First Person

Getting a visa as a writer

August 19, 2021 Film Industry, First Person, International

Many foreign-born writers work on American films and TV shows. Give them a cocktail and they will tell you horror stories of how hard/frustrating/nerve-wracking it was to get their visas allowing them to work legally in the US.

In preparation for an upcoming Scriptnotes conversation, we reached out to several to get their tips for international writers hoping to work in the US. What follows is their advice, gently edited with some identifying details removed.

First – get a lawyer.
Anyone thinking about getting a work visa absolutely needs to consult an immigration lawyer. The visa system is constantly changing, and lawyers know the most-up-to-date info. Hell, even some of the things I’m talking about below may have changed since the last time I heard about them/dealt with them.

The absolute biggest misconception about acquiring a work visa is that people think that you get a job, and boom, you can get a visa. It doesn’t work like that. Having a job offer is only the beginning of the process, and even then, only sometimes. Not every job can put you on the visa path.

Most Americans have no idea what it takes to get a work visa, and that includes many employers.
This is why it’s important to consult a lawyer. Most Americans have no idea how their own immigration system works. It’s very possible to get jobs you don’t qualify for or can’t get you a visa, which only ends in disappointment for both parties.

The most popular work visa doesn’t typically apply to Hollywood writers.
The most common work-sponsored visa is the H1-B. It’s a lottery program that opens only once a year, in April. If you have an employer willing to sponsor you, your application gets put into a giant lottery, and if you don’t win the lottery, they throw it out, without even opening it. You could be an accountant with a $250k a year job offer – doesn’t matter if you don’t win the lottery. The lottery, last I heard, gets twice as many applications as it has open spots. So half of the applications are tossed out without even reviewing the merits of the application.

The H1-B ties you to one employer, and if you lose your job with that employer, you have a very, very short amount of time to find someone else to sponsor you. Given that most working Hollywood writers jump from one assignment to another with different production companies/studios, sometimes with months in between assignments, this visa really doesn’t work for most writers.

There are some people who think they can get an entry-level job (for example, at a production company) and get this visa, but it doesn’t work that way. First, the employer has to cover the legal costs for the H1-B, which they’re not going to do for an entry-level employee. Second, the company has to prove why they need to hire someone from abroad. For an entry-level job, that’s impossible to prove.

If you’re a foreign writer, entry-level Hollywood jobs are off-limits to you.
An entry-level job can’t (and won’t) get you a visa. So if your plan is to be a PA or work in the mailroom, sorry to say, but these aren’t visa-qualifying jobs. So the path of ‘start at the bottom and work your way up’ is not really a path that exists for foreign writers, unfortunately. I’ve seen many well-meaning Americans give this advice to foreign writers, not realizing that it’s impossible. I’ve also seen many foreigners think that this path is open to them, only to find out it’s not.

Although if you start as as student, there may be a way. I went to film school on an F1 Student visa. With this visa, after you graduate you get one year called Optional Practical Training (OPT) to stay in the States. I used that year to go to LA. With OPT, you can essentially work any job (there may be restrictions that it needs to have something to do with your degree but from my understanding it’s quite loose). Your OPT year is HUGE. You basically have one year to “make it.” At least, that’s how I saw it and here’s why: after that OPT year you need to apply for a real visa (I call it my big girl visa) and with it you need “evidence” that you are “extraordinary” in your field in order to qualify.

You’re probably looking for an O1 visa.
The O1 is for ‘artists of extraordinary ability.’ That’s you! This is a visa that’s great for writers, but you have to be established already to get it, and it costs time and money. A big advantage is that you can apply for it year-round, and there’s no lottery.

The caveat, though, is that you have to be able to prove that you are already an established artist – an ‘artist of extraordinary ability.’ The way you do that is by fulfilling a certain number of criteria. This could include being the lead on major productions, commanding a high salary, having won awards, garnered press, etc. This visa also allows you to work for multiple employers. You do have to have one primary sponsor (e.g. a business manager, agent, manager, etc), but they can hire you out for jobs. So if you’re a TV writer and you are moving from a Netflix show to an Amazon Prime show, this is the visa that will allow you to do that.

The challenges to getting it, though, are significant:

If you’re a writer looking to break in, this visa is off-limits to you. You need to have established yourself already in your home country. If you have no track record, it isn’t possible to acquire.
It’s expensive. The cost to get a lawyer to do an O-1 application ranges anywhere from $3,500 to $7,500, which doesn’t include the filing fees with US immigration (which are around $2k).
It is possible to find a sponsor who will pay for your O1, so you don’t have to cover the cost yourself. For example, for some working writers, their agents will sponsor their O1 and cover the cost. However, if that relationship gets severed, it voids the visa. So during the ATA dispute, foreign writers who had been sponsored by their agents had to get special dispensation from the WGA to not have to fire their agents, since firing them would have meant losing their visas. Conversely, if their agent fires them, it also voids the visa. You have to maintain a working relationship with your sponsor to keep up your visa, but if you pay for it yourself, you usually work with a business manager who isn’t your agent, but someone whose services you employ to manage your business who is unlikely to fire you. There’s definitely a way to avoid the expense of the O1, but it comes with more risk.

Here are some of the items you need to collect:

10 letters of recommendation from top members of your industry
6 additional letters confirming your employment for the next three years (difficult in an industry that is largely freelance)
Evidence of your outstanding achievement in your home country. This is largely done with newspaper articles. If you won an award, it better have been written about in a major newspaper. Also if you won an award, it should be an internationally recognized and prestigious award. You could also be asked to be on a jury of a prestigious organization. Membership in an internationally recognized union helps (like the WGA).
An “Agent” to act as your employer or essentially your sponsor. Some people will go through an accountant, some will go through their talent agency. It all depends on the company, on you, on your lawyer and how savvy they are. It’s a mess.

Basically, it’s really hard for someone just starting out to qualify for an O-1 visa. But it can be done.

Here’s how I got my O-1.
At first I tried to apply for an O-1 visa for writing, acting, and directing. Between my first and second year at film school I went back to my home country for the summer and put on a play that I wrote and directed in my hometown’s Fringe Festival, which won a major award in theatre and was reviewed by several major newspapers. It got picked up for another big festival and again was reviewed by several major newspapers. All of this contributed to the “evidence” that I was noteworthy in my home country. Without this, I would not have gotten my O-1.

Because of that play, I got noticed by all the top theatre artistic directors in my hometown (who were prominent in my home country) and formed relationships with many over the next two years (during my final year at film school and my OPT year) and three or four of them wrote recommendation letters. Again, huge get for me!

My other recommendations included two teachers from college with major credits to their name, and two showrunners of major shows. (I found one of them through the university’s alumni mentor network and the other was my thesis crit panelist.) I didn’t know I’d need them all to sign these letters so I’m lowkey very proud of myself for maintaining these professional relationships, especially with the showrunners. I’m not particularly good at networking but in this instance, wow, it really paid off to put myself out there.

Next issue was compiling all the evidence. And this I need to thank my obsessive and meticulous father. He kept every single press clipping for my plays, screenplay competition wins, every interview I gave, every review, every write up, every program big or small. I brought this huge binder to my lawyer who beamed and said “You owe your father a HUGE thank you!” He basically did all the work for them.

Then comes the really tedious filling out of forms. With details like “list every flight you have ever taken in the last ten years.” I now make sure that every time I fly I put it in my calendar. I mark every itinerary email in my inbox. I put it on a list in my Notes app. It’s surprisingly hard to remember, especially since as a student I had flown back and forth so many times.

Random things like “expected financial compensation for visa duration” – WHAT? How can you predict how much money you’ll make in a freelance-based industry?

The cost came to over $10,000, including the lawyer fees and all the USCIS fees for the application (which are about $2,500 alone). You could do it without a lawyer but it would be next to impossible. The full application is hundreds of pages. The lawyers have to write up bios and summaries for every single person or organization you mention. It’s so much work.

Which brings me to why it’s so intense: the amount of work. I cannot express enough how grueling the process is. If you haven’t gone through it you’d think oh it’s just emailing people and pulling research off the internet. But the amount of time it takes and how meticulous the process is painstaking slow.

The timeline is another issue. I graduated in May. I moved to LA that July. My OPT year would expire the next July. And it took about six months to compile all the documents. So I sought out my lawyer in November – only FOUR months after I moved to LA. I barely had my first job at that point and I already had to start the process of applying for my O-1.

That first O-1 nearly killed my drive to be in this business.

It has to be renewed every 3 years.
You’re basically paying $5-$10k every three years to renew.

The US has a lot of types of work visas, but all of them have restrictions. Some are limited to certain countries. Some are limited to certain job functions. Some visas are only available to employees of certain companies. This is again why it’s so important to consult a lawyer.

You can try your luck with the green card lottery.
There is a green card lottery (though it may have been paused due to COVID). Only certain countries are eligible, and only a small number are given out, but if you get lucky, it’s one way to get work approval to the US. Just know that if you return to your home country, even if you give up your green card, you will have to file taxes in the US for ten years.

The bottom line: foreign writers have to be a lot more conscientious if they want to work in Hollywood.
There are lots of international writers working in Hollywood, so it’s not impossible to do! But you’re going to have to be a lot more focused and dedicated than those who are American citizens.

Screenwriting competitions aren’t worth the money

March 5, 2021 Film Industry, First Person

Since the early days of the site, I occasionally run posts by writers who can share their experience working in the industry. In this case, Paige wrote in to Scriptnotes with her take on screenplay contests.

My name is Paige Feldman. I was a guest/contestant on a Scriptnotes live show about a year ago (the one with Ryan Reynolds and Phoebe Waller-Bridge). That’s still one of my best quarantine memories.

I’m writing because contest season is fast approaching. Nicholl, AFF and Final Draft all have deadlines in May. While I know most aspiring screenwriters will be champing at the bit to apply, I wanted to share something I discovered about the cost of entering contests like these: it’s a lot of money for little upside.

Like many not-yet-full-time screenwriters, I have entered multiple contests, hoping for placement or notice that might help me push to the next level. And, like many not-yet-full-time screenwriters, I have received glowing comments from readers — and no momentum.

In June 2020, I embarked on an experiment. For four months, I kept track of every screenwriting contest I was advertised (either through email, targeted ads, or coming across them organically on social media). And for every contest that I could enter without doing more work (e.g. I had a completed script I could ostensibly enter), I would take the cost of the entry fee and put it in my savings.

Over the course of four months, from June to October — so not even “contest season” — I saved $1424.

That is from individual contest entry fees alone. This does not count paying extra for coverage. It is not the early entry fee plus the regular entry fee plus the late entry fee. It’s one entry fee per contest. Extrapolated to a full year, that would mean spending nearly $4500 on contests.

I already knew screenwriting competitions were an industry, but the amount is just shocking to me. What even is this screenwriting contest industrial complex? And why is it? And how many people is it actually helping?

At the end of my experiment, I didn’t have answers to those questions, but I did have an extra almost-$1500 lying around thanks to my savings scheme. I decided to use it to further my career in a way a contest could never do.

I took one of my already-written pilots and adapted it for audio. Then, I hired actors and recorded it remotely over Zoom (modeled after how you, John, had me send you audio recorded on my computer for that show last year). I hired a composer to write original music, an artist to design a logo, and used YouTube to teach myself how to edit and process audio. And now I have an audio pilot up across podcasting platforms. Plus, it was such a fun experience that I wrote the remaining nine episodes of season 1 and we’re starting to record them this weekend!

Now, instead of a bunch of contest rejections, I have an actual product that I can share with people: How to Fall in Love in the Hard Way

I wanted to write to you about this because I feel like the rhetoric that contests are the best way for unknown writers to break in continues to grow (especially on Twitter). I think it’s important to point out how much of an industry screenwriting competitions are becoming, how they help very few writers who invest that cash into them, and that there are other ways of becoming a working writer than winning a contest.

In my case, I met a director who hired me to write a script via someone I met in an acting class I accidentally took five years ago. That ended up being a better use of my money.

This isn’t a slam on all screenwriting competitions or the writers who’ve found some success through them. But for most aspiring screenwriters, I believe there are better ways to spend your time and money.

Working as a freelance reader

March 11, 2020 Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up

On this week’s Scriptnotes, we talked about professional readers and the challenge of making a living as a freelancer. We got several great emails from listeners, like this one from “Zeke.”

Like most people outside LA, I had no idea that people are actually getting paid to read scripts or that coverage even existed. That changed when I took a story analysis course that specifically taught us how to read, analyze, and write professional coverage.

From there I started doing unpaid reading at a couple of places around town as an intern and with the Austin Film Festival. My first paying gigs were with some popular script competitions such as Screencraft and obscure ones such as the Canadian Wildsound. The pay ranged from decent ($30-$40 a script) to downright embarrassing ($15 per script).

My first “real” reading for a company was Paradigm talent agency, and then UTA, who pay more but also require more extensive work (additional character breakdown, etc.). From there, and for the past few years, I’ve been focusing on reading for production companies and, most recently, for premium cable and streamers.

Consistency is the bane of the freelance reader’s existence. I always make sure I’m reading for at least 4-5 places simultaneously, and even then, there are slow weeks with little to no work (especially around the holidays). As for rates, I started with lower rates and had to fight for raises. And that’s a big issue: unless you push the companies to pay more and ask more than a few times, you will stay at the same rate you started with years earlier. I know that for a fact by asking other readers who just didn’t know they could ask for more money.

Being a reader for multiple companies, I have to be on call essentially all the time, including nights and weekends. For example, just this week, I got a request to read a script at 11 PM on a weekday, and the requested turnaround was for the following morning. This is not a rare incident.

Technically, you don’t have to accept the work. If you turn down one script or one book, maybe it won’t change much. But the second time you do it, you risk losing the gig with that company, no matter how good your working relationship is with them. Needless to say, sick or vacation days do not exist. I go to Israel every year to visit family, and I work from there as well. Again, I was never forced to do so, but I have no choice since this is my main source of income.

As for the union, we’ve been having a discourse about organizing as freelance readers, but it’s still quite vague on what steps we could take. A union reading job is much-coveted since it not only provides you with stability, but also a respectable salary, excellent health insurance, and paid days off. I would note that Netflix is probably the company that offers the best pay and terms of all non-union companies who work with freelancer readers.

Finally, I believe that a major problem in this field is the fact that many of us, including veteran story analysts at the studios, often feel somewhat inconsequential. Intellectually, we know this work is essential to the development process of any production company/studio/agency. But it doesn’t often feel that way. And that problem translates to everything else: if readers don’t respect themselves, why should companies?

It’s hard to convince employers to offer better rates or better conditions when most places in town use assistants or interns to read their projects. No matter how good a given reader might be, free labor is hard to compete with.

Assistants’ Advice to Showrunners

February 14, 2020 Assistants, First Person, Follow Up

We asked twenty current and former TV assistants what advice they would offer showrunners as they set up their writers rooms. Here’s what they had to say:

RESPECT BOUNDARIES

“Setting a normal working schedule boosts morale and allows people to plan accordingly. It’s one thing if the room goes late because a pitch got thrown out, but that should be the exception not the rule. If people can expect that typically the room is 10am to 6pm, it makes a world of difference.”

“Don’t procrastinate and stay late and make your staff stay, too.”

“Don’t use your assistants as emotional support and therapy. Don’t overshare about your life and feelings.”

TELL US THE END DATE

“Let assistants know when they will be wrapped on the show. It’s extremely upsetting to find out with a week’s (or less) notice that you don’t have a job because the showrunner didn’t really know when they hired you what your end date would be.”

SET EXPECTATIONS

“Showrunners set the tone for the room. If they treat the support staff with respect everyone else will.”

“The showrunner I just worked under for my first staff writer position made it VERY clear how the writing staff was to treat the assistants from DAY ONE. He made sure we all knew to treat them with respect, to only ask them do things that were appropriate/show related, and to think of them as fellow writers right off the bat. He gently encouraged all of us to reward their hard work by offering to read and note their samples and reminded us that they’re paid very little, so the connections they make and the notes they receive are what they’re actually working for. As somebody who started as a PA, I respect this approach tremendously and would love to see other show runners do the same.”

“Make sure assistants know what they can and can’t do. Tell them if they can pitch, or go in the room, contribute jokes on punch ups, etc.”

“Before the room meets for the first time, discuss transparently what is expected of the Writers Assistant. Every room operates differently. For example, should the WA quote or credit specific ideas in the notes? What format do you want for the notes document at the end of the day? Deciding up front will save hours of work.”

GIVE APPROPRIATE CREDIT

“When the time comes to build outlines and beats documents, discuss beforehand who this responsibility belongs to. There’s a difference between copying off the whiteboard and writing.”

IF YOU ASK, LISTEN

“If there’s only one person of color, do not treat them like a token. And when you talk about things that the minority person can speak to, listen to what they have to say.”

SUPPORT TEAM-BUILDING

“Have an optional gathering that you pay for: a concert, a movie, an escape room. It builds team unity and allows you to see each other outside of work. Our bosses did this, and it made me love them very much.”

“Don’t pit the support staff against each other. It creates a very toxic workplace.”

HANDLING FINANCES

“Never put your staff in a position to use their own money for things. Asking for reimbursement causes a lot of anxiety.”

“Don’t complain about money in front of your support staff. We make a lot less than you.”

TELL US WHO’S IN CHARGE

“Make it clear on day one who to talk to about workplace issues.”

DELEGATE THOUGHTFULLY

“The number one thing for a new showrunner to understand is that there will suddenly be more than they can manage. They will be expected to put out constant fires, approve everything, and make sure the writing is getting done. Best practice is to deliver crystal clear game plans to the room, support staff and production. Delegate authority where comfortable, at least to the degree where a strong second or producing director or line producer can make an educated guess on something while they wait for an answer.”

“Hire a full support staff (showrunner’s assistant, writers PA, script coordinator, and writers assistant). Each one is a full-time job.”

“If you can’t hire full support staff, let your support staff know if they’re expected to do double duty on certain things. Clearly define the duties so there isn’t last-minute chaos.”

SEEK AND GIVE FEEDBACK

“Have an open discussion about feedback. Check in after the first week to break any bad habits or to make any changes. “

“Ask about assistants’ writing. Ask to read their work. If their work is not a fit to eventually be staffed, TELL THEM. It is more productive for them to know (and have the option to leave) than to stay in hopes of something that will never happen and eventually become resentful and frustrated.”

“If someone spends a season or two working as a support staffer and you’ve decided you don’t think they’re staffing material, you MUST tell them so they don’t continue holding out hope.”

KEEP PEOPLE HEALTHY

“Advocate for your assistants to have INSURANCE. First season shows often don’t have it and it doesn’t cost that much, but it’s life-changing for assistants.”

“Make sure they know they do not have to come in while they are sick.”

“Discuss time off and expectations. Allow for a system of coverage if someone has an appointment, illness, etc. Open this dialogue before the assistant has to ask for time off. Some people have weekly medical appointments they can’t miss. Work with them.”

KNOW HOW MUCH WE MAKE

“I also think understanding assistant pay is important. For example, my current boss had NO IDEA we don’t get paid over winter break until he saw a thread about it on Twitter and asked me.”

“Don’t ask your support staff to work for free. Ever.”

INVITE ASSISTANTS INSIDE

“Introduce your support staff to writers/producers at the beginning of meetings/when the writers’ office opens.”

“If your assistants have free time (which they often do), allow them to use it to observe in the writers’ room. Set clear expectations, such as if they are allowed to pitch or not (just letting them listen is okay!) and let them come in. Let us remember why our job is exciting, and what we’re aiming for.”