Making The Shift

So here's the setup. You are a producer, director, and writer of edutainment who has worked on projects for museums, Fortune 500 corporations, and classrooms. Once you ran your own company and worked 14 hours a-day sweating all the details from payroll to script continuity. Then you woke up one morning and said, "I can't do this anymore."

And so you began a process of reinvention, something becoming increasingly common in a generation that first believed they should trust no one over 30 but is now convinced that they will all be wind surfing at 100. This is the story of one of those reinventions and it has no ending at this juncture, only a string of plot points that might be described as "things I am sorry to report but am going to say anyway."

It is 1998 and a well-endowed production company has hired me to write and possibly produce an interactive drama for a big science and technology center based in a large mid-western city. The budget is a moving target, they tell me, because fund-raising is still underway for the brand new theater that will be built in their brand new wing that is currently under construction. We begin working out our story outline which will be based on a fictional drought that devastates the area. I am thinking big disaster-drama - "Towering Inferno," "The Perfect Storm," an audience-gripping saga of the environment gone berserk. In my initial treatment, there are numerous characters that are endangered and the audience will be challenged to save them.

To illustrate what I'd like to do I bring a demo tape of an earlier project to our next meeting. As the project manager and the executive producer watch this dramatization, I can see the concern in their eyes. "This is very nice," the PM says, "but I think we'll need to stick with a documentary approach."

"Why?" I ask, imagining the bone-dry interview-a-talking-head-cut-away-to-his/her-lab/site-do some-moves-on-stills formula that has given everything from Nova to nearly every History Channel programs a mind-numbing sameness.

"Because," the producer chokes out, "If we can't shoot it like a real film, it will come across as amateurish."

Those of us who spent the early years of our careers steeped in "industrial" television know that the first issue, the only real issue with creating anything worthwhile in dramatic cinema is money. While a current Hollywood film rolls in at an average budget of 78 million, the typical industrial or documentary is lucky to be produced for a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

Working within an industrial budget means that certain rules will be true: 1) It will be shot on video and therefore, at best, will look like the flat, low resolution feeds that are recorded as backup checks for "real" films. To put it in more concrete terms, even with the best of lighting directors and camera operators, your project will probably look like a 70's "Doctor Who" when compared against an episode of "Star Trek", 2) Your music track will consist largely of "needle drops" (an anachronistic expression) or other synthesized music, and will in no way resemble a John Williams score, 3) Your cast will probably be a mixed bag of AFTRA or SAG veterans who have day jobs as real estate brokers or computer programmers and Taft-Hartley-cleared actors who somehow got hold of your casting call. As a result, if you're really lucky, the characters will be sort-of-okay, often tending to over-perform as a result of too many years in Community Theater.

So, how do you break away from the industrial video economic vise and reach the deep-pocketed Hollywood types? The possible solutions are:

I believe the first step is to write or buy a script, or adapt a book to screenplay that is absolutely original in its characters and plot line. This means that you need to free yourself of the ghosts of all the old movies you've admired and not try to reproduce them in whole or as disparate parts somehow stitched together. Avoid the derivative unless you've optioned the rights to do the remake.

Make sure your script has enough dramatic and set direction so that any reader can immediately get what the scenes look and feel like. The brain-dead, easy-to-understand approach will endear you to Hollywood readers who must filter out tens of thousands of badly written, often incomprehensible scripts each year.

The characters should evolve over your 120-or-so pages to the point of familiarity, their voices and mannerisms unique, the sort of people an audience will care passionately about, even if that "caring" means that they'd like to tear them limb from limb. Don't run your industrial video spread sheet in your head, calculating the number of set-ups and associated costs. Assume anything can be created if the right producers get involved. A typical film can have between 70 and 100 different scenes. Just go for it. It is more important to finish the story, run it by qualified readers (preferably those who are already in the film/video business), revise as necessary, and get it out the door. Don't re-write endlessly. There's no point. If you are lucky enough to sell it, they're going to perform massive surgery on it anyway. The most hilarious scene in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY was a last minute addition that Meg Ryan suggested she could pretend to have an orgasm in the middle of a New York deli.

The Right Contacts Here is where things get fuzzy. If you are not Sofia Coppola, you probably don't know how to break through to the actors, directors, or producers you have in mind for your nascent project. But even Sofia had to chase Bill Murray for over a year to convince him to act in LOST IN TRANSLATION.

I think it is quite smart to develop a script with certain actors in mind. With lots of help from the Internet, I do considerable research on any actors or directors who are likely to be drawn to my types of stories. Shakespeare wrote for the performers at the Globe and their unique abilities. Why not tailor your story to those it fits best.

I am currently at work on a TV series and a screenplay. But, before I began the writing of them, I imagined the ideal actors (not necessarily super stars) for all of the major roles. In reality, neither of these projects may ever see the lens side of the camera, but doing this exercise has enabled me to clearly hear the voices and to imagine the physical gestures that would be possible with specific, highly skilled talent. I have written log lines, 3-page treatments and more lengthy outlines so that any interested parties can choose to read these cliff notes as a narrative preview to the whole script.

Using every contact I have been able to garner, I have identified the agents of most of these actors and am in the process of contacting them. Many actors with a track record have established their own production companies or have commercial relationships with certain directors and producers. I believe that these contacts will be critical to any success I might hope to have because "buzz" is how your project gets any serious consideration.

Creating A "Buzz" If you are lucky enough to have ownership of a terrific script or a script with terrific potential, be sure to register it with the Writers Guild of America, either East or West. For only $22.00 your script and its intellectual content will, at least, be recorded with a professional organization. Most agents will not even look at unregistered material. Take your work seriously and it is more likely that a professional will do the same.

Several weeks ago, I attended a panel discussion in New York where Nora Ephron, Robert Towne, Steven Zallian and others discussed how to circulate your work. They all agreed that the last thing a writer should do is to simply "get the script out there." Be careful and selective about where you send your material. I have seen ads offering to pay a writer "$1,000 if you win our script competition." "And it will be promoted to production companies," they also promise. These sorts of come-ons seem extremely dangerous to me.

"Buzz" occurs when you are able to get your script to a few powerful people, have them read and respond to it positively, and, as a result, can then tell other powerful people that there is interest in your work. For example, there are many agents who will consider representing you if you can produce at least one recommendation from a pro in the field. A list of these agents and others is available at the Writers Guild of America (www.wga.org/agency.html) It does not matter that all of your industrial work came by word-of-mouth or from repeat clients. This is a different ball game and you must prove yourself all over again.

Finally, an agent is more likely to take you on and promote your work if he or she believes that you are a true producer. By this I am referring to someone who gets projects done and can continue to generate new ideas and keep on working, project after project. This requires the sort of focus, commitment and discipline that you already exhibited when you worked in the industrial video world. It is now a matter of making the terrifying but potentially highly rewarding leap.

Genine Amada Tillotson has been writing and producing multimedia projects, educational videos, and documentaries since 1983. She has worked for such varied organizations as ABC; the Association of Science and Technology Centers; Chedd-Angier; Silver, Burdett and Ginn; Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications, and Mattel.