I learned from that experience that if I ever wrote anything else I would be the only person to write it – my name would only appear in front of my words, not someone else’s.Īnd I had something to add to any future query letters or resumes … “I wrote a screenplay that was produced and aired in the following markets: US, UK, France, Italy, Australia, South Africa, Japan, United Arab Emirates…” I got to spend weeks in the Caribbean, all expenses paid. I learned how important it was to really know and understand the market, any market. I proved to myself that I could write a marketable product. I couldn’t stomach what those brought in screenwriters had done to the original story – they’d created a new character who changed the story so much that I didn’t recognise it.īut it wasn’t all bad news. I had my screenwriter credit removed from the head credit roll. I was too busy to go to the set when they were shooting those scenes. ![]() (We had to be spot on with our timing to leave the networks enough advertising time in each broadcast.) I was swamped with my regular job (making up for all the time I’d lost while away on location), so my boss hired two screenwriters to write some fill-in scenes. Once the director and editors had done their thing with the raw footage, the movie came in several minutes short. Sounds like a dream beginning to a writing career, right? (And I admit that some of the work wasn’t that hard … like when we had to herd some baby chickens out of a public washroom at a marina because they were chirping so loudly that one of the sound guys was threatening to deep fry them.) (There’s nothing normal about anyone who works in production!) And it was a lot of hard work for all of us … in an incredibly beautiful location. I had to travel with and was responsible for a motley crew and a cast of actors not my normal travelling companions. I got to go play on a yacht in the Virgin Islands. (And one shoot in particular seemed to combust on an almost hourly basis.) I supervised all the company’s line producers … and their productions, like all productions, spontaneously combusted on a daily basis. He liked having me around to put out the many fires that ignited every day. “You mean like leave the office? Be away on-location? A foreign location?” He wasn’t happy. “I’ll only sell it to you if you let me produce it.” “Okay.” I left my meeting and walked to his office. “I love it! It’s like it was written for our markets! Get the writer into my office NOW!” ![]() I was in a production meeting when he called me. (I didn’t include a cover page, because I didn’t want him to know who had written it.) I handed the finished screenplay to my boss first thing on Monday morning. I wrote an action/adventure screenplay, set on a yacht in the Caribbean, over that weekend. If we make a movie that’s set on a yacht he’ll give us one of his yachts and a crew for free for as long as we need.”Ī yacht? In the Virgin Islands? It sounded like my dream holiday! And I hadn’t taken a holiday in a really, really long time … and I knew exactly what kind of screenplay my boss would want … action/adventure in an exotic location … and I’d been fighting the urge to quit production and write instead … “Let me look through them over the weekend and I’ll get back to you.” “I just signed a deal with a guy who owns a yacht charter company in the Virgin Islands. I’d only stacked the screenplays I hadn’t even read their cover pages yet. ![]() “Do we have a screenplay with a yacht in there?” One day my Executive Producer came storming into my office and pointed at those piles. Now that I’m on the other side as a writer I feel so bad for all those screenwriters who put their heart and soul into every single word – words that never got read. I could usually tell by page 8 whether or not it was something we’d be interested in producing. ![]() I said I’d be honest in this series of blog posts, so here’s the brutal truth – I only read the first 8-10 pages of 99% of those screenplays. Only when one of the piles looked like it was about to topple over would I grab a couple of screenplays and take them home to read. One of my jobs was to read those screenplays to see if there was a hidden gem that would appeal to the buyers in our broadcast markets. On the floor behind my desk was a multi-peaked mountain range of screenplays that hopeful screenwriters and agents had sent in to our production company. It was a crazy job, juggling so many moving pieces that I’d start every day feeling dizzy. I used to produce television shows and movies.
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