Getting Notes

 In the latest Let's Schmooze video podcast, I talk with screenwriters Karen Stillman and David Bunello about studio and producer notes.

Karen has written pilots for or sold projects to FOX, ABC, CBS, Freeform, Lifetime, NatGeo and USA. David's credits include Disney’s AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS, 12 ROUNDS: RELOADED, and HALLOWED GROUND, which he also directed

 

 

Audio only:

Ken Aguado's Principles of Hollywood Development

For this week’s Let’s Schmooze blog post, I am running (with permission) an excerpt from an essay by producer Ken Aguado, my co-author on The Hollywood Pitching Bible. The essay is entitled “Principles of Hollywood Development” and covers a lot of territory, including the various flavors of development, how development goes wrong, and how to navigate the politics of development. It includes advice for all parties to the development process – writers, producers, executives, etc. I’m going to excerpt Ken’s section on how to take notes. But first, let me give you his definition of development:

“Development is the process by which film and television scripts are acquired or created, and then improved… Development doesn’t happen unless there is a minimum of two parties involved — one of which is typically a non-writer. If there’s just a writer involved, we call that 'writing.' Development starts when other people get involved in the process.”

Now here are Ken’s thoughts on getting notes:

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Here are some tips if you are getting notes:

Be gracious. You may or may not love the notes to get, but there’s a good chance someone spent a lot of time and effort reading your project and drafting them. Thank them for their work and for trying to help you out with the project. Also, it is likely the person giving you notes is a fan of yours, and we can all use more of those, right?

Don’t respond right away. There’s always a good chance there will be something in the notes that pisses you off. My advice: take a beat, sleep on it, and respond the following day. As I will discuss below, sometimes the notes are not as bad as they seem.

Get clarity. If you disagree with a note, don’t get in a fight. It almost never helps and it can sometimes get you fired or marginalized. Instead, I recommend you ask the person who gave you the note to kindly explain further. Do this verbally. Many times you will find they are not as committed as they seem or they might even back down entirely. Also, the brevity of notes can lead to misunderstandings. It’s not as bad as texting, but at least there are no stupid emojis.

Handling major conflicts. This is one of the tougher things to navigate. It will often happen that member of the development team vigorously disagree about notes. The conflicts can range from slightly annoying to near apocalyptic. The situation can be made worse by the parties trying to manipulate each other. For example, I have seen grown writers have near-nervous breakdowns when a powerful producer tries to get them to make the producer’s script changes that everyone knows the studio will hate. The number of possible scenarios here makes it hard to give specific advice, but very often the solution to the problem is less about the notes themselves and more about resolving personality conflicts, as in my example. My advice? Sometimes you have to stand up to a bully.

Sometimes the notes are better than they seem.

In most development situations you will get notes or give notes along the way. Sometimes both. If you’re on the receiving end, sometimes it can be overwhelming if you get 10 pages of notes for something you thought was already perfect. Don’t freak out. Sometimes notes are better than they seem. First of all, not all notes are weighted equally, meaning that while some notes can be significant, many others might just be someone floating an idea that popped into their melon at 2am, and even they don’t care about it. Second, I’ve seen many situations where tough notes are given (by a producer or network exec, for example) only to have them change their mind or even forget their own notes at some later time. Thank God for showbiz, or there’d be a lot of people with ADHD who couldn’t get a job.

Lastly, and most annoying, I have seen people give notes delivered with absolutist comments like “the script doesn’t work,” or “the script is a mess,” only to soon discover that their proposed solution to fixing the “mess” is changing all of three lines of dialog, etc. Ugh. My only explanation is that some people are prone to hyperbole or use the development process to bolster their own self-worth. Maybe both. Sometimes various development partners just want to give a project their own personal “spritz.” It’s annoying for sure, but if the solution is changing three lines, my advice is to make the changes and leave the psychoanalysis to a trained professional. One extra related piece of advice: if you get a note you don’t like but if saying “yes” to the note will cost you nothing, don’t fight it. Say “yes” and move on. In fact, this strategy has broader implications for survival in Hollywood, and life in general.

Sometimes the notes are worse than they seem.

So some notes are better than they seem, but sometimes they are worse. Hollywood is a place that can kill you with kindness, and sometimes your development partners will be disinclined to give you direct and honest feedback if they think that their honesty will crush your spirits or be counterproductive in some other way. Put yourselves in their shoes. Sometimes a script is delivered that is so bad, that the only possible honest response would be to prostrate oneself and mourn the trees that died to print it. Now this example rarely occurs, but there are many situations where there is serious work that needs to be done on a project and someone has to figure out a way to deliver this bad news. When it’s time to write up notes, the people writing the notes will sometimes sugarcoat it or speak euphemistically — anything to avoid telling the reader the truth — that they have just wasted months of their life going in the wrong direction. And it’s not just producers or executives doing the sugarcoating. Sometimes it’s the writer. In The Hollywood Pitching Bible, Doug Eboch and I discuss the strategies that writers should adopt when they meet to pitch an assignment. In this situation, it’s the writer giving the notes. Our advice is never trash the source material, no matter how bad it might be. For example, it would be a mistake to open with “wow, the script really sucks. You must have been rocking the ganja when you bought it.” Rather, it would be much better to accentuate the positive and explain that, while the script as some issues, you will help bring the project’s “aspirations” (a euphemism) into the foreground, etc. As you can see “worse than it seems” goes both ways. The only problem with the way Hollywood sugarcoats notes is that you sometimes have to learn how to read between the lines. If you are inexperienced or susceptible to praise and adulation, this might be tough for you. The best strategy is to first want the truth, and then ask a lot of questions. You will eventually get to the bottom of it.

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Thanks, Ken for your insight! If you’d like to read the entire essay, Ken posted it on Medium.
 
And if you want to learn to pitch like a pro, check out The Hollywood Pitching Bible.

Development Hell 3 - The Players

Development Hell is a series of occasional posts where I discuss the process by which an idea or spec screenplay becomes a movie either in Hollywood or in the independent world. Development is the bread and butter of the professional screenwriter’s life. This is the third post in the series.

Last week I talked about various events and stages of development. Today I want to discuss the people who are involved in the process, and their agendas within the process. You have to know the game and you have to know the players!

Writer(s)

The writer is the one component absolutely necessary to development. They are the person revising the screenplay based on the notes from whatever other players are involved. Obviously, they have to be skilled at writing. They also have to be skilled at taking notes and delivering solutions even better than those suggested to them. But perhaps most unexpectedly, they have to be master politicians.

The development process is filtered through the writer onto the page. The writer distills input from all of the other players, and these other players rarely agree on everything. Also, as you’ll see below, often the various players are concerned about specific issues relating to their job, which will influence the direction they give to the writer. So the poor writer is left to navigate and balance these sometimes-competing agendas and interests. And that requires monumental diplomacy. Meanwhile, the writer’s agenda is (or at least should be) to deliver the best possible version of the story given all these forces.

All of this applies to the first writer, the last writer, and all writers in between (see “The Writer is Replaced” in last week’s post.)

Producer 

The producer is the person shepherding the individual project. They typically work most closely with the writer, sometimes even giving feedback on drafts before they are officially turned in. Producer is a hard job to define as it can involve so many different things and few producers do all of those things. But typically the producer has two agendas: first, to get the best version of the story (just like the writer), and second, to get the movie made – meaning they deal with issues of castability, budget and marketability. Often the first agenda gets compromised for the second, though a good producer will try to find a balance between the two. A good producer can be a real ally to a writer, helping the writer navigate all the politics of development – assuming the producer and writer share a vision of the project and work well together.

Underlying Material Creator 

As you have no doubt noticed, most movies these days are based on pre-existing material of some kind. There is a wide range of this material – from comic books to plays, from novels to toys, from video games to board games to television shows to older movies.

Sometimes the creator of the underlying material has little input into the development of the movie, sometimes they have a great deal of control. Unknown playwrights and novelists seldom get any say in how the screenplay evolves. More famous novelists like J.K. Rowling or E.L. James can have a great deal of say. Even if a famous author doesn’t have contractual control over the material (e.g. script approval), often the producers will defer to them for fear they’ll badmouth the film to their fans.

Screenwriters working on movies based on TV shows or old movies typically don’t have to worry about the input of their original creators. However, screenwriters of movies based on toys or games may have to deal with a company concerned about protecting their brand. Lego was very hesitant to allow a movie to be made using their product, and it was only with considerable reassurance from the writer/directors that they agreed to license the brand.

In the case of comic books, independent creators usually get little say, while the big companies are intimately involved with the development of movies based on their characters.

Creative Executives and Other Executives

Various executives at the studio and/or production company will be involved in the development of any project they plan to make. This includes, of course, executives in the development department, but can also include marketing executives, production executives and senior executives. This is where the bulk of notes generally comes from in the development process. The executives will be concerned about creating a good story, but they will often be more concerned about creating a marketable movie. They will also be very concerned about budget. Their job isn’t dependent on the movie being good; it’s dependent on the movie making a profit. And, if the movie is part of a franchise, they will be concerned about protecting the brand.

The Director

When a director comes on board, they will typically take charge of development. Producers and executives generally defer creatively to the director (while still keeping a rein on the budget.) This can be advantageous for a writer – assuming the director’s vision of the story doesn’t clash too much with the writer’s vision – because the writer now only has to worry about pleasing one person. Directors' concerns will often be related to making the story more visual. They are concerned with how they are going to shoot things. Sometimes ego also comes into play when a director insists on “putting their stamp” on the screenplay, even when that stamp isn’t really needed.

Movie Stars

Many movie stars get involved in the development process, assuming they are famous enough to have that clout. They are mostly concerned with making sure their particular character is interesting and consistent (Sandra Bullock is said to have come up with the backstory for her character in Gravity, for example). They might also be concerned with their image. They are a brand, after all, and they have to protect the value of that brand.

Some movie stars have “pet writers” that they demand rewrite every screenplay the star commits to. Usually this is the writer who penned the star’s biggest hit or Oscar-winning movie. So sometimes when a star comes on board, a writer gets fired.


Television
Television has its own slightly different development player list. In general, all of the television development players want the same thing – a quality show with mass appeal (though budget and brand identity are important to the companies as well). If all the players agree on what constitutes the best, most appealing version of the concept, then they all work together to realize that vision. Unfortunately, it often happens that the various players have differing visions and the development process goes badly awry. Here are the players in television:

The Creator

The show’s creator is the person who came up with the idea and sold it as a pitch or, more rarely, as a spec pilot.

The Show Runner

The show runner is the person who will be running the show as it is being produced – supervising both the writers’ room and production. Often this is the creator, but not always. If the creator is inexperienced in television, they may be paired with an experienced show runner (and sometimes the creator is replaced on their own show).

The Production Company

The production company is the entity that is financing and actually making the show. They typically don’t make enough on licensing fees to pay for the show, which means they lose money on every episode in the initial broadcast run. They only make money if the show is successful enough to produce ancillary revenue – reruns, DVD box sets, and licensing for streaming. This can sometimes lead to conflicts when a production company is trying to hold down costs while a network wants a more spectacular show.

The Network (Broadcast, Cable or Online)

This is the entity that licenses the show from the production company. It is the distribution channel. These days, most networks own their own production companies so they can own the product that they air (this is mostly due to the impending over-the-top/cord-cutting revolution that will remake the business – a topic worthy of its own blog post). But, even if the network owns the production company, it doesn’t necessarily mean they both have the same vision of the show. They are separate entities with separate creative staffs that can have different opinions.

Non-writing Producers

Non-writing producers can also be involved in television (in television, writers typically double as producers). Non-writing producers facilitate putting the various parties together. They can have creative input on a show, but generally the primary creative forces in television are the production company, the network, and the show runner. Very rarely directors also serve as non-writing producers helping to develop a show. But in television, directors usually come in late in the game and work for the show runner, having little input into the scripting.

As you can likely see by now, there are many forces at play in the shaping of a screenplay or teleplay. It is part of the writer’s job to navigate those forces while protecting the core integrity of the story.

Development Hell 2 - The Stages of Development

Development Hell is a series of occasional posts where I discuss the process by which an idea or spec screenplay becomes a movie either in Hollywood or in the independent world. Development is the bread and butter of the professional screenwriter’s life. This is the second post in the series.

When a screenwriter is writing a script on their own, on spec, they are not in development. Development starts when someone else gets involved in the screenplay. Today I want to look at the various stages and events that can be part of the development process.

Development almost never proceeds in a smooth, straightforward fashion. So though I’m presenting these stages/events in a roughly chronological order, often a project will move backwards on this list, skip steps, jump around, etc.

Free Development
Some might not consider this technically development, but it is often the first step in the process. Free development typically occurs when a producer (or sometimes a director or actor) finds a script (or sometimes a pitch or underlying material – see below) that he or she likes, but is not willing or able to pay to acquire it and doesn’t feel it is ready to take to a studio yet. The producer may offer to work with the writer, giving them notes to hone the material. Of course the writer may turn down this offer, and in many cases probably should – such as when the producer has no track record or credibility. But if the producer is established and has a good vision for the project, this can be a big opportunity for the writer. (All of the foregoing also applies to a director or actor who might want to work with the writer on some spec material – also see attachments below.)

Option/Purchase
This is the point at which someone acquires spec material or a pitch from a writer. An option is a temporary acquisition – the buyer has the exclusive right for a limited time to purchase the material (for more on what an option is, read this post). With a purchase, the buyer now owns the copyright. At this point it is the buyer’s project to do with as they like.

Underlying Material
If you look at the films currently in the theaters, you will discover that most movies these days are not made based on screenwriters’ original ideas. Instead, the producer or studio acquires some type of “intellectual property” – a comic book, novel, video game, play, etc. A writer is then hired to adapt that underlying material into a screenplay. This is also development and plays out very similarly to what happens to a spec script.

Development Drafts
Once a spec screenplay or underlying material is acquired, it is rare that the buyer immediately proceeds to production. Instead, they first commission new drafts from the writer to shape the material to the buyer’s needs and vision. Under WGA rules, the writer is to be paid for these drafts, but often they are pressured to do extra free drafts. This is a complex and nuanced issue beyond the scope of today’s post – perhaps I’ll cover it in the future.

Notes Sessions 
Before each new draft, the writer gets notes on the previous draft. These notes will come from the producer and development executives involved in the project, and may also come from a director or star(s) attached to the project. They may even come from a marketing executive. Notes may be delivered in person in a meeting, over the phone, or in writing. The writer is expected to address these notes in the next draft. (I’ll definitely go into more detail on this process in a future post.)

The Writer is Replaced
In Hollywood, it is exceedingly common for writers to be replaced by new writers on a project. There could be many reasons for this. Perhaps the current writer is not capable of fixing certain problems in the current draft. Perhaps the producer can’t figure out why the screenplay isn’t working and wants new creative input. Perhaps the writer and producer have different visions of what the film should be. Perhaps the writer is not a good team player. Perhaps the producer is not a good team player. In any event, the writer is fired and a new writer is brought on to do the next draft. Rinse, repeat, sometimes with more than a dozen writers. It may not be the best system, but it helps many writers pay their mortgages!

The Option Lapses 
As I mentioned above, often a producer or studio will option the right to buy a script for a particular period of time. If that time expires and they don’t acquire it (by “exercising their option”), the rights of the original script return to the writer. The rights to any drafts done while the script is under option do NOT necessarily go to the writer… that’s a more complicated legal question that depends on the wording of the contract and whether the writer was paid for those drafts. If the writer reacquires his script, he is free to start the development process all over again with a new buyer.

Turnaround 
Turnaround is when a studio has actually purchased a screenplay but decides they no longer want to make the movie. Turnaround is actually a specific legal situation having to do with tax write-offs, though the term is sometimes used in a broader sense. When a project is put in turnaround, it can be acquired by another studio, but that studio would have to reimburse the initial studio for all development costs (this can be negotiated, of course, but usually it’s the full cost). Those costs can run to tens of millions of dollars if many drafts have been commissioned.

Attachments
When a script is in development, other creative talent – typically directors and movie stars – may become attached. “Attached” often has a fuzzy definition. Sometimes it means a mere expression of interest; sometimes there is a contractual element with hefty financial penalties. But when a director or star becomes attached, they often become another participant in the development of the screenplay. In fact, it is not unusual for a major attachment to initiate a new creative direction for the project.

Green Light/Flashing Green Light
When a movie is given a green light, it officially leaves development. A green light means the studio has decided to make the movie and the project proceeds to pre-production. This is supposed to be a hard line, but sometimes projects get what is referred to as a “flashing green light,” meaning the studio is starting pre-production but might still back out of the project. Also, some producers claim something has a green light before it really meets that criterion. Even when a movie enters pre-production, however, development often continues with more rewrites. Sometimes the script is being rewritten even as the movie is being produced – usually not an ideal situation.

Going through these stages and events should give you a good idea of how the development process functions – and perhaps how it sometimes malfunctions. Next week I’ll dig more deeply into the players involved in the process, what they do, and what their concerns are. After all, if you want to be a professional screenwriter, you need to know how the game is played and who the players are!

Development Hell 1 – The Purpose of a Screenplay

Today I present the first in an occasional series of posts about screenplay development. The series is titled “Development Hell,” which is the industry term for when a project gets stuck in development – an endless series of rewrites are commissioned from one screenwriter after another, and yet no movie is forthcoming. It can, indeed, feel like you’re being punished for your sins.

If you haven’t experienced development then chances are you haven’t worked in Hollywood. If you are just starting out, there may be a temptation to bury your head in the sand and ignore this aspect of the business. And no wonder – it’s so much nicer to think of the pure creative process of imagining your dream movie on the page. But that also suggests why you shouldn’t ignore the realities of development. And that brings me to today’s topic.

There’s an obvious truism about screenplays that most screenwriters seem to forget at one time or another:

A screenplay is not a finished product.

No, a movie is a finished product. A screenplay is simply a step in the process of creating a movie. A screenplay that does not get turned into a movie is a failure by definition. Sure, the writer may learn something by writing the screenplay. They may get an agent and/or meetings using it as a sample. They may even earn money optioning or selling it. But the ultimate goal of any screenplay is to be turned into a movie… or at least that really ought to be the goal.

As writers, it’s easy to forget that the screenplay is not the finished product. After all, it’s usually the final thing we produce. We must remember that we are creating a plan for the making of a movie. This has certain consequences for our writing, some obvious, some not. For example:

• We must write in proper format. Much of the weirdness of screenplay format is designed to aid production. For example, the production manager uses the slug lines to schedule the shoot. They need to have each scene identified by slug line so that they know how many pages are to be shot in each location. They need to know whether it’s an interior or exterior scene, and whether it requires a night shoot or day shoot (which is why you should not use things like “afternoon” or “3 p.m.” in your slug lines).
• We can only write what can be seen and heard. Prose can tell us what’s going on in a character’s head or what they smell or what something feels like, but a movie can’t. We should only write what can be communicated on film.
• More subtly, some things work better on the page than on screen and vice versa. For example, every scene looks the same in a screenplay – black words on a white page. But in the theater, we usually want visually interesting settings. Good screenwriters think about how the scene will look, not just how it reads.
• Similarly, your dialogue must actually be spoken by actors. Something may read well but be very difficult to say.
• Your decisions carry production implications. Every 100 words cost the writer the same as every other 100 words. But for the producer, the content of those words has serious budgetary impact. “He makes a sandwich” is not equivalent to “He blows up a bridge.” And producers have to worry about legally clearing things like hit songs or brand logos that screenwriters blithely write into the screenplay.

A screenplay is often compared to a blueprint, and that is really an excellent analogy. Just like an architect’s job is to provide the plan for the construction of a building, the screenwriter’s job is to provide the plan for the construction of a movie.

This does not mean you tell everyone else how to do their jobs, though! The architect doesn’t tell the electrician what kind of wire to use or the decorator what color the drapes should be. Those professionals bring their own expertise to the project. Similarly, the screenwriter should not be telling the director how to stage the scene or the cinematographer what kind of shot to use. This is why actors hate parentheticals like:

ACTOR
(annoyed)
I hate parentheticals.

They want to decide how to play the line!

Instead, the screenplay should capture the vision of the final film to allow the other creative artists to make good decisions. You don’t describe each character’s wardrobe in detail, you provide a clear vision of the character and environment so the talented costume designer can create a better wardrobe for that character than you could imagine.

Many screenwriters get annoyed when their script changes throughout the production and post-production process. But this is actually what’s supposed to happen! You want all the other artists to bring their valuable contributions to the final product. Film is a collaborative medium after all. In the best cases, the rest of the creative team makes your work better. All too often, however, the opposite happens. But the solution is not slavish devotion to the screenplay.

So to review, I’ve discussed two major purposes for a screenplay:

One, through proper formatting, provide the basic technical information for the planning of the production.

And two, carry the vision of the story so that the rest of the creative team can make good decisions.

There is one final important purpose of a screenplay: Give the studio, producers and financiers a clear idea of what the film can be so they can decide whether they want to make it or not (and movie stars can decide if they want to play a part, and directors can decide if they want to direct it, etc.)

This is really what we talk about when we talk about development. Development is the process by which the movie is repeatedly made and remade on paper (or pdf) until everyone agrees it should be made on film – or until they agree it should remain forever on the page, never to be seen by an audience!

If you think of it that way, development is a good thing. Even though it often feels like hell.