Basically, Casio have just released a $900 35mm SLR, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-F1, which will shoot short bursts of JPEG images at 60fps… and MPEG4 HD at 1200fps… no, I didn’t mistype that, they really do have an off the shelf camera that will shoot a genuine ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED FRAMES PER SECOND! Yikes!

Now, in terms of resolution the HD MPEG4 is problematic… it is a web format, however we’d expect the quality of the lens is likely to be vastly superior to all of the existing HD MPEG4 camcorders which only offer a standard 30fps.

What’s important is this is a camera which will do genuine slo-mo… it’s a camera fast enough to give this level of slo-mo to a skateboarder at just 300fps.

OK… sure he look like George Lucas in shorts (maybe not a subject to dwell on)… and it’s also hard to tell how much of the pixelation is caused by the capture codec and how much is by having to recompress for Youtube.

Anyway, it’s an interesting development and in all the rush to play with 600fps people have overlooked the much more interesting genuine 60fps at JPEG resolution… for a serious indie film maker that’s of genuine interest.

We’re going to see if we can get hold of one to review… to see if the movie option is a viable tool or merely a glimpse of exciting things to come. Personally, I can’t wait to see this kind of technology developed into professional SLRs, with all the high quality, cheap prime lens options that come with that.

However, across the scene there is some truth in the belief that micro-budget films have bad scripts… simply because far too many micro-budget film makers see self production as a method to green-light scripts that aren’t good enough to survive in the market.

However, there doesn’t have to be a link between micro-budget and bad scripts… at the end of the day it’s our decision… we can either stroke our own egos and make bad films or we can start taking both ourselves and micro-budget seriously and sharpen our scripts.

At the moment the biggest barrier to the creation of major, break-out, commercially successful micro-budget movies isn’t the lack of resources or the difficulties of attracting name talent… it’s really simple: the same three script mistakes get made over and over again.

So, let’s look at what they are and ways to overcome them.

The number one offender is:

The film’s central idea isn’t good enough

So, how do you know if you’ve got a weak idea for a film? Actually, this is pretty simple to identify, just ask yourself the following questions… Can you sell your movie from the info on a DVD cover? Or in other words, one visual image that sums up the movie, a ten word tagline and one hundred words of text to sell the story?

You’d be amazed at how many people don’t even look at this issue until their film is made… you’d also be shocked at how weak most people’s sale’s pitches are. If you can’t persuade me to rent this movie based on your cover image and one hundred words, then your film concept isn’t strong enough. I’ll go further, your cover image has to be strong enough to persuade me to read the one hundred words.

The truth is, you can’t do too much work on this… and although I hate this fact, it is still true:

A bad film with a bad script but a strong concept will ALWAYS do more business than a well made film which has a weak central concept.

I’ve said this before but here we go again… make the poster and write the DVD cover BEFORE you write the script. Then test out the concept on friends you trust to be honest with you. It’s a simple question, would you rent this movie at Blockbuster?

If the answer is no, then go back to the drawing board… ask yourself time and time again: what can I change here that will make this film more interesting? In fact, screw that, the real question is … how can I make this film so fascinating that people will have fist fights in Blockbuster to rent the last copy?

As micro-budget film makers the one thing we can’t afford is to be mediocre… make your concept bigger, more outrageous, weirder, sexier, more controversial than anything else on the shelves… and if it’s not, don’t even write the script… you are wasting yours and everyone else’s time if you do.

The second biggest script problem is:

Zero emotional intelligence

or in other words… dude, your characters suck ass!

OK, again this is usually a simple problem to both spot and fix.

Here’s the test: Remove the character names from above your dialogue… can you still tell who should be delivering the line without the names above the dialogue? It is that simple to spot… if you can’t your characters suck ass… not a little, they genuinely are hyper-hyper-hyper-lame and you CAN NOT afford to make this script into a film.

The fix for this is easy — STOP being a lazy bastard.

Screenwriters all too often attempt to pull characters out of their minds (I’m being polite here! LOL) without ANY research at all… so the protagonist is a FIREMAN but talks like a high school teacher (and ironically the screenwriter just happens to teach high school).

Stop trying to write characters based solely on your life experience… especially if you’re under thirty years old… especially if your life experience has largely been spent watching TV… especially if you’re a bloke (sorry, we start off with less emotional intelligence to start off with… Hey, but at least we can throw stuff in a straight line… it’s a swings and roundabouts thing).

Some of the most ridiculous scripts I’ve read have been set in the projects, but written by white, middle-class university graduates, whose hardest life challenge so far has been deciding whether to ask Mary-Lou or Kirsty-Lee to the senior prom! It’s actually not good enough to use other people’s films as research for either character behavior or dialogue. If you want to write about gangsters then at the very least read some “true crime” books, talk to some cops, watch some documentaries, read some newspapers… research breathes life and authenticity into characters.

and finally… mistake number three:

It’s a story, but it ain’t a film

Films are pretty straight forward in terms of story… characters are presented with problems which cause them to make difficult decisions and eventually take action to resolve a major problem or problems.

On every single page there HAS to be action (stuff has to happen)… on every single page there HAS to be conflict (which doesn’t mean people shouting at each other)… on every single page characters are either presented with a problem or are attempting to solve one.

If your script has gone five pages without any action, a problem for a character to solve or any conflict, then I’m not sure what you’re writing… but it probably isn’t a film.

Now, I know there are some readers out there who completely disagree with what I’ve just written… and to them I say “prove me wrong”… go out there and make a film with concept that can’t be pitched in a hundred words, where all the characters talk the same and there is no real conflict or drama…

(Oh, Kevin Smith need not apply… you’ve already proved your point dude! LOL. Respect to you and the geniuses who managed to sell Clerks)

… but to everyone else, don’t bitch to me… make the damn film and make your point that way.

A rant from me about the stupidity of the “Hollywood” system for finding new writing talent.

A piece from the Unknown Screenwriter about his early days as a micro-budget film maker.

Another great piece from Cole about the DIY Mindset

and finally, a free gift from Digital Heaven… a hard drive space calculator

Now it’s up to you whether you read them all at once or pace yourself… but either way, have fun… now, where is that inflatable beach ball and my copy of Delueze’s Cinema 2

Clive

Thanks to Clive for asking me to come on board the 1000DollarFilm.com crew. Not many people know that I actually come from a micro-budget film background. Did I say micro-budget?

Scratch that. What’s lower than micro-budget? Hmmm. No budget? Whatever I could scrape up?

My foray into the world of micro-budget filmmaking began when I lived in San Diego, California back in the late 70s — early 80s. I’d always wanted to make movies but I had absolutely no clue on how to go about it until I read an article about guy living in Burbank, California named Mark Pirro. I’d read that this guy had taken a Super8 camera and together with friends and associates created a movie called A Polish Vampire in Burbank.

Just reading that article was enough of a motivation factor to get me going. Within weeks, I managed to purchase my own Super8 camera, rudimentary editing equipment, and projector. I started shooting and editing Super8 like there was no tomorrow. Eventually, I graduated to making my first short. It came off pretty well and made me feel like maybe — just maybe, I might be able to make real movies some day.

But I couldn’t.

Personal situations and events caused me to keep putting my dream on the backburner in order to put food on the table. Funny how that works… LOL.

Ten years flew by and I thought things in my life had improved enough for me to get back to my dream of making a Super8 feature film. I still had all my equipment and for the last 10 years, I’d been taking meticulous care of it. Months went by without me moving forward at all.

Why?

I needed a story. I needed a screenplay and I had no idea how to go about it. I went to my local library and there was NOTHING for me to check out. I went to the book store and found some film industry magazines but nothing on how to write a screenplay. I did however, find an ad for this little place in Hollywood that sold screenplays…

Script City.

I gave them a call and this guy tells me they have hundreds of screenplays that you can actually purchase. Luckily, I had the upcoming weekend free and not only purchased a few scripts from them but as even more luck would have it, there was a horror movie convention in Los Angeles and I ended up attending and purchasing both BLADE RUNNER and THE THING screenplays.

Back home I had an old IBM manual typewriter that I’d found at a surplus sale for $10. I remember taking the brass fasteners out of THE THING — taking a lone page from the screenplay and sticking it in my typewriter and setting the tabs to correspond with the formatting on the page.

I then started banging away. Hours later I ended up with SHIT. Why? Because I hadn’t even had an idea. I just figured it was going to come to me as I was writing… I mean, hell — that’s how I write just about everything.

Not this time.

That’s when I realized I needed an idea. A concept. My first thoughts were to simply copy sequences and scenes from my favorite movies and somehow string them all together. I quickly realized that wasn’t going to work either.

This was starting to feel hard but hey, I love a challenge.

Fast forward ten years…

I had written nothing. I had shot more Super8 film. I had made a few more shorts without the aid of a screenplay. They turned out okay — my friends and family loved them but let’s face it… This wasn’t the kind of filmmaker I wanted to be.

This time I dug in hard. This time I came up with a concept. I came up with some characters. I did as much research as I could on my subject matter. I didn’t even know what structure was but I started taking notes on some of my favorite movies that I desperately wanted to emulate. I didn’t even know what a fucking inciting incident was but by God I knew it should happen fairly soon in the beginning of my movie. I noticed plot twists. I noticed there were reasons I seemed to like the Protagonist more than any other character. I realized that there had to be a great ending.

It was all finally starting to come together and I’d never even read one book about screenwriting.

It took me less than a month to bang out my very first screenplay on my old (then new) Amiga 500 computer… LOL. Using Word Perfect and the same old tab settings I’d written down over 10 years ago on a 3 X 5 card.

Over the next two years — over weekends — I shot a little more than half of my Super8 epic. It had been a really long time since I had felt that much alive.

But as I said — I managed to shoot only half before I found out that my wife of fifteen plus years was fucking around on me. Needless to say, the world turned upside down for a very long time. I didn’t give a shit about anything anymore and for those that knew me back then that still know me now, I thank the hell out of you for caring enough about me to point me back to the writing.

Because one day after the divorce from hell and once again, not getting my kids on my predetermined weekend, I just said, “Fuck it. I’m gonna write my way out of this shit,” and that’s exactly what I did.

With money I didn’t even have, I purchased a 486 laptop with Windows 3.0 and the current version of Script Thing — now Movie Magic Screenwriter. I went back to the drawing board. Remembered an idea I’d had from when I used to jump out of helicopters for a living. One day in San Diego, we were on our way back to our base and as I was hanging out the door with night vision goggles watching people walk around on the ground below, I wondered what IF?

What if instead of observing the usual things I always observed while heading back to the base on fumes, what IF I observed a murder? What if I observed that murder through night vision goggles? What if I observed that murder through night vision goggles from about seven-hundred feet in the air? What if we couldn’t do anything about it?

That idea stayed with me until that day I could no longer deal with my very own ordinary world… LOL.

On that day, the idea became my obsession and off to work I went to put my own ordinary world back into balance. I still didn’t actually know what structure was per se but I felt that I knew my way around movies. I’d broken down all my favorite movies and because they are my favorite movies, I really never had to refer back to what I’d written down. I’m kinda lucky that way. Once I write it — I never have to look at it again.

Much of the story was written with what I knew of the Navy so it was technically correct. When I finally completed the screenplay a year later, guess what happened? Someone tried to kill me by burning down my home. Unfortunately, there were children inside and my priority was getting them OUTSIDE and by the time I did, I couldn’t get back inside and sure enough, my laptop and screenplay were destroyed.

A year of my life down the tubes in twenty minutes.

Not only that but all the money I had in the world at the time — $600 was burned up along with the laptop and screenplay and I still owed money on the laptop. LOL.

I don’t mention this for anyone to feel sorry for me… Fuck that.

I mention it only so you know what it took for me to get to where I am today. Today, I’m a sold screenwriter with several concepts waiting to get written and a producer of three films in pre-production.

Six months later after I paid off the old laptop, I finally had enough credit to buy another one and yeah, I had to buy Script Thing again too. LOL. And remember, I didn’t have an outline. I just started banging away — remembering the previous draft.

And guess what happened?

Three months later and from complete memory, I rewrote the script. I rewrote it because I had to — NOT because I wanted to. LOL. But again, guess what happened?

It was better!

Not just a little better but HOLY SHIT WAY FUCKING BETTER! I sat back and couldn’t believe it. How could it be better? How could I have improved it that much without really even thinking about improving it and just trying to rewrite it from scratch?

That was officially my very first screenplay that I tried to market. This was also the beginning of the Internet and I was able to use the net and a hard copy of the Hollywood Creative Directory to start querying producers.

I did that for a year and got some outstanding feedback from producers you’ve heard of and that I won’t name for obvious reasons. Let’s just say, I was very persistent when it comes to marketing. I even had one producer like the screenplay so much that she wanted me to move to Los Angeles and work on it with me together so we could get a studio to make it. Unfortunately, I was still in the Navy so that wasn’t going to happen. Another rewrite based on a lot of the feedback I received and within another six months, I optioned that screenplay to a producer for three years.

Funding never came through and the script reverted back to me years ago… However, I read it about a year ago and guess what?

It SUCKS.

The concept is still very solid but I can easily see where major improvements are needed in the story. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to work on it right now so it’s another project sitting on the backburner but with the knowledge that it’s like a piece of real estate waiting for improvement. Like a piece of vacant property I purchased and then built a house on. It still needs work but it probably isn’t going to lose much value.

What does any of this have to do with micro-budget filmmaking?

Glad you asked.

If I learned anything from the past thirty years, I learned STORY IS KING. Not the camera. Not the movement of the camera. Not the actors. Not the director. Of course all those elements matter but without a story and a screenplay that tells THAT story — you ain’t got shit.

That’s why the Sundance Film Festival had a record number of submissions this year and the majority of those submissions were SHIT. Many of those submissions looked fine i.e., the LOOK of the movie was good — certainly passable — but the stories contained in those movies were severely lacking.

I’ve been a judge on a few film festivals as well as a couple of screenplay competitions and let me tell you — it’s BRUTAL. In fact, I can’t think of anything more brutal (for me) than watching a film that doesn’t make any sense or reading a screenplay that not only doesn’t make sense but contains nothing but errors that even the most novice screenwriter NEED NOT MAKE if they just go invest in The Screenwriter’s Bible at their favorite book store.

I urge even the poorest micro-budget filmmaker to take the extra time — even if it takes a year or two — to get their screenplay in the best possible shape it can be. If that means writing a dozen drafts, DO IT. If that means getting others who know about screenwriting to read it and offer suggestions, DO IT. If that means, spending money on a reputable screenplay analyst and or consultant, DO IT. In other words, DO WHATEVER IT TAKES to write a great story and get that story transcribed in the form of a screenplay.

Why?

Because if the screenplay is RIGHT and the BEST IT CAN BE, you’ve done your job. If you’ve not made your screenplay the very best it can be, then you’ve NOT done your job yet you are very likely asking others to share YOUR VISION and help you make a movie. Don’t just think because you wrote a screenplay and it makes a couple of your friends laugh in the right places that it’s ready to shoot. The numbers simply do not support it.

Your friends, family, and associates are fucking amazing because they are helping you to realize YOUR VISION. Not their vision. Not my vision.

Yours. Do your job.

Be that diamond in the rough.

Unk

Well, it’s occurred to me for a long time that there is something slightly odd about two of the facts I know to be true within the movie industry:

1) There is a worldwide shortage of great scripts

2) There are hundreds of thousands of wannabe script writers out there writing

Now, I know from experience that a lot of un-produced screenwriters actually don’t have the ability or the knowledge to create a workable script… so, there sure are a lot of really bad scripts out there.

And yet, they can’t all stink… there must be some good scripts out there, and if that’s the case why aren’t they being discovered? As you can imagine I’ve got some ideas about that…

So, let’s look at the industry for a second and see if we can see where, if any, the fatal flaw is.

It’s common knowledge that the major players won’t read unsolicited scripts and that they use agents as the gate keepers. What’s less well known is that the vast majority of agents don’t accept unsolicited scripts either… here’s a quote from an agent’s blog:

“So if you really think your script is amazing and you don’t have an agent or manager there are several ways to expose yourself to the entertainment community. You can try what most writers do and submit query letters. Don’t send query letters by snail mail. No one reads those. Well, maybe the interns do, and they make fun and keep the worst ones to share around the office. Sometimes, if your script has a real catchy logline, then you can try email, but most agents and managers will delete after reading the subject line. At this point, my eyes are trained to delete query emails the same way I’ve been trained to delete viagra emails. In my opinion, one of the best ways for a brand new writer to get exposure is to submit your screenplay to screenwriting festivals. A good one is the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship. You may not get many agents calling you, but if your script is good, you will get managers and smaller producers calling you. They have more time to read these scripts and they will request the top 5 scripts of the competition. Once this happens, your script will make it’s way around town, maybe not the right way, but you need to start somewhere.”

OK… just in case you missed the significance of this, let me run that by you… Don’t even think about contacting us, because we’re too busy to read your shit (in fact, we let our interns take the piss out of your letters)… we’d rather you entered contests, so that small time producers will read your script… and then if they like you, they’ll network with us, so we can then steal you from the small producers and we can sell your ass to the major players.

Now, let’s talk about small time producers.

About three years ago I saw a job add that read “Wanted. PA to film company producer, must be able to type, make a decent cup of coffee and write coverage”

I though it was a joke, so I asked around and no… it’s common practice for even small producers to delegate their initial script reading to either the secretary or some intern… in fact, even the major players delegate the writing of coverage to interns.

So… are you with me so far… in order to get your script onto the desk of one of the major players it has to travel the following route:

Having won a major screenwriting contest your script will be handed to a small time producer’s secretary, who will read it resentfully in her spare time and will then write a report on it… if it passes the “pissed off secretary” stage, it will be passed onto the small time producer, who will then put it in a pile of stuff to be read. Eventually, if you’re lucky, the producer will find half an hour to read your script and if it passes that stage he will either try to option it for a bag of nuts and a credit… or will try to use it as leverage to become a slightly bigger producer.

At this point your script is being “shown around town” an industry euphemism for people trying to earn money from it without paying you for it.

If you’re lucky (I’m not sure “lucky” is the right word, actually) the small time producer manages to get the interest of a major player… and at this point an agent gets whiff of the sales potential and rushes to the scene, in hope that s/he can step between you and the sale fast enough to make it look like he or she had a hand in it.

When you understand that NOBODY in Hollywood reads query letters or any script that someone else hasn’t first recommended, then both the shortage of good scripts and also the difficulty that new writers have getting into the business both suddenly make sense.

Basically, nobody in Hollywood wants to take on the actual hard work or the responsibility for discovering new writing talent… EVERYONE wants someone else to do that work for them. However, when one of them gets a whiff of potential success, it suddenly becomes a feeding frenzy and everyone tries to grab their share of the spoils.

Bottom line is the current poor state of the business is down to the fact that people are too lazy to read spec scripts… too stupid to see that delegating the most important job in the industry to a small time producer’s secretary is a piss poor business model and too greedy to realise that the process is insane. Nobody actually cares if the writing is good or not… only in who might be prepared to pay for it; and how much.

In the end this combination of greed, stupidity and laziness will destroy the industry… in fact it probably has already.

As a European writer/producer I take some comfort in the sheer insanity of this approach to film making, because the more they play the game this way the easier it is for me to steal all of the best writers for independent European projects… and because actors follow where the good scripts are, well, I fully expect to steal all the great actors as well.

It’s a great time to be an independent and with any luck a combination of shrewd independent producers and digital technology will bankrupt the stupid bastards some time in the next twenty years… which will be fantastic, because by then I’ll be in the market for a nice pre-owned Astin Martin DB9 and I think LA will be the place to pick up a bargain.

OK… So I’ve written three articles and not a single mention of building your own DIY dolly, crane, 35mm adaptor or goofy car mount. I was brought on board by our glorious editor Clive to be the DIY guy, but haven’t been posting any of the typical DIY guy things. That’s because there are already a ton of these resources out there (and we’ll get to those).

When coming up with where to go with this column, my first priority was to find a part of the DIY universe that hasn’t been explored as much as the obvious topics. It occurred to me that why DIY people make their own things, even though they’ve been made before and are widely available, is a lesser understood phenomenon. I came to this conclusion while posting to one of the filmmaking forums I frequent.

Online, questions about how to solve a specific problem with no budget come up and the answer is invariably “Buy this doohicky for US$300 and all your worries melt away!” These answers are given by industry professionals and are the accepted method of solving the specific problem on a professional set. The problem with this is the answer doesn’t fulfill the initial request… specifically, the no budget part. No budget solutions are what I’ve been doing for the past 5 years in my pursuit of the elusive beast that is a good film that captivates an audience.

I am constantly surprised when I present a no-budget solution, how often the “it’s easier just to buy it” comment comes out. Being able to build it yourself is exactly the point. It’s the driving motivation behind filmmaking and any other creative pursuit. The DIY mindset, therefore, is the focus of this column. The drive to create at every level of production, even if it means throwing away the thinking box (the one that people are always trying to find the outside of), is really a pursuit unto itself. Removing the “this is how it’s done” boundaries can really unleash your creativity and bolster your projects, infusing them with their own life.

In pursuing this obsession, I’ve come to find that good filmmakers either just get it, or have to construct and analyze the results of every moment of every project they do to see what works and what doesn’t to get to the place where the “naturals” start. The advantage we have as DIY folks is that starting from the craft side (rather than the art side) of filmmaking, when we get to the point where we are ready to spend the correct amount of time on every single element on screen, we’ve made our little test films. We’ve dissected and analyzed what worked and what didn’t. We’ve figure out how to fix the problems. We’ve come up with interesting solutions to all of the little niggling problems that can each be solved with a us$300 doohicky, or with a half an hour of elbow grease and ingenuity.

I just watched an hour long film by a first time filmmaker who just went out and bought a camera and started shooting ( Oceana ). It was absolutely captivating even through all its technical problems. I’ve done 9 shorts and a feature that I consider learning projects and the earliest ones are almost unwatchable. I’ll expect most filmmakers don’t just come out the door swinging like this guy did, they (myself included) tend to start from the lowest level and hone their story telling abilities by making movies that are either unwatchable or entirely derivative (be proud of these films anyway).

When encountered with problems on set, having the DIY mindset allows us to troubleshoot a problem, evaluate the possible solutions and solve the problems in a very proactive and immediate way. The alternative would be to give up and wait for the delivery gal with our doohicky in a brown parcel.

I will get around to figuring out builds, evaluating and comparing the builds that exist around the web for solving a specific on set equipment problem. Until then, I’ll be focussing on approaching all of filmmaking as a DIY build project. This is how I’ve approached filmmaking thus far and is the mindset I’d like to share with all of you. I’ve already started with the pre-production phase and will continue with some more of that, then move on to production and later post production. If you leave comments on topics you’d like to get a DIY perspective on, I’d love to read them and include them in future articles.

http://www.yafiunderground.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/knightscape

Basically, you feed in the codec and the duration of your footage and it automatically calculates the drive space.

And, now it’s available as an online resource… (Video Space Online)… so as long as you’ve got access to the net you’ll never been at a loss to sound like a right clever bastard… He, he

<script src=”http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

This “sweded” version of Terminator II is a perfect example of the craze that is now sweeping across Youtube. A craze being driven by swededmovies.com

video here

or my current personal favorite… Aliens
video here

However, there is more to this than meets the eye… because whilst it’s incredible fun to knock out a quick parody of your favorite movie with your mates for a laugh, the process itself is capable of being used to create real movies.

There is absolutely no reason at all why a screenwriter or film maker couldn’t “swede” their own script… don’t try to be slick like Hollywood, tell your story as quickly, cheaply and as low-tech as you possibly can. If you do it in an entertaining way, you will find an audience…

The truth of the matter is film makers have been swede-ing their own scripts for years anyway… don’t believe me… well here’s a clip from one a movie made the guy who holds the boom on my movies, the original “swede” genius… Steve Sibley, Sunderland’s answer to Ed Wood!

video here

Sheer Genius, maybe; entertaining, definitely; a real movie, I don’t know… but the truth is for anyone with a little imagination and the right script this wouldn’t have to be a joke… and that’s something to think about over the weekend.

A few years later Alex was presenting a TV series called “Moviedrome”… which showed great movies, but Alex talked about them first. I think it was Moviedrome that first helped me realise that it was possible to talk intelligently about film, that film was an art form in its own right and not just entertainment. Not only that, here was a real live film director talking about his passion for film.

Moviedrome introduced me to the early work of Kurosawa, who up to that point I only knew for his beautiful adaptation of King Lear… a film called “Ran”

I think because of the influence being an extra on Alex Cox’s movie had on me and the subsequent introduction he gave me to a larger world of cinema, one that existed beyond Hollywood, I have always had a soft spot for him… and I still hold onto to the ambition that one day I’ll be able to present him with a project that will bring him back to the centre stage where he belongs.

So… when I found an old Moviedrome introduction on youtube, I just knew it was something I wanted to share.

And for anyone interested in Alex, his personal rants about critics or his view of the industry he also has a very fine website. Alex Cox

Basically, my take on agents is this… DON’T GET ONE and DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME LOOKING FOR ONE… BECAUSE THEY REPRESENT A REAL DANGER TO YOUR CAREER

There, I feel better now… but, hold on a second: doesn’t a screenwriter need an agent?

Well, in real terms, No… a great screenwriter doesn’t need an agent; at least not as much as an agent needs a great screenwriter.

The truth of the matter is that agents only really become interested in writers at the point where they look like an easy business proposition… or in other words when they have a project which is obviously an easy sell. In the main, agents survive by knowing who is in the market for what and matching writers to producers… or more importantly for the mainstream industry, they have been designated by some producers to act as gate keepers. In other words, in order to not get deluged by a shit-storm of dreadful unsolicited scripts producers only see projects from writers with “acceptable” representation.

What this means is that an agent is really working for the studio and the producer, because they are the agent’s long term source of money, and writers are just commodities whose value can come and go depending on the outcome of either a “good” or a “bad” meeting. Make no bones about it, if your agent has to chose between you and the studio (meal ticket) then you are going to lose. So, who do they really represent?

So, once you accept that agents don’t really represent you and are actually brokers for the producers… then what is their actual value? They would claim that it is the access that they provide and also their skill at negotiating deals.

Again, both of those points are less than true… sure, without an agent some doors are going to be closed… but the trick is to ignore those doors and concentrate on the ones that are open. The companies who won’t see you without an agent today, will be standing in line to talk to you the day your movie premieres in competition at Cannes or Sundance… (if they can elbow their way through the pack of agents offering you their first born child, that is!)

When it comes to negotiating a deal… well a good entertainment lawyer is going to do a better job and will also act like an employee, not like they’re doing you a favor.

In the meantime, what screenwriters need to remember is that there are more great directors and producers out there looking for a new project than there are great scripts to keep those director employed. It’s supply and demand… and as writers we are definitely on the right side of that equation… they want what we have.

Great scripts are in short supply… and therefore if you can write a great script, instead of seeing yourself as a potential employee of a producer or director see yourself as what you really are… a potential business partner.

Screenwriters need to stop seeing themselves as employees who have to go cap-in-hand to agents, to get meetings with producers, who will then do us the favor making our script… when we buy into that game, we give away the very real power that we have to make our own careers. Not only that we lose creative control… and I’ve yet to meet an agent who was better at script development than I am.

So, here’s the bottom line… everybody needs the next hot script

So, if you have that project, do you really need an agent?… No, but you do need to have the confidence and ability to talk to directors and producers as an equal… as a potential business partner.

Now, the truth is I have sitting in my desk a $54M plus budget action movie, with franchise potential that would need to be pitched to a very serious producer, at the highest level… am I really claiming that today I don’t need an agent to get than meeting? Well, no I’m not… the doors I need to open to sell that film are closed to me unless I get an agent… or, unless I’m prepared to wait. My strategy, as a writer, is to co-produce some $4M-$12M projects… demonstrate my ability to write great, profitable movies and then in three year’s time the big doors will be open.

In the meantime I can make as many micro-budget movies as I like, experiment with new story telling techniques and build my CV. The important thing is that I keep control of my career and stay true to making the films I believe in. In my opinion that’s how you build a career.