Loglines are one-or-two sentence summaries of a story or screenplay. Here’s an example: When a prize-winning journalist makes up a source, she pays an ex-con to be her supposed poet-laureate. That’s a logline I wrote for Sam Hamm’s 1988 script “Pulitzer Prize.” It’s likely the first logline I ever wrote, way back in film school. […]
Film Industry
General meetings don’t have to be general
I like this advice from Jeff Nathanson: It took me well over a decade to realize that general meetings are only general if I allowed them to be. And so, I changed my approach. I figured as long as I’m putting on a clean shirt and meeting with people who have the ability to hire […]
Working as a freelance reader
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 […]
How accurate is the page-per-minute rule?
Back in 2006, I answered a reader question about page counts: Every screenwriting book I’ve read, class I took, and basically the first rule I learned says: ONE PAGE OF A PROPERLY FORMATTED SCRIPT = APPROX. A MINUTE OF SCREEN TIME. I know one page of say a battle can last five minutes whereas one […]