ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years, 3 months ago - Marlom Tander

Bouncing stuff off people can be good.

IMO your starter should be someone who :-

a) Has a good rep at the level and in the market you'll aim at. Want to pitch to Hollywood? Use a top Hollywood person. Aiming at the BBC/C4 - use a Brit with that experience.

b) They offer advice, not instructions. View their comments as interesting and where they chime with what you already sort of felt, that's worth acting on. But where you think they didn't get it, you don't have to change, but you might need to signpost more strongly, esp purely visual aspects like sight gags.

c) Make sure they have a brief.

Example - you have a London Noir. It's very dark. It will have strengths and weaknesses. But if you get two very good readers and tell one "I see this as a Hollywood production with stars" and another "I see this as a low budget UK Feature" while anything they both feel is weak probably is (and if you wondered about it yourself, def is) a lot of their other comments may be very different because of the context in which you asked for their help.

Remember no one wants to make YOUR film. They want to make THEIR MOVIE, and your script is simply the starting point.

The good reader, knowing that you see it as London Noir Low Budget UK, helps you steer your script closer to what someone looking for a London Noir Low Budget UK script would be looking for. But even once you hook a producer it's going to be "got a great actress. Can we make the Bill Patterson guy an attractive 30 year old woman, and she has to have a child and work/life balance issues". :-)

9 years, 3 months ago - Steve Deery

Cheers for the input - helps focus.

9 years, 3 months ago - Peter Spencer

Given that Shooting People on an almost daily basis has adverts from people offering script evaluation services I am very surprised you posted this question. Just flick back through a few bulletins and find the contact details of people who posted on here recently