Film Courage: Dan, if we were to delve into the mind of most new writers whether they live in LA
or or they're living somewhere else, do you think that they view a lot of their
work as a sample or a series of samples or are they seeing it as the next big
thing that Wow once it's discovered this thing is
taking LA and New York and London by storm?
Daniel Calvisi, Author: Definitely London yeah not as many scripts get bought as used to be so I
think it's imperative that they think of it more as a writing sample of their
work yeah too many new writers are thinking I'm gonna sell this for six
figures and I can live off that for the next ten years you know and I'm gonna
sell a whole bunch more scripts in that in in the meantime but they don't buy as
many scripts as they used to and it's a really really competitive market
especially for newbies so I think it's best if you think of it more as a
writing sample but yeah I do see a lot of writers who are trying to write for
the market and they're trying to write something that they think Hollywood will
buy because Hollywood makes a lot of those types of movies but unfortunately
they're borrowing formulas and cliches from those movies and that's not the
right thing to do on the page on the page you still need to really impress
that reader and have something unique bring something to the table
let's say I'm a new writer and I'm very precious about something and I've
written and it's very close to my heart it's very emotional
I've been able to get a chance to present it and I've been told this is a
great sample and now I'm hurt I'm angry my hopes are dashed okay where do I go
from here well if you've been told you mean it you've been told it's a great
sample but it's rejected or your manager says I'm gonna send this out as a great
sample to get you jobs let's suppose they sent it out to get me jobs and then
we've been told this is a great sample but this isn't gonna work and what else
do you have and let's let's start getting more samples you're not ready
yet you're right you your your this is not
the end all right here that you thought it was well I mean first cross that
bridge when you get to it you know it only takes one great script to get your
foot in the door and that's gonna happen you're gonna get rejected way more often
than they're gonna say this is a great script and I want to work with you so
you got to have a thick skin you have to get used to that rejection and the name
of the game is to find that one champion in the business for that particular
script that you have and four out of five people are gonna pass on it nine
out of ten studios that you send it to are gonna pass on it so it's your job to
find that one champion executive or producer or agent that is willing to go
all the way with it that is willing to push push past that rejection over and
over until the point where it does get option or sold or made as a cheap movie
that's funded on Kickstarter by a really talented director okay so then let's
suppose we keep sending it out and my take is they just don't get it they
don't understand where I'm coming from they don't believe in this material
Hollywood just wants to make these things that no one really cares about
there's no heart and soul am I too sensitive for the industry do I just
really need to be honest with myself about the work I'm creating I think you
should take some time away put it in a drawer metaphorically take some time
away from it do some thinking and it's your job to keep writing so if you only
want to write this one script then yeah you are in the wrong place you're in the
wrong business so you have to keep writing and writing and producing
material hopefully you have at least one other idea that you want to write that
hopefully is a little bit more commercial but you just have to keep
writing and you have to keep pushing past rejection and yeah it is tough and
it's dog-eat-dog so if you don't have the thick skin for it then maybe it's
not the business for you well what if I know that I'm
sensitive but I still want to be in the industry I mean it's it's a realization
that you know we find out things about ourselves we don't necessarily want to
be a certain way but what if we say okay so I can't submit my own work because
I'm so precious about it and it makes me so infuriated to know that I can't get
it made but what else can I do in the industry where it's not as personal well
I think you just should produce it yourself I think you should produce your
work like for example you can take your feature and you could cut it up into
10-minute webisodes for example and put it on YouTube put it on Vimeo and
produce something put something out into the world rather than just keep getting
rejected and if you feel like you're too sensitive to keep getting rejected well
at least at the end of the day you've produced this and you have something you
know something of quality that you're proud of and it could potentially get
either people to reconsider the script or reconsider you as someone who could
who could potentially write an assignment and what about other jobs
where there might be more of a steady paycheck coming in well there's tons of
jobs in the industry if you want to go into production you know start as a PA
they're jobs and development offices there's jobs I see jobs listed all the
time on LinkedIn there's a lot of jobs for social media coordinators at various
companies I see Netflix and Amazon and even like commercial production
companies and a lot of companies involved with entertainment so I mean I
don't know if I could say a specific job for a sensitive writer what they would
do but I would say look on LinkedIn there's actually a lot of jobs in the
entertainment industry
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