John August

Film Industry

Amazon Studios at AFF

Film Industry, First Person, Follow Up

Amazon Studios has been a [much](http://johnaugust.com/2010/on-the-amazon-film-thing)-[discussed](http://johnaugust.com/2011/amazon-studios-now-slightly-less-terrible) [topic](http://johnaugust.com/2012/amazon-studios-and-the-free-option) on both the blog and the podcast. Last week at the Austin Film Festival, the company made a presentation explaining how they work with screenwriters.

Reader Mike attended and took notes, which he generously offered to write up.

—

first personA little bit about my background: I started out working at a production company as an intern and as a reader, kept working at writing and eventually got representation from a manager and an agent. I’ve had scripts go out and I’ve done the studio water bottle tour a couple of times, but have yet to earn a single penny as a writer.

I consider myself in that grey, ugly pool of zombie writers: Part alive, but mostly dead inside.

I’m guessing the crowd ranged from people like me to those who are thinking about writing their first screenplays. I had heard a lot things about Amazon (including on the podcast), so I went in with an ass-load of skepticism along with a tiny bit of hope. Unfortunately, very little during the panel moved the skeptic needle, and it pretty much pissed all over the hope.

Again, I can only speak for myself.

First, it wasn’t really a panel. There was one Dude at a podium, so it was more like a new-hire presentation at Dundler Mifflin rather than a Q&A with a studio exec. The Dude, head of development at Amazon Studios I think, seemed nice enough and intelligent enough, but he used the phrase “I’d rather not get into the details of that” way too often for my tastes.

Bullet points:

* Writers can upload their scripts to the Amazon Studios site as a non-WGA writer, or if they are WGA they can have their rep upload.
* Once a writer uploads his script, he cannot sell his script to anyone for 45 days. Essentially a free 45-day option.
* If Amazon is interested, they will option the script for a period of 18 months for $10k.
* If that script goes into production, the writer will be paid $200k, with some other pay-outs if the film reaches certain financial milestones.
* They also have open writing assignments from time to time, and these are handled much the same way, with writers submitting their work on the website for consideration for the gig.

All of this is well and good on the surface. I am not a million-dollar-screenwriter by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have some access to the lords of Hollywood. If I didn’t have anywhere to go with my scripts, I would probably be interested in what the Dude had to say. However, once he said they have somewhere around 10,000 submissions with 22 projects in development, it doesn’t take a Harvard grad to do the math and realize your odds are just as good in the traditional studio system.

The things that I found puzzling were mainly around their development process and their overall plan.

The Dude explained their development process by talking about information studios gather from test screening and how it is used. Basically saying that once you shoot a film, you have a test screening and get feedback from the general public on what they liked and didn’t like about the story, the characters or whatever. Meaning that the problem is that the film is already shot, so there is only so much you can do to alter it.

At Amazon (wait for it) they want to get public feedback (through their website) on the script as it is being developed so they can make changes before they begin shooting. They plan on doing this through several methods. They already have comic books made from a script in development that they are asking for feedback on. They are also thinking of making short videos and other things to get parts of the script out there and gather opinions from Amazon’s customers. The writer will get this info and incorporate it as notes for rewrites. Now, the Dude did say it is up to the writer to do what he wants with these notes. You be the judge on that. On one hand, I’d like to congratulate them on thinking outside the box on development. But I see problems with this, as I’m sure you do as well.

The other problem I had was with their overall plan: There doesn’t seem to be one.

They have a first-look deal with Warner Bros., but when he was asked questions about the deal he defaulted to the “I’d rather not get into the details of that.” He was asked what type of genres or budget ranges they were looking at, and he didn’t really have an answer. I would have been more impressed if they picked a direction, like saying, “We want to provide funding for small, independent minded stories that might not get a shot in the Hollywood system,” or saying, “We are looking for big, tent-pole, event movies.”

I had other concerns, but that was pretty much the thing in a nutshell. I think it great that someone with money is jumping in, and I hope for the best, but it looks like there are problems with hair on them, and I think there are some very rough growing pains in the making.

On the new Black List

Film Industry, So-Called Experts

Franklin Leonard, creator of [The Black List](http://blcklst.com), has announced a new incarnation of his site that allows screenwriters to upload their scripts for review and rating — for a fee:

> Aspiring screenwriters will pay $25 a month to have their scripts hosted on The Black List’s website, accessible only by a closed community of Hollywood professionals. They can further pay $50 for evaluations by anonymous script readers hired by The Black List. Every read by industry professionals generated by those evaluations is entirely free.

> Moreover, The Black List will not claim a commission, finder’s fee, or producer credit on business generated by their service. “Writers retain all rights to sell and produce their work and are free to negotiate the best deal they can get. All we ask is an email letting us know of their success,” added Leonard.

Many readers (and podcast listeners) have asked for my take on it.

At first glance, it feels like an attempt to leverage the prestige of The Black List to create yet another service making money off aspiring screenwriters.

Yet Franklin Leonard knows what the hell he’s doing. This isn’t another Amazon Studios situation, where an outside entity boldly declares it can fix what’s wrong with the film industry. Leonard has already posted a [long list of answers](http://blog.blcklst.com/2012/10/the-what-how-and-why-of-the-black-list-the-long-answer-by-franklin-leonard/) to some of the immediate questions and feedback, showing he’s thought it through.

I can’t predict if this new Black List will succeed — or even if it’s a good thing for screenwriters and filmmakers — but I know it’s not done with naiveté or hubris. That makes it worth watching.

Craig Mazin and I will be discussing the new Black List in depth at Scriptnotes Live this Saturday in Austin, with the podcast episode scheduled to go up next Tuesday.

Women, screenwriting and confidence

Film Industry, Follow Up, Psych 101

Continuing the podcast discussion on the comparatively low number of female screenwriters, listener Elana writes in to call attention to Deborah Tannen’s book, Talking from 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work:

> In the book, she at one point floats the theory that the Glass Ceiling is actually an issue of how confidence is perceived in different groups, and how groups are socialized to express (or not) that confidence starting in childhood. Women, she theorizes, are socialized very early to not speak too well of themselves, whereas young boys are both subtly and overtly rewarded for boasting about themselves a little bit.

> I’ve often wondered if the above is at play in screenwriting. So much of screenwriting as a career is not really about the words on the page but much more about how you come into a room and tell terrified people that you can save their asses and fix their franchise. Even at the level of interest [in the profession], I wonder if this is a factor. Perhaps even to submit to the Nicholl or to you guys, or to ask an agent to read your material, one needs to feel comfortable donning the mantle of “I’m probably pretty awesome”? Maybe, even to get interested in screenwriting in a minor way, you have to believe that you are crazy amazing and can beat insane odds.

> I am just speculating, but I would be prepared to believe that men, on a population level, are more likely to do that than women. That might account for some of the difference in interest levels.

To me, this speaks to the importance of modeling. Often, you don’t aspire to become something until you see someone like you achieve it. The best way to get more female screenwriters (and directors) is to raise the visibility of those we already have.

How the summer movie season expanded

Film Industry

Dustin Rowles looks at how studios learned to look beyond the [summer release schedule](http://www.pajiba.com/box_office_round-ups/six-movie-milestones-that-helped-shape-blockbuster-boxoffice-release-schedules.php):

> They were releasing too many tentpoles in a short period of time, and they were cannibalizing each other. The studios adjusted. The box-office release schedule evolved. The summer season expanded. Months that used to be dumping grounds became profitable. Big budget films were finding unusual times to exploit audiences.

> Gradually — and we’re still in the midst of this expansion — studios began to realize that Memorial Day through the first of August and the holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas were not the only times a a studio could release a $100 million film. They could also make money in January. And March.

Horace Deidu came to many of the same conclusions — [with charts!](http://www.asymco.com/2012/02/07/hollywood-by-the-numbers/) — when he looked at movie release schedules. The summer pattern is still dominant, but an increasing number of titles have made $100+ outside of that window.

In fact, for 2011, the only months that didn’t have a $100+ title were January, September and November. And November was an oddball — it’s traditionally a big month.