them all) which was so easy to write suddenly makes your script worse than worthless; it's now impossible to make. Write a story that takes place in three apartments and an elevator, with no CGI BS, and make the characters seem like actual people with problems, get the movie done, and you're off.
See David Holzman's Diary or Coming Apart as two other examples of movies made on a shoestring that launched a dozen careers. Better yet, check out Marti Scorsese's "Who's That Knocking on My Door" with Harvey Keitel made for less than five grand instead of the ferociously ugly and bloated "Departed" to see the steps a writer takes to making a name for himself or herself. Instead, everyone is writing "Departed IV," and that movie will never be made, unless you're the Capo yourself and can speak from experience. And even better yet, how about Almodovar's first movie with a young Banderas jerking off in public; that was made for less than $25K cash.
And there's video technology. The camera is three grand. What are you waiting for? It' cheaper than ever to make a movie. And harder thn ever to sell a script. How many got sold last month? A dozen? 20? I'm not talking about options privately between lawyers and writers; those are easy to get but hardly a way to make a living. Read the trades. More wannabes make movies than sell scripts. And very few people who sell scripts have much of a shelf life. But a producer of a movie can do anything he wants for a long time, o somebody else's dime.
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Seanie.
My rebuttal will be short, since I have a life.
All the facts you present seem true, except you give the impression that ANONE with a camcorder, a couple of grand and some devoted and talented people willing to work for next to nothing can MAKE a movie AND get it sold.
Most people here cannot write a production worthy screenplay (my apologies to those who can), so what makes you think they can produce, direct or even shoot one.
How about telling people... "If you have a passion for film making, take some classes and learn how to make a film. Then make a film, but be warned it is just a little less risky to distribute than writing a screenplay to sell, however, screenplays are much, much cheaper to create.
Less than 10% of all films shown at Sundance (and most film festivals showcasing unsold films) get picked up by a distributor.
Cannes is a bad example, since it is mostly a venue for distribution companies to generate interest in films they plan to release later in the year.
As for making a film under 100K a great investment for everyone involved, I know a several people who got seriously into debt making their own film and most never, ever made a penny.
I myself in the early 80's made a low budget horror that went nowhere.
On the other hand... I do know a small percentage of filmmakers who did make a film and sold them and some even made a fair amount of cash and minor notoriety, but they too have a hard time "making it" by selling scripts or by finding financing for future projects. Hell! a very good friend of mine wrote one of the better installments of a famous horror franchise and although he options scripts regularly, he is by no means a salable screenwriter. He still has a day job.
Whether you make films or write them it is a tough road ahead. There is no easy way out, no magic pill. Only hard work, productivity, marketing oneself and lots and lots of patience will and even so, do NOIT expect to become a superstar, but hope to be a writer who can make a living at it. If you become a superstar then be happier..
Making a film is not the answer to a screenwriter. It is to a filmmaker or director, but not someone whose passion is to write.
My problem with your post is how easy you make it sound.
My rebuttal will be short, since I have a life.
All the facts you present seem true, except you give the impression that ANONE with a camcorder, a couple of grand and some devoted and talented people willing to work for next to nothing can MAKE a movie AND get it sold.
Most people here cannot write a production worthy screenplay (my apologies to those who can), so what makes you think they can produce, direct or even shoot one.
How about telling people... "If you have a passion for film making, take some classes and learn how to make a film. Then make a film, but be warned it is just a little less risky to distribute than writing a screenplay to sell, however, screenplays are much, much cheaper to create.
Less than 10% of all films shown at Sundance (and most film festivals showcasing unsold films) get picked up by a distributor.
Cannes is a bad example, since it is mostly a venue for distribution companies to generate interest in films they plan to release later in the year.
As for making a film under 100K a great investment for everyone involved, I know a several people who got seriously into debt making their own film and most never, ever made a penny.
I myself in the early 80's made a low budget horror that went nowhere.
On the other hand... I do know a small percentage of filmmakers who did make a film and sold them and some even made a fair amount of cash and minor notoriety, but they too have a hard time "making it" by selling scripts or by finding financing for future projects. Hell! a very good friend of mine wrote one of the better installments of a famous horror franchise and although he options scripts regularly, he is by no means a salable screenwriter. He still has a day job.
Whether you make films or write them it is a tough road ahead. There is no easy way out, no magic pill. Only hard work, productivity, marketing oneself and lots and lots of patience will and even so, do NOIT expect to become a superstar, but hope to be a writer who can make a living at it. If you become a superstar then be happier..
Making a film is not the answer to a screenwriter. It is to a filmmaker or director, but not someone whose passion is to write.
My problem with your post is how easy you make it sound.
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Making a film for under 100K is a GREAT investment for everyone involved .. everyone except the person putting up the money !
If you want the experience of working on a film, then simply get involved with other filmmakers in your area and volunteer on a few of their short films. You'll learn an amazing amount for the investment of a couple of weekends. At the very least, you'll learn an enormous amount about writing to a budget ... and the contacts you make certainly won't hurt.
Good luck!
Mac
Well, I'm a writer first. The producer in me always has the writer in his pocket, but I'm a writer first. It is NOT easy to do what I described in the post above. I forgot to write about the part where I almost died of cancer for a year which I know was caused by me writing. Not by what I wrote, but by me actually writing. I admit I make it sound easy, and I admit it's not.
But my intent is to flay the purpose and not the process. People write screenplays because they're easy to write. Let's be honest. A bad screenplay takes two weeks. A good one can be hammered out in a month. A neophyte can write an excellent screenplay. (See Nick Cave and "Proposition.") How many people do we know who write both novels and screenplays. A novel is tough. Three months, four months, with hidden structures and pacing? Or how about a non-fiction book of real depth; I had a sit-down video interview a few months ago with Kai Bird and we were both muttering about angles to take on writing projects involving Beirut, and I was my usual dismissive, breezy self: "Just write what it was like to be 21 around the hijackers!" The exact next day he won the Pulitzer for his bio on Oppenheimer. I am reading that now, and what can I say? The bio is plutonium, heavy. He wants to know what I think. What do I say to him? "Now I know why Oppenheimer seemed like the Judas of science without knowing why all my life"? Was it easy for Bird to write his opus? Would it be easy for him to walk out tomorrow onto a small set and direct a movie?
Point taken, about my expression of relative or absolute ease. But movies are a common and simple language if viewers care to broaden their tongues. You can't "study" Scorsese and Eastwood and have the remotest idea of how to make a movie for less than two million dollars. But you can look at
Last Life in the Universe
The Return
Morvern Caller
Naked
Raining Stones
and other low-budget masterpieces to figure out how to tell a modest story in impressive fashion. Cinema is easy to learn if you're willing to look at all its forms, and not just the junk that advertising budgets extol. I would argue that watching the new Bruce Willis flick would retard anyone's aptitude for making a cinematic story. People might say my attitude is elitist; but I'm grounded in the reality of making a story without resources, so the story better be good and the characters better sing, because I'll never pay for two helicopters to crash even in FX.
My point in writing this diatribe and the one before it is to urge people writing for a screen to play in the screen themselves. It isn't enough to point out to erstwhile scripters how impossibly rigged Hollywood is; people still write "Departed IV" and "Departed V", etc. Then they retire at age 34 and edit the local hospital newsletter. Fine. But before being crushed by entertainment reality, experiment with the medium and learn how to tell a story with its tools; the camera, the microphone, light. To say nothing of editing, which is a magic far removed from precis and proofreading when applied to movies.
Maybe it takes three or four movies or shorts or youtube efforts to discover the real language of movies, in which the biggest single expression is silence, but any writer can at least try this and see if they are willing to learn.
And I have to take umbrage at the suggestion that a movie-maker "take classes." This is the Writer's Digest institutional delusion. Just buy the damn camera and write for it. My heart always sinks at the writer who writes only for a class or only prompted by an academic deadline. Isn't writing a stream of expression, lifelong, in which to lose yourself and then find your way again, repeatedly? How does a class teach you to live? Perhaps this is the insecure 16-year-old drop-out in me speaking now, but by the time I was 23 I was editing Presidential Commissions because I was the only stooge on board willing to read in his spare time rather than chase chicks and drink, and no boss I ever had asked if I had a high school degree.
So I'd sum up by saying if you want to write cinema, create images for your words, in the same way that I would say to somebody to stop pretending at being a writer if they're not willing to read. Joe is quite right that I make it sound too glib; this is my own personality defect. But churning out another MS with the pretty brass brads in a literary form meant for third-graders is not my idea of working very hard to begin with, especially if the content turns out to be as lame as another "Million Dollar Baby" knockoff.
See "Tarnation." If that person waited to go to school and learn something about filmmaking, he wouldn't be sitting on top of the world today. He made his movie on a computer. For $100. He had no idea what he was doing.
But any of the titles I offer on my lists in these two posts will do. Especially the early Scorsese: "Who's That Knocking on My Door." If he made that movie now, people would swoon; instead, he gets the sneers and the complimentary awards for the wooden travesties he brings to the market now. If "Kings of NY" was Marty's first movie, we would never have heard from him again.
I stand corrected on making things seem too easy. They are not. But I also stand resolutely behind my position that a writer of screenplays is much better off abandoning a malfunctioning process to learn the business of movies first-hand, with fingers on every aspect of creating a live work of art or narration. Any sort of success in this latter option will lead to opportunities in Hollywood. Not to say that this should be anyone's end goal, but it certainly seems to be here and on most online congregations of writers wondering how to break in to the gild and glitter. Or should that be Guild and glitter?
And if you can't write a screenplay you can make yourself, at least write one that somebody else can without having to spend a million dollars, or even half a million dollars. Get it down to where we can all envision it, Match your screenplay's budget to the equity you have in your house. One hundred grand? Two hundred grand? What kind of a movie can you make for that amount? Check out the movies I've mentioned; they can all be done for what you already own. And each one of those movies has looked after their creators. That part I will guarantee.
Maybe my language should be that the writer should create a property with whatever he or she is willing to lose. If you can't go to Vegas and throw away five grand in a single night and live to tell the tale, don't bother trying to make a movie. Perhaps the people in Joe's examples above spent too much money; they lost control, or they can't pay it back. I am willing to lose twenty-five thousand dollars on my own movie. I have more than sixty thousand in a movie right now which is barely worth twenty grand to a distributor. I'm willing to lose more, and I rarely gamble. But I always gamble on myself. Doesn't every writer do the same?
But my intent is to flay the purpose and not the process. People write screenplays because they're easy to write. Let's be honest. A bad screenplay takes two weeks. A good one can be hammered out in a month. A neophyte can write an excellent screenplay. (See Nick Cave and "Proposition.") How many people do we know who write both novels and screenplays. A novel is tough. Three months, four months, with hidden structures and pacing? Or how about a non-fiction book of real depth; I had a sit-down video interview a few months ago with Kai Bird and we were both muttering about angles to take on writing projects involving Beirut, and I was my usual dismissive, breezy self: "Just write what it was like to be 21 around the hijackers!" The exact next day he won the Pulitzer for his bio on Oppenheimer. I am reading that now, and what can I say? The bio is plutonium, heavy. He wants to know what I think. What do I say to him? "Now I know why Oppenheimer seemed like the Judas of science without knowing why all my life"? Was it easy for Bird to write his opus? Would it be easy for him to walk out tomorrow onto a small set and direct a movie?
Point taken, about my expression of relative or absolute ease. But movies are a common and simple language if viewers care to broaden their tongues. You can't "study" Scorsese and Eastwood and have the remotest idea of how to make a movie for less than two million dollars. But you can look at
Last Life in the Universe
The Return
Morvern Caller
Naked
Raining Stones
and other low-budget masterpieces to figure out how to tell a modest story in impressive fashion. Cinema is easy to learn if you're willing to look at all its forms, and not just the junk that advertising budgets extol. I would argue that watching the new Bruce Willis flick would retard anyone's aptitude for making a cinematic story. People might say my attitude is elitist; but I'm grounded in the reality of making a story without resources, so the story better be good and the characters better sing, because I'll never pay for two helicopters to crash even in FX.
My point in writing this diatribe and the one before it is to urge people writing for a screen to play in the screen themselves. It isn't enough to point out to erstwhile scripters how impossibly rigged Hollywood is; people still write "Departed IV" and "Departed V", etc. Then they retire at age 34 and edit the local hospital newsletter. Fine. But before being crushed by entertainment reality, experiment with the medium and learn how to tell a story with its tools; the camera, the microphone, light. To say nothing of editing, which is a magic far removed from precis and proofreading when applied to movies.
Maybe it takes three or four movies or shorts or youtube efforts to discover the real language of movies, in which the biggest single expression is silence, but any writer can at least try this and see if they are willing to learn.
And I have to take umbrage at the suggestion that a movie-maker "take classes." This is the Writer's Digest institutional delusion. Just buy the damn camera and write for it. My heart always sinks at the writer who writes only for a class or only prompted by an academic deadline. Isn't writing a stream of expression, lifelong, in which to lose yourself and then find your way again, repeatedly? How does a class teach you to live? Perhaps this is the insecure 16-year-old drop-out in me speaking now, but by the time I was 23 I was editing Presidential Commissions because I was the only stooge on board willing to read in his spare time rather than chase chicks and drink, and no boss I ever had asked if I had a high school degree.
So I'd sum up by saying if you want to write cinema, create images for your words, in the same way that I would say to somebody to stop pretending at being a writer if they're not willing to read. Joe is quite right that I make it sound too glib; this is my own personality defect. But churning out another MS with the pretty brass brads in a literary form meant for third-graders is not my idea of working very hard to begin with, especially if the content turns out to be as lame as another "Million Dollar Baby" knockoff.
See "Tarnation." If that person waited to go to school and learn something about filmmaking, he wouldn't be sitting on top of the world today. He made his movie on a computer. For $100. He had no idea what he was doing.
But any of the titles I offer on my lists in these two posts will do. Especially the early Scorsese: "Who's That Knocking on My Door." If he made that movie now, people would swoon; instead, he gets the sneers and the complimentary awards for the wooden travesties he brings to the market now. If "Kings of NY" was Marty's first movie, we would never have heard from him again.
I stand corrected on making things seem too easy. They are not. But I also stand resolutely behind my position that a writer of screenplays is much better off abandoning a malfunctioning process to learn the business of movies first-hand, with fingers on every aspect of creating a live work of art or narration. Any sort of success in this latter option will lead to opportunities in Hollywood. Not to say that this should be anyone's end goal, but it certainly seems to be here and on most online congregations of writers wondering how to break in to the gild and glitter. Or should that be Guild and glitter?
And if you can't write a screenplay you can make yourself, at least write one that somebody else can without having to spend a million dollars, or even half a million dollars. Get it down to where we can all envision it, Match your screenplay's budget to the equity you have in your house. One hundred grand? Two hundred grand? What kind of a movie can you make for that amount? Check out the movies I've mentioned; they can all be done for what you already own. And each one of those movies has looked after their creators. That part I will guarantee.
Maybe my language should be that the writer should create a property with whatever he or she is willing to lose. If you can't go to Vegas and throw away five grand in a single night and live to tell the tale, don't bother trying to make a movie. Perhaps the people in Joe's examples above spent too much money; they lost control, or they can't pay it back. I am willing to lose twenty-five thousand dollars on my own movie. I have more than sixty thousand in a movie right now which is barely worth twenty grand to a distributor. I'm willing to lose more, and I rarely gamble. But I always gamble on myself. Doesn't every writer do the same?