Quote:
I have been pondering about writing a movie script for my film for a while now. I have the premise to the story. It's going to be campy, & in the vein of Darkman/Ichi the killer/Kill Bill/machete. The plot is simple & not very original in general, but there are things in my film that I never seen before & very unique. Something that I have personal experience with including my disability has given me ideas that most couldn't relate to. Then I got creative, & let my dark side come out. I would like to know who I should contact, or any idea to get my idea out to production companies & studio's.. I would like to get my foot in the door & see who bites on my idea. My film will be bloody & gory, with as little CGI as possible.. Looking for a lead will be unique since many don't have what it takes 'literally.'
First, don't try to go to Hollywood (figuratively or literally) with an "idea." You don't really own an idea, just its expression. There are writers who do pitch meetings on a regular basis. They're basically "pitching" a movie idea, looking for someone to pay them to write it up. That approach is very sketchy. When you show up, without an actual story (just an outline of where you'd go with it), you don't have anything tangible. It robs you of value, gives the other party the feeling that his or her input has more value than it may be ultimately worth, and opens the door to outright theft. If you don't have an actual script, just an idea, you are on the shakiest ground for protecting whatever genius has seized you. Yes, there are people in Hollywood who can call someone up and, as Dan Aykroyd did, hum the first bars to Dragnet, but to have that much clout, you have to have connections and a track record. As often as not, if they like your idea, they also have friends who are writers, people to whom they either owe a favor or trust more than they do you. Until you've written a script they can read as a work complete, nobody has any reason to trust your instincts. The trick is to write a script that reads like a movie and which sells itself.
So, start by learning how to write. There's both nature and nurture in the writing process. You can't "teach" someone to write but nobody becomes a writer in isolation. Writing is storytelling. Like any work of art, there are expectations with regards to format, conventions, et cetera that you need to be aware of if you want your script to at least look like a script. That's the first hurdle since lots of people get the same dream of hitting Hollywood with their ideas and scripts but without putting in the basic investment of learning the medium. Fortunately, you are no more than 50 miles from a bunch of screenwriting primers, sitting idle on a shelf at Borders, Barnes and Noble, Books a Million or even your public library. Devour them all.
The great irony of screenwriting primers is that most of the people who write them are screenwriting failures. Hollywood is full of sharks, including pretenders. Of course, some people are better teachers than writers. There's nothing wrong with that. Either way, you're fine. What goes into the kind of screenwriting primer you see on a bookstore shelf is nuts-and-bolts advice, stuff that's easier to tell than show. The script gurus don't always agree among themselves about the so-called "rules" of Hollywood, but knowing what the issues are, as well as the different answers that have been proposed, makes you more sophisticated.
Right now, you need to develop your own critical judgment of what will work. You may think you know about movies because you've seen a few. Most of us have been inundated with film - much more so than any previous generation - but there's a difference between passive enjoyment of the craft and knowing how to contribute to it. It's the difference between eating at a fine restaurant and working in the kitchen. You're not a chef until you have to turn inventory into mouth watering.
Writers are among the most naked of artists. Most professionals have specialized toys. Directors have their cameras. Musicians have their interests. Writers have word processors. Anybody can download a copy of Final Draft, the most popular software used for writing scripts. The only distinction between a writer and a non-writer is work product. As the adage runs, "Writers write." Lots of people have better contacts, better schooling and more personal charm - but they don't write. Lots of people who might have become great writers won't - precisely because they never did.
A writer makes more decisions than a brain surgeon. Every aspect of the story has to be considered, from beginning to end, and all the way down to the smallest beat of action and the shortest line. It may be a labor of love but it's also a daunting task, which most people wimp away from at the drop of a hat.
Inhale book after book about screenwriting. As I mentioned before, a lot of the people who write these books have anemic credits of their own, if any. Syd Field wrote Screenplay, the most successful screenwriting primer in history. Look up his credits at IMDB. Do the same for script nazi, Robert McKee. David Trottier has a book called The Screenwriter's Bible, which is used all over the world as a primer on the craft, even if its observations are pretty basic and Trottier's credits unimpressive. Everybody has something to say. Don't be too proud or too lazy to learn what they know, or what they think they know. When I started writing, I created my own little shrine full of these books, not because they were going to teach me Hollywood's secrets but because I didn't have any better access. I knew I'd feel like a nobody and an ignoramus, so I read as many books and articles as I could. Within time, I'd find myself informed enough to lose that beginner's fear.
Learn the structure of film. Learn how to discuss acts, plot points, inciting incidents, turning points, beats of action, the different kinds of dialog, where to put your margins, what to call your characters, how much setting to give you reader, when and where to use voiceover, whether or not to direct your actors and how to get away with directing the director without getting caught. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Learn everything you can and then use it as you develop your idea into a script. Write that script. Register that script (The information is in the books you'll find; it's also on the WGA's website). Copyright your work (not hard but basic). Have something you've created, refined and finalized, something you've shown to trusted friends and advisors, something ready for submission.
Then learn how to pitch your work. Unless you're good friends with Steven Spielberg, you'll need to send a query to somebody. Query letters are short and to the point. Agents and producers read stacks of them on a daily basis. You're purpose is to get them to read your script. Ultimately, it's to get representation or a sale, but you first have to get somebody to read the thing. Hollywood readers are at the bottom of the pecking order. They get paid either by the script or for maintaining a certain quota. They're job is to say "No" to basically everything but it's also to find that needle in the haystack. They're going to submit a report to their boss, justifying the decision to take the next step or "pass." They need something. Your script could be that one, but it's got to get their attention. The reader has to like your script. But before he or she will even see it, the boss has to decide to task that reader with reading it.
This is where query letters make all the difference.
When you hit your bookstores and library, you'll find whole books (albeit short ones) on how to write a decent query letter. Here, time is money. You have to be both banker and pirate. You have to make sure your pitch doesn't get pitched (in the trash) because the guy who wrote it looks like a nut. You need to write a short pitch on a business-style letter, identifying who you are (so they can contact you) and whom you're contacting (so it gets to the right person). Without wasting any time, you have to launch into a short introduction to your script.
There's a pattern for doing this, one you'll want to pick up. What you actually say will depend on that pirate part of you, the brave buccaneer who set out for adventure. Here, you're not going to be a banker. You're going to be a storyteller. But you're going to be damned quick about it. You have to identify, as quickly as you can, the heart of your story. As briefly as you can, you have to share that wonderful "idea" that will sell your story in a sentence or two. There's an art to this. Lots of stories can be introduced different ways. You have to find the one that gets their attention.
I haven't done this in a while, so forgive me if I'm as rusty as a nail. I was going to write more, but got bogged down in my day life. Along the way, I wrote some queries that got requests. Unfortunately, some of these queries were stories I'd only dreamed up, and the pressure to write them quickly - while surviving life - often put me behind the eight ball. Moral: Write it first.
How would you sell Avatar, the most commercially successful movie in history? In some respects, James Cameron didn't have to, since he was both writer and director, and he had a track record - such as being the writer/director of the previous number-one movie in history: Titanic. Yet, even he had to sell the concept to somebody else. In fact, all of Hollywood is a chain of people selling their dream to somebody with the power to say "yes" or "no." Writers sell to producers, who have to bring in the money while attaching directors and bankable stars. Any movie, even a piece of crap, is a successful reaching of that critical mass, where all the elements were assembled together to at least get the thing off the ground.
And you're the one who gets it all started. You're the equivalent of a Wall Street lawyer writing a prospectus, attracting investors into something that will attract millions of dollars of seed money into a project that may yield tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in gross receipts.
So, how would you get a reader to read Avatar? You can't tell 'em you wrote Titanic. You can't talk about the 3D effects you're ready to shoot. You're just the writer. You have to convince somebody to task some nobody to read your script in the off chance that it might actually be something. So, would do you say?
One approach is to focus on the main character. Jake Sully is the disabled ex-marine, recruited by a mining corporation, to take his brother's place on a science team that wants to study the Navi' people of Pandora, a hostile world full of precious resources, by linking their minds to the nine-foot-tall genetically-combined "avatars" of the Nav'i. Through a series of misadventures, Jack is taken in by the Nav'i and learns their ways, only to discover that his efforts to broker peace between the Nav'i and "the sky people" are for naught: the corporation is simply going to take the resources, whether the Nav'i like it or not - even if it destroys their entire civilization. Jake has to decide which side he's on.
As you can imagine, boiling this down to a single idea is ridiculously difficult, if not impossible. Avatar wasn't sold on the strength of its core concept. It was sold as a 3D thrill ride from James Cameron, the guy who gave us Terminator and Titanic.
Here are some easier sells:
A quiet beachside community is terrorized by a Great White Shark (Jaws).
A roman general is forced to fight for his life as a gladiator (Gladiator).
A night watchman discovers something unsettling about the museum of natural history: At night, the museum comes to life. (Night at the Museum)
Kidnappers grab an American high-school student in Paris only to discover her father is a covert assassin. (Taken)
