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Compilation © Robin Kelly 2001 - 2003
Edited and compiled by Robin Kelly exclusively for Writing for Performance
SHOOTING PEOPLE - UK SCREENWRITERS NETWORK
Supported by The Script Factory
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From: Litmus Productions
Subject: Re: Development Finance
"Producers are actually just playing the numbers as they have no financial investment in a spec script. Development finance is the Holy Grail of the British film industry, my friend. Various producerial warriors who've been out on the trail for many decades claim to have glimpsed it, touched it even, in their long years of wandering. Us newbies, even those with credits under our belts, are made cynical long before our time by the mere mention of its existence and proliferation, especially when it comes from the mouths/pens/keyboards of writers, disingenuous or truly innocent."
There are producers who will pay for development if they have a deal with a financier. That's what their deals are meant to do. Hopes and vague promises are common currency, sure, but if the producer's not paying you and he's got a deal, make the judgement call as to your own worth, or at least level up the playing field and take it to a producer who CAN'T pay you, so you're at least in the same boat.
First-timers need a spec script. First rule, end of story. Otherwise how can anyone see whether you can write or not? We did c.15 drafts of ours before a financier came on board.
When they're on board, negotiate hard, though. But don't confuse an independent, living on whatever that woman who kept asking about us believes we live on, with a financier, or with an independent who has on-tap access to a financier's coffers.
"How much work should a writer do on the spec script to take on board a producer's notes before some development money is paid?"
Depends on what you think of the notes, what you think of the producer, what else you've got going on, etc. Does it get the script in a better selling shape?
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From: A H
Subject: Re: Development finance
You ask "how much work should a writer do on the spec script to take on board a producer's notes before some development money is paid?" - There is no categorical answer as a 'proper' producer will pay you and a 'wannabe' will/can not. How much work one should do on a spec script though, depends on just how much you want to make a living out of writing. There are people out there who commission treatments and then the script but before they do that they need proof that the writer can come up with the goods. And that's not just being able to write a good yarn but also to take aboard notes, understand character, structure etc etc.
Saying that, there are more and more people in the industry who expect a lot for little or indeed nothing - an ethos that's even creeping into television but like any market it's all based on supply and demand. It's Catch 22, whilst you have writers willing to do it, you will have people who will take advantage.
If you've written a 'spec' and found a producer who wants to take it on but unable to pay, you need to consider two things. Can this person REALLY get it made and/or can they help to improve my script. If the answer to either question is yes, then go for it but don't sign away the rights for too long an option period. The problem is, there are too many wannabe producers (and indeed real ones) who know sod all about what makes a good script and even less about how to make it into a good script.
Finally, your ambition of getting writers to start work at 9am is a bit of an oxymoron - the whole point of getting into a position where you can make a living out of writing is so that you don't have to do ANYTHING at 9am.
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From: Ian, Media Magic Productions
Subject: Re: Paying for scripts
Reading much of the postings on this site regarding payment for scripts, I get the impression that many writers are of the opinion that they should be paid a fee or part of as soon as a producer shows interest in their concept or treatment. I ask the question, Why?
You have no track record, you have no evidence that you could ever write a full script let alone a completed and usable script. If you submit a detailed synopsis that is on the surface promising, how often during the creation of the full script do you change/add extra parts, i.e.; characters or locations that were not in the original synopsis. Your 10 min short, low budget idea ends up a full length feature requiring a huge budget of millions of UKP. How are you going to react to the request from the producers for a 2nd, 3rd, 4th - 10th rewrite. Whatever you think, your script is a big gamble for a producer, he wants to edge his bets, and you are untried, untested and unknown.
I would suspect that a producer may be willing to make some form of payment once the script is written in full, but only under certain contractual conditions, e.g.; if you fail to complete the rewriting to the satisfaction of the producers and on time, they reserve the rite to bring in other writers to finish the job and you are liable for their fees and their share of any royalties from the production.
The above is just an opinion, I am positive someone will disagree with my comments but the question is still the same. Why should anyone pay you anything before you come up with the goods?
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From: Dan
Subject: Development money follow up
First, thanks to everyone who replied to my posting about development money. Quite a few people have emailed me to ask what answers I received so here's a quick summary:
Contact your local arts board
Try the BFI info line
Try the film council (http://www.filmcouncil.org.uk)
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From: Sheila Hayman
Subject: point of information etc
There are not one but two Churchill biopix in the works - at least one (with Albert Finney) from an American company, HBO, and Scott Free (Ridley and Tony). Dan Dare - the movie - is also on its way, in a focus-grouped-to death, and guess what, American version - but for anybody interested I have a much better story - how Dan Dare was created, and why (detailed treatment available...)
I like the premise about the bike built from washing machine parts, depending where it goes - as it were.
Which is to say, it's all about execution. They just write them better over there, and more often, and for longer. They write twenty and thirty drafts. For some reason, in all this money that's been thrown at film in this country, and with all the lip service paid to development, NOBODY actually pays for drafting and redrafting until the script is ready. So producers rush into production so they'll get their pittance, and the films aren't good enough - funny, or tight, or plausible, or original, or inventive, enough. It's as simple as that, and it has been for years.
In my humble opinion.
What can we do? Maybe remember what Byron said about the power of writing
"But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."
- and try really hard to write scripts that are worthy of our ideals and talents, whether to mend hearts, unite nations or just make 'em sick with laughter.
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From: Mark Grant
Subject: Re: Point of information, etc
"For some reason, in all this money that's been thrown at film in this country, and with all the lip service paid to development, NOBODY actually pays for drafting and redrafting until the script is ready. So producers rush into production so they'll get their pittance, and the films aren't good enough - funny, or tight, or plausible, or original, or inventive enough."
While I entirely agree about the problem -- as do most producers I've spoken to lately -- I think it's more a time issue than funding (other than time costing money, of course). Over here we don't have the same production-line mentality as a Hollywood studio, so when an independent production company finds a script they like they don't want to spend a year developing it because that's a year when they probably won't make any movies; for a big studio a year doesn't matter, because they'll already have plenty of other movies lined up to shoot in that period and fit yours in when it's ready.
Unfortunately, of course, that means we end up with too many movies that are big piles of poop and few people are interested in funding more. And while much of the blame has to be put on the producers who do shoot movies long before they're ready, I think we have to accept part of the blame as screenwriters, because far too many are so eager to get their scripts out there that they don't do enough development work either; a couple of times lately I've read scripts by people I know and said 'yeah, it's got something, but I really think it would work better if you did this, this and this', and they've just ignored the feedback because it's not how they see the story... even when producers have been telling them similar things and it would be a much better movie as a result. Too many writers seem to be concerned more about telling a story their way than writing a good movie, probably because we have so few full-time screenwriters here who've learnt what works and what doesn't.
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From: Mikael Colville-Andersen
Subject: tips and tricks
"How to capture the particular nuances of everyday speech patterns and slang in a realistic way?"
I find the best tool in writing dialogue is also the simplest. Write the lines and then play them. In the bathtub, at your desk, wherever. Play all the roles, try the lines in different ways. Act them out. You'll find the natural flow that often escapes the written word.
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From: Tom Dowler
Subject: re: tips and tricks
I have always been of the opinion that you shouldn't be afraid to make your characters crap. ie, they stutter, hesitate, say "y'know", and generally don't come out with the perfect one-liners that most Hollywood characters do. think about your own speech patterns. how often do you say things perfectly? The most obvious example of really good use of realistic speech patterns in a film is "Boogie Nights" - esp the scene when the fat ginger kid (sorry, forgotten both actor and character's names) tries it on with Mark Wahlberg. Watch that scene again and listen to the actual words used.
Food for thought....
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From: Hugo Heppell
Subject: crap dialogue
Following up on Tom Dowler's posting... yes, Phil Hoffman's dialogue may have been 'natural' in its use of stammers and stutters, etc., but that's the way it works in performance. It's another thing altogether to make that zing on the page. It's like swearing...
Don't do it if you can get the character and the moment across without it. If you really, really have to, write it out and then trim the hesitations, expletives, whatever, to at least a third. Concentrate on getting the rhythm of the speech right. Let the actor add the rest.
There's nothing more, you know, like, utterly fugging boring than having to read, like, endless fugging dialogue that doesn't go anywhere. Know what I mean?
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From: Steve Keyworth
Subject: Re: crap dialogue
Following on the 'natural' dialogue debate Hugo Heppell seemed to be suggesting that stammers and swearing etc wouldn't work on the page and would best be added by actors in performance. I agree that too much fugging and erming can produce the worst read, but surely it's equally bad to let the actors paraphrase and add swearing or stammering at whim. I don't consider myself a precious writer (and some of my best friends are actors!) but if written well the stuttering and swearing will make the rhythm of the speech, and the rhythm of the speech is all - look at people as diverse as Mamet, Richard Curtis, Tarantino, Bleasdale. A writer should craft their dialogue and leave nothing to chance unless they are working with the director on rehearsals. Particularly in comedy, letting the actor add around the written dialogue can be disastrous. But then it depends on which actor, which director, which writer? I'm certainly not saying scripts are set in stone but if the actor is finishing the job then it's a job half done.
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From: Adrian Rawsthorne
Subject: Screenwriting Books
Personally I've never found a good book on dialogue writing, it's an element curiously weak in all the screen writing courses I've done. Do you have any techniques you use?
I find dialogue and character are to a certain extent the same thing. Its mainly an intuitive process which often takes until I've written maybe two thirds of a piece before I'm sure of the voice of the character
An established word set for a character can help. Focusing on perhaps an overused phrase. "To be honest", "Do you know what I mean", "Absolutely". With restricted words or phrases only used by one character "I feel, you know, more fluffy" "Ignorant cretin". All of this carries a charge which is underpinned by character.
Regional variations can often paint some extra colour into dialogue. Liverpudlians have a tendency to over use "Like" People from the East Midlands "Mash tea" those from the North West "Brew Up".
Regarding characters - Recently I found this. It's a terrific article on creating characters
Also Creating Unforgettable Characters by Linda Seger
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From: Dash
Subject: re dialogue
"I find dialogue and character are to a certain extent the same thing. Its mainly an intuitive process which often takes until I've written maybe two thirds of a piece before I'm sure of the voice of the character"
I understand how you might not REALLY feel the character for a while but that does mean that you have a hell of a lot to do when rewriting. Maybe because I have an acting background I feel that I can't start work until I know everything about the main characters history before I start. Generally I write several pages on what they look like, where they live, what sort of school they went to what kind of music they listen too. I often write it as a letter to a friend describing someone I have just met. of course what the character does and how they react over the course of the story may surprise me. Even names are important as a producer and director when I read a script that just says "Woman" or a name that seams to have had little thought behind it I find it tells me far less that "Edna Gruntfuttock" I immediately guess she is older, conservative, crotchety etc.
i.e. from "In the Snoop"
NIGEL THUMP: Is a NEW MAN he doesn't want to be, he really wants to be a Lad but as the youngest child with 5 older sisters and a father that popped his clogs before he was born he was never in with a sporting chance. He genuinely likes Special K for breakfast and extra starch on his Y fronts and got dumped by his last girlfriend because he was sobbing so loudly during Billy Elliot
I know that often writers want to leave room for actor's interpretations but if the writer knows what they want then put it on the page.
For what it's worth that's my 14p's worth
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From: Ben Blaine
Subject: Stammering in ink.
"One of my central characters has a stutter. Have any of you scripted a character with a speech defect? I'm trying to decide how best to do this - do I explain in the descriptive passage immediately preceding the dialogue that she has a stutter and indicate for example when the stutter is better or worse. Or, do I try to simulate the pattern of a stutter within the dialogue itself?"
Speaking from experience of reading spec scripts filled with phonetic vernacular dialogue I'd say just tell the reader that the character stutters and how badly they are doing so in each instance and let an actor do the work.
I've never actually read scripts with stutters in but I've read plenty where instead of just telling me that John is a cockney I've had to wade through pages of "Alwight daarling?" "Geroff you slag!". Not only is this irritating to read but, more importantly, it's also quite offensive - especially if the writer gets it wrong.
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From: Charlie Harris, www.screen-lab.co.uk
Subject: first ten pages
"Does everyone here have the same opinion, that in the first ten pages of the screenplay something has to happen to really grab the audience? Does it have to be some action or conflict, or can it be something more subtle?"
10 pages? You'll be lucky. Many producers will make their initial judgement on the first quarter page!!
And I'm sorry to tell you, they're right. Most scripts I've read either grab you in the first dozen lines, or never grab you at all. But there's action and there's action. It certainly doesn't have to be a car chase!
You have to get us involved at an emotional level, or at the very least concerned or intrigued. Obviously this is far too early to plunge us into the main plot, but you don't need to. It can be as simple as a semi-naked woman putting on lipstick before watching a young man try to steal her mother's car (Bonnie and Clyde), a couple snatching a brief moment of love in a dingy hotel room (Psycho), a lonely man making a joke about life (Annie Hall)...
Check out your own cache of favourite movie scripts and see for yourself.
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From: Martin Day
Subject: First Ten Pages
If there's no conflict on any level in the first ten pages then what *is* happening? I'm not talking about explosions or fisticuffs - it can be entirely emotional or character-led - but surely *something* must happen, if not within every scene, then at least every major sequence, to keep the audience's interest?
I could be wrong, but I wonder sometimes if concerns like this don't actually come down to too narrow a definition of conflict.
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From: Mark Grant
Subject: Re: first ten pages
"Does everyone here have the same opinion, that in the first ten pages of the screenplay something has to happen to really grab the audience?"
Absolutely. I'd say that if you don't have *something* to grab the audience in the first ten minutes, then you probably started the story way too early. The first ten pages and the last ten are the most important by far.
"Does it have to be some action or conflict, or can it be something more subtle?"
Certainly you don't need to blow things up in the first ten minutes, but you do need to get the story going quickly and have some kind of hook to pull the audience into it, be that action, characterisation, some other kind of conflict, or an original setting.
For example, I watched 'Alien' again recently for the first time in years, and only then realised that nothing happens for the first 45 minutes; but the movie starts right at the beginning of the story with the crew being woken up unexpectedly, there's tension because we're all expecting the alien to appear any moment and we're learning a lot about the characters, the conflicts between them, and the setting.
So that works, but if the movie had been called 'space tug', started with ten minutes of scenes of the crew loading the cargo and going to sleep, and then after waking the characters had sat around being nice to each other for half an hour before the alien was introduced then most of the audience would have walked out.
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From: Cally
Subject: screenwriting advice.
Regarding your advice to others from the Elliot Grove screenwriting course you attended where you say:
"I learned:
1. First three pages must be gripping
2. First ten pages must be better and
3. The whole script must have producers slavering at the mouth to buy
it ( as we say up here) and also -
4. If you ever get invited to a meeting to talk money - wear expensive shoes.
But most importantly, don't send your script to anyone TILL IT'S GOOD ENOUGH!"
As a script reader points 1 and 2 really annoy me. Too many people take this too literally and I find that I USUALLY read scripts which are good/show promise for the first 15 pages and then they are diabolical after that - presumably because people are following the advice above (I've also heard many people told that readers only read the first fifteen pages!) I would just like to point out that a script reader CAN tell within the first 10 pages whether a script has some potential or not, and then they read on. If, as too often happens, it turns to crap after this point, as a script reader
you cannot help feeling cheated, and that the writer just hasn't bothered to write the whole script. Of course if you follow the final advice "make it as good.." then you stand more of a chance. I would just caution writers to COMPLETE their script before they send it - and to spend a bit more time thinking about subplots, themes, character development, structure and originality than wasting time listening or thinking about making "producers slather" The first person to read your work will be a reader. They will be looking for reasons to say "no" so make it too good for them to resist. And anyone who pays money to take the advice "wear an expensive pair of shoes" might as well just throw their money down the drain! I can give you considerably better and more practical advice than that for considerably less (and I'm sure there are plenty of other shooters out there equally equipped). Don't look for tricks and tips - just write a decent script - structure before you write it and make sure it is COMPLETED before you send it in. If it dips after the first 15 pages you will only make a reader angry and they'll remember your name for the next time! If I have to spend 2 hours reading a script I don't want to feel I'm having the piss taken out of my after page 15.
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From: Lauren Mackenzie
Subject: Gripping
I'm responding to remarks about the first 10-15 pages needing to be gripping and feel a coda could be added. This advice is often taken too literally by new writers. Speaking as an editor and writer, the key to 'gripping' is a damn good dramatic question. "Will unhappy, alcoholic, overweight, Bridget find love?" "How did Lester die?
"Whatever happened to Baby Jane?" to name a few. It's all down to just wanting to know what happens next. Who needs cars and bombs?
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From: Robin Kelly, http://www.writing.org.uk
Subject: Re: Screenwriting advice
Screenwriter's Utopia: "How many pages do you give a writer before you put the script down?"
Morris Ruskin, bigshot producer: "Three. I hate to admit this but a good writer is going to capture your interest right away. Nevertheless, if it is anything better than horrendous I will usually read the first ten pages. If it's just average and not very original, I will read the first act or up to about page thirty. Then I will jump to the last ten pages. From there, one can usually have a semi intelligent conversation with the author without getting busted. Your readers probably hate me by now. If any screenplays are recommended by a member of my staff, I will read those scripts in their entirety."
In my opinion Elliot's advice is sound and the only problem is *how* to capture the interest which there can be a useful discussion about. I have gone down the "cars and bombs" route before, literally, but now agree with Lauren that a "damn good dramatic question" is better.
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