Film Courage: So you have a mantra on your site which is Act Four Screenplays dot com. And the
mantra is craft equals business which means focus on your craft first and
foremost and the commercial success will follow. And I was wondering if we could
expand on that? Daniel Calvisi, Story Instructure: Yeah it's more important to write a great script than it is to
worry about what door you're gonna get it in you know to worry about the
commercial aspect the marketing aspect focus on writing a great piece of
material and that will open doors for you
so don't worry too much about writing for the market it is something that you
should consider I mean you don't want to write a three-hour drama set in 1903
about you know a grandma and her dog maybe unless it's the greatest thing you
could ever think of you probably do want to write something that's a little bit
more for today's commercial marketplace but your main job is to write a great
script that's gonna blow away that and reader I know you I think you'd also
said that you know if you try to play to the market by the time you get that
story out there and go through meetings that trend will have sailed yeah it's
very possible that that particular trend will be gone by the time you finally
finish this get it in professional quality you know highest quality to
really blow away that reader and really move up the ranks and an example that
would be there was a big fairy tale trend in Hollywood in film and TV a few
years ago and it's pretty much dead now because they bought so much material and
so now you probably should think twice about writing a new take on a fairy tale
it doesn't mean you can't it doesn't mean you couldn't write a great thing on
that but you should probably check with the industry to see if there hasn't
already been a script with that similar premise like let's say you have a new
take on Goldilocks and the three bears for example check with people that you
know in development to see that maybe there weren't three Goldilocks and the
three bears specs floating around five years ago and two of them were already
bought and are sitting in the you know coffers of the studios and
then if you don't know anyone in development let's suppose you you
haven't made those contacts yet is there a way could you look through the trades
I would say yeah I look through the trades you know Hollywood Reporter
Variety deadline.com so look through the trades there's certain certain websites
that might have a little bit more insight into the industry just try and
do whatever research you can and just like timing the market is is difficult
in whatever sort of market you're trying to enter into and finding that next big
trend I mean that's like the million dollar question in any industry yeah
don't worry about it don't worry about it you're writing a
writing sample most as a newbie you're mostly writing a writing sample that
shows your talent that shows your voice that shows your writing quality and that
will get you picked up by a manager or an agent and they're gonna have you
write more scripts that will then maybe those will be the pieces of business
those will be the things that sell but that first high-quality writing sample
that you write that's gonna get the industry interested in you it's more
about the writing than about the sale ability I love it so once someone gets
this agent or manager though I see a lot of people resting on their laurels and
thinking okay well now I have representation so I'm going now but it's
not it sounds like you're still doing exactly the same thing yeah you're still
writing writing writing you're only as good as your last script and you need to
have a portfolio of scripts not you don't have 10 scripts ready to go but a
few scripts ready to go in case you're in a meeting and you say hey I've got
this action script that I wrote you know two years ago or two weeks ago and they
really like the idea they really want to read it so you have to have that ready
to submit you know you want to have different scripts in your portfolio so
that they're ready to submit at any any moment and knowing that someone that's a
new writer will not be as high a priority with their agent and manager
how much should they be in contact with them and how proactive
should they be because I feel like if someone's not proactive enough they're
gonna drown in the sea of all the other calls and emails this person good I
don't know that's a tough question but I would say one lesson there is it's not
their job to get all of your submissions you should be networking as well even if
you have good representation you should be finding submissions and then you tell
them to send your script and they they will email it and so it'll kind of be on
their letterhead so it's an official submission so you do need to be
proactive and find places to submit your script and to make connections and shake
hands and get face time with potential buyers but then you have representation
to send them the script and they'll read it because you have legal representation
whether it's a lawyer agent or manager so really almost be in the mindset of I
don't have someone representing me in terms of finding me work but then once I
do find that sort of nugget where I can try to submit to that then I can put it
on their letterhead and I look more you know it's it's not even that you look
better having a rep it's that in a lot of cases big companies do not accept
unwrap material they don't accept unsolicited material so unless it's
coming from a lawyer a manager or an agent they won't read it and they say
they can't read it for liability reasons so it's really important that you get
yourself a rep
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