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Okay. 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?
Pimping my CGI script.
- Thread starter Hobbledehoy
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Place her under a dim street light at a busy intersection at night wearing see-through clothes and just the right amount of make-up to accentuate her features, and before you know it, you'll get an offer from a passerby.
Is it a feature?
Is it an animated feature? Or a live action sci-fi/fantasy that needs a boat-load of CGI work?
Big budgets are a tough sell for an unproved writer unless you have something really awesome. And let's suppose you do have something incredible. In that case ...
Query. Query. Query.
But, it might be prudent to run your script past a few trusted beta-readers first. In fact, here on this web site there is a sub-forum called "Share Your Work" --and in there you'll find a sub-sub-forum just for movie scripts--where you can post small excerpts for peer review and feedback.
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Script agents and production companies. And keep in mind that some agencies and/or prodcos are allergic to sci-fi/fantasy/CGI-fests.
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If you haven't already, check out the screenwriting tips thread which contains info plus links that you may find useful, including ways to submit queries to production companies. Don't overlook contests as a way in.
-Derek
-Derek
You still haven't mentioned if it is a full blown totally animation or real life with loads of CGI.
Which is it?
K
Which is it?
K
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Sorry, I dunno. I'd just keep checking out upcoming contests and hope you strike lucky.
If "CGI based story lines" equals an animation spec, then once again I point to one of link removed via request from other site's Webmaster..Wordplay's most excellent link removed via request from other site's Webmaster.Columns:
-Derek
If "CGI based story lines" equals an animation spec, then once again I point to one of link removed via request from other site's Webmaster..Wordplay's most excellent link removed via request from other site's Webmaster.Columns:
-Derek
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If it's all CGI, have you thought about story-boarding it? Even if it's not animation, you may need the pictorial to get the vision across to prodcos or agents.
Good luck - post a couple of pages up like others have suggested and let the guys tell you if they agree it's awesome - which from your enthusiasm they very well might!
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ResearcH!
Find out who has been doing YOUR type of stories and then query them.
Be specfic. Tell them you know their work, mention film names.
DON'T over-hype your script, just tell them the really cool core conflict that makes this one story interesting. Keep it simple.
Sell them on the concept and the characters.
After that, cold query anybody you can.
Your other option is to find an in SOMEHOW, any how.
Keep your ears open.
Two weeks ago I found out that one of my husband's renters is friends with the PRESIDENT of the Heartland Film Festival. She is now talking up one of my scripts to him.
So, keep your ears open for ANY connections.
Find out who has been doing YOUR type of stories and then query them.
Be specfic. Tell them you know their work, mention film names.
DON'T over-hype your script, just tell them the really cool core conflict that makes this one story interesting. Keep it simple.
Sell them on the concept and the characters.
After that, cold query anybody you can.
Your other option is to find an in SOMEHOW, any how.
Keep your ears open.
Two weeks ago I found out that one of my husband's renters is friends with the PRESIDENT of the Heartland Film Festival. She is now talking up one of my scripts to him.
So, keep your ears open for ANY connections.
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Storyboard it! Even if it's only 3 or 4 drawings to give people a feel of your vision. Work with a friendly artist if your drawing skills aren't tip-top. It's worth it - esp in cartoon-style, a picture speaks a 1000 words (or even 18,000).
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I don't like the article Dpaterso presented. I guess I'm going to have to be the first one to sell an animated spec script.
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Especially since it is a cartoon, I would seriously think about doing a 60 to 80 page graphic novel. Much cheaper than making a movie. You can find talented professional artists to work from anywhere between $50 to $120 a page (b/w to color). You may even find an artist who is just starting out and willing to do it much cheaper or even for credit. hang out in places like conceptart.org, deviant art or the drawing board.
Once you have a few dozen pages and a full synopsis, you can submit to small to large publishers and they may pick it up.
But if worst comes to worst, self distributing a comic is pretty easy and with POD store fronts you can advertise and sell with little money and hopefully make your money back and then some.
In either case, once done and printed I would send a copy along with a query letter to production companies that have done animated films and agents too for the purpose of selling the original screenplay.
That's what I am doing right now for my Hindu Action Adventure.
Once you have a few dozen pages and a full synopsis, you can submit to small to large publishers and they may pick it up.
But if worst comes to worst, self distributing a comic is pretty easy and with POD store fronts you can advertise and sell with little money and hopefully make your money back and then some.
In either case, once done and printed I would send a copy along with a query letter to production companies that have done animated films and agents too for the purpose of selling the original screenplay.
That's what I am doing right now for my Hindu Action Adventure.
Scott Adams has an interesting article on his experience with a meeting at Dreamworks:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/creative-questi.html
The main page of his blog is here:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com
To quote a snippet:
Mac
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/creative-questi.html
The main page of his blog is here:
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com
To quote a snippet:
My vote is for Leprechauns / Gnomes & beavers.
Mac
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What's funny. Is that my movie is PG 13 and has cursing and minor lude situations. It's really hilarious. It pains me to have good material and can't get it out there.
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But this is the problem we all have. If there was a quick and easy way, we'd all use it. Then it wouldn't be quick and easy any more, it would be flooded and useless.
Hence pointing you at the various query services and contest links in the tips thread.
-Derek
Do you mean minor "lewd" situations -- as in sexual/naughty -- or "lude" as in "ludes" -- that is the drug?
In either case, there are certain things that you probably need to hear, though you probably won't like it (and maybe you're already shutting down, which would be unfortunate).
All CGI animated movies -- certainly those made by U.S. studioes, are extremely expensive, in the realm of 100 million dollars and more.
The people who even get to pitch these movies is an extremely small and exclusive club and they come from a whole different group from the people who pitch live action movies.
They come from the world of animators. Animation directors, producers, story people.
These projects generally start with presentations that consist of artwork -- character drawings, large scale artwork that gives the feeling of the style and key story moments.
They don't start with screenplays and certainly not with spec screenplays.
And on top of everything else, it's a a spec screenplay for a CGI feature that's going to be rated PG-13, which means that a lot of of prospective audience -- young children who'd go to a movie like Shrek, will not be going to this movie.
So -- big budget, unknown writer, project coming from a completely unfamiliar path in a sub-category of an industry that only makes a handful of movies every year and which, in addition, isn't even going to appeal to the full market range that every other U.S.-made CGI movie has so far aimed to reach.
Chances of it even being considered by anybody in a position to seriously evaluate it is essentially nil and beyond that, the chances that such a person, if that miniscule chance managed to happen, of buying the script and putting it into development is likewise essentially nil.
You are no doubt about to say that what tips the balance in your direction is how "fantastic" your script is.
The trouble is, there's "fantastic" according to your standards and there is "fantastic" according to the standards of your market.
And what is that market? Not the market of the people who go to see movies. Your market is the people who buy movies or, in this case, the people who buy CGI animation projects.
What is it that they are looking for? Are they looking for spec scripts? No. Are they looking for PG-13 projects that will restrict access to the finished film? No. Are they looking to take risks and strike out in new uncharted waters with a new uncharted writer and new uncharted approaches to creating hundred million dollar movies intended for mass entertainment and, traditionally intended for children and family audiences? Absolutely not.
They are looking for projects from experienced animation producer/directors who will be able to shepard those projects through to completion. They want people they know. People who have come up through the ranks, who have demonstrated, in practical terms, their ability to do the job. They want projects that are going to be immediately marketable and marketable to all four quadrants, if at all possible -- that is, children, teenagers, adult couples, older americans. You come up with a movie that hits all four quadrants (and a movie like for instance, The Impossibles, was a four-quadrant hit).
Barring that, they want family films. Kid friendly films. For these kinds of movies, that's the bread and butter.
And from what you're saying, you've giving them something else.
Hard though it may be to hear, and I know everybody will always give you the line about believing in yourself and never say die and all the rest, but at some point you have to come down (as a producer I know is always saying) to a point of reality.
That point is that the chances of this project selling are virtually non-existent.
The chances of most spec scripts by unsold writers are extremely small -- but even compared to those chances, the chances of this script selling (and I say this without have read a word or a line of it, but just based on the little you've said about it) -- is essentially non-existent.
Whatever virtues it may contain in an artistic or a narrative sense are simply not going to overcome the fundamentally market-driven basis upon which these movies are chosen and produced.
NMS
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Well, lewd is too strong of a word. Just mature problems and situations. So even if I structure it as a four quadrant hit, I have no chance?
Back in the seventies, there were a handful of movies made by Ralph Bakshi aimed at mature audiences -- R-rated animation, some of which were moderately successful, others of which bombed. Every so often an animated movie along the same lines comes in from overseas and always, at best, here, it never really hits. There is a kind of "associative dissonance" in U.S. audience minds. They strongly associate animation with kid stuff -- *not* with mature problems and situations. Clearly, a lot of the most successful movies of this kind put stuff in for adults, but they sneak it in in a way that allows it to still work completely for kids.
And especially now, with CGI movies costing what they do, studios are simply not going to stray from that formula. They're not going to make a movie for a hundred milion dollars that, *from its inception* is likely to confuse or alienate some aspect of its potential audience.
Studios are making fewer movies than ever before. They cost more than ever before. The stakes are higher than ever before. More is at stake if a choice is wrong than ever before. The ultimate financial success or failure of a studio for an entire year may hinge on the success or failure of two movies or three or even one. That means that the people making the decisions are more conservative in their choices than ever before.
If a movie fails, those that approved it have to be able to go in and justify at every level why they approved it -- here is the director with his incredible track record. It was a sequel to a bunch of really successful movies. The screenwriter -- look at these other movies he made. Look at the cast, all A-list. Etc., etc., etc.
What they don't want to have to do is say -- we went outside the box and bought this spec script, that we never did before, for a CGI movie, from somebody that nobody ever heard of, because we really thought that it was a fantastic script -- and oh, look -- the movie bombed.
Nobody wants to get in a room and say that. Because when they say that, the next thing they hear is -- you're fired.
That's why, in this business -- pretty much nobody does it.
And that's really why, irrespective of the quality of your script (on which, obviously, I cannot pass judgment) -- the chances of it ever even being read and evaluated by anybody in a position to buy it, are extremely small -- and even if they do read it, the chances of their buying it -- if not zero -- you've got to place it at right next door to zero.
NMS
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Based on what
is being said in the thread, maybe you should try a different market?
Or the format? From CGI to cartoon or claymation?
There are adult cartoons on late at night, like Adult Swim which does Futurama, and South Park, etc.
Perhaps they would consider a feature length film?
And there have been other Cartoon, CGI, or Claymation films that have been picked up. So you may want to try the studios who did those.
Someone else will have to come up with the names as I can't right now.
All I'm saying is research.
Lots of research.
is being said in the thread, maybe you should try a different market?
Or the format? From CGI to cartoon or claymation?
There are adult cartoons on late at night, like Adult Swim which does Futurama, and South Park, etc.
Perhaps they would consider a feature length film?
And there have been other Cartoon, CGI, or Claymation films that have been picked up. So you may want to try the studios who did those.
Someone else will have to come up with the names as I can't right now.
All I'm saying is research.
Lots of research.
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Shrek 2 Talks about a thong.
You could maybe, perhaps, count the "seductive dancing bunny" in Wallace & Gromet Wererabbit.
As for cussing i don't think that would get through the net for aimed at kids animation.
Kev.
You could maybe, perhaps, count the "seductive dancing bunny" in Wallace & Gromet Wererabbit.
As for cussing i don't think that would get through the net for aimed at kids animation.
Kev.
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There is a market
for everything.
All you have to do is find the right market for what you have.
OR
Create what the market wants.
SO, you do your research and you find the type of people that are buying more mature CGI films (or just not little kid films) and then you see what they are making, what they expect, you alter the story to match that to some degree and hope that you get far enough to get some notes, and then you see where it leads.
for everything.
All you have to do is find the right market for what you have.
OR
Create what the market wants.
SO, you do your research and you find the type of people that are buying more mature CGI films (or just not little kid films) and then you see what they are making, what they expect, you alter the story to match that to some degree and hope that you get far enough to get some notes, and then you see where it leads.