Regarding a screenplay, the blueprint of plotting and topical direction of the film no matter what the visual transition of it looks like, while studying the pre-existing, initial choosing and post-production process, I was thinking on the originality of the screenwriter having the connection or “Collision” with the pre-existing film market. This market has already conceived what’s wanted when bringing a completed film to distributors.
This goes into the vision of the writer, director and the team not being hindered, and best to go on and write out or acquire the script that’s desired to display once done with production. Right after or preferably right along in the midst of it throughout the months of production, studying distributors and similar movies previous for specific ones is a must.
For myself, I follow genre, themes and topic a lot as a navigation point. As much as many of us may want to be fully done with something, whether it’s a sample, a full layout or full spec script, it can be an advantage point to write a script intentionally in segments over a certain duration until it’s done.
What’s crucial not to be lost on is you have to keep track of the change in the film market local-to-international in that timespan, mainly directly paying attention to what distributors are buying. You might be dealing with some primary genres, themes and topics that will always be sought after at one point or another, so this being kept in mind might give your script everlasting advantage.
Of course, as we know, this means you have to stay committed to the writing of that project’s time range every day. The more commitment to it the faster it gets done; not done in a rush, you get to scripted “Gold". With the imagined play-on-words kept, why not pre-determine, in your respectable ambition, that it’s gold leading to the goldmine?
Glad to act on these myself these days and in recent years, though commitment itself was never an issue, just figuring out ideas, and a lot of external studies indirectly related or unrelated to the work of the scriptwriting itself. This is where accomplishment factors come from in writing a script, always able to be the blueprint for what people are going to see on screen and what has been seen, outside of rarer or experimental methods of filmmaking: Retro-scripting, Improv, actors intentionally doing it “Unscripted” for a few examples.
For the outsider to the field and process, it’s just a bunch of words digitally or printed pieces of paper. This can be funny, on how it’s just the way it is sometimes: difference in perceptions and focus of different people as far as this goes. Only bad if they are anti-literacy and try to disrespect it, that’s problematic but not usual, most people I’ve encounter respect it, if not, not having an opinion on it at all.
Imagine not being able to recognize scripted gold when you see it? Even the mindset of a producer, given they have good creative instincts and not willing to make just anything, has to recognize scripted gold in some sense, so to commit to the possible risk in financing it. As opinion-based as it can be to many others overall, someone out of the entire production team has to be informed or no respectable movies would ever get made!
Doing something long-form beforehand can expand your thoughts into other shorter types of writing for faster results, like an article or stage play, despite original inclination to screenwriting.
No matter which, especially one expanding the ability to do the others, for us screenwriters, we know the amount of work that goes before and after the completion itself. When aiming to sell, studying companies’ distribution patterns before within and after is the next best move, to greater the chances of the project to be chosen.
Thanks for reading!
WEBSITES FOR FURTHER READING:
https://www.scriptmag.com/features/five-tips-to-poise-your-script-for-distribution https://nofilmschool.com/topics/distribution-marketing