squish, are you 100% sincere in this thread or are you posting obtusely on purpose?
Let’s say you want to build a house. You have this great idea for a house, the greatest house the world’s ever known. You don’t know what it looks like per se but you’ve been collecting parts of it, and so far you’ve got a few windows, a drawing or two of a garage, some tile for a kitchen backsplash, a faucet, some 2x4’s. Where do you take this massive pile of stuff to get this house built?
An architecture firm? Well, why would they care? They design houses all day every day, houses that actually get built. And they went to school for architecture, and have been doing it their entire professional lives, so they’ve seen more houses, been inside more houses, and planned more houses then you even knew could exist. Chances are, your house isn’t unique, especially since you’ve done none of the hard work, like draw up blueprints.
You might say, but my house is different! This could very well be true. But architects communicate through blueprints, and you don’t have a blueprint. Without a blueprint, what do you communicate to them what your house looks like?
You might say, but I have this idea for a door that’s never been done before! Yea, but, who cares? It’s a door. Doors are supposed to be functional, and if you have an idea for a great gimmick… it’s still a gimmick. Not only that, chances are – since you haven’t spent your entire life studying doors – your idea probably isn’t that unique, and probably has been done before.
See, having the greatest idea ever for a house isn’t enough. There’s plenty of great houses in the world, but at the end of the day, they’re just houses. The only way you’d get your house built, without a blueprint and with only a pile of vague house-ideas, would be if you were independently wealthy, and could finance the building of the house yourself.
…
Another thing you probably don’t realize is that you’re being insulting to a toooooooon of people and professionals. In this thread, but I’m sure in real life as well. You’re not only telling people how to do their jobs – telling actors how to read their lines, telling cinematographers how to make things look – but you’re also telling them you know more than them. You’re implying that you thought up ideas they could never think of. Considering you probably couldn’t name 5 cinematographers, or give a list of 10 things a director actually does, or name the various acting schools or methods, chances are your ideas are not that unique.
Not if your pitch *resembles *trash. Remember that as an industry outsider with no film-making experience, the default assumption is that your submission is trash. What the readers are looking for is some spark that suggests otherwise. But if that spark isn’t immediately obvious they’ll just move on to the next submission in the slush pile.
They’re not looking for originality. They’re looking for profitability.
LOL. No, they’re going to say “We’re not in the business of curing cancer!” and chuck the submission in the bin. It doesn’t matter if twenty Harvard professors like it. Harvard professors are not in the film business.
Credentials outside the industry are meaningless unless the endorser is a famous celebrity. If Stephen Hawking aggressively endorsed your script that would help a little. John Random Professor likes it? No one cares.
Have you *already *obtained those rights? Because that’s an important piece of information.
Getting rights is a tricky process. Some people will sell them for a pittance. Some people want buckets of cash. Some people will only sell them if there are strings attached. Managing a production with lots of different pieces of licensed content is a pain in the ass.
If you go to a studio and say “Hey, I have the rights to several hundred hours of parkour footage and I have a screenplay that makes clever use of it!” … that’s a pitch.
However, going to a studio and saying “Hey, I have this idea for a movie, but it requires you to negotiate the rights to footage that is owned by two dozen random people scattered across the globe.” … that’s a much riskier proposition.
Exactly. You’re half-assing it on completing a finished, standard screenplay for a business that pretty much demands them, so god knows what else you’re planning (or not planning) to do amidst all your other grand plans.
(Just checking - is the cure for cancer thing “real” or just a metaphor? Because no, it isn’t totally clear in context.)
I’m not asking anyone to take risks they wouldn’t normally take. I’m talking about submitting my framework with enough finished components and coherence that someone would take it on as is (just as they’d take on a lone screenplay), if they believe they can hire the people to finish what’s not there and/or can place faith in the major professionals and achievements attached to the project. I don’t understand how you keep missing this.
Maybe it’s a *little *bit lazy to be asking all these questions during the mid-stages of my project, but in general it’s invaluable to develop elite foresight. I would love to find someone right now to look at it all and throw funding at it just with my promise I’ll finish it all (i.e. the framework, not the final movie), but I’m in no delusional state that that’s all but impossible. You’ve reminded me how critical it is to have titanium components like a polished script. I get this. I knew this well, but you’ve drilled in the point further. It’s helped, really. But the completion status of my project doesn’t change the question of the process of getting it to professionals once it’s achieved professional backing and credentials, just a kind so unorthodox that it’s especially daunting to figure how to go about promoting it.
Look. I interested an Emmy-award winning researcher and a world-class athlete in my invention just a little bit. This helped me pitch to Epson. I contacted them once in their little online contact box, and the letter was forwarded right up to a top-level VP, who’s asked to see a prototype. I’ve spent over a month just organizing multimedia to present to him in a concise and efficient manner while simultaneously relaying the scope and core of the project set.
Just supposing it all goes somewhere down the line and I end up signing a contract with Epson to patent and produce my method, that’s no minor footnote to tag on to a project heavily integrating the method into a movie framework, nor would it be trivial to involve other elite professionals. In combination with half the footage already being done (that’s zero risk, too), and all the other components that will have obvious surface value as is (e.g. top of the line fractal art that can be glanced at in a second serving as elite completed storyboard art), and a killer polished screenplay that by itself would already have a light chance of getting forwarded up the chain even without any other elements, that makes a great package!
Now how do I efficiently submit all that to Hollywood? 
Do I have to spell the absurdly obvious out? If Harvard gave my project a $600 million budget with a high interest in producing a blockbuster movie on the matter, don’t you think that detail along with a finished screenplay, might bump up a query letter a micron higher than an unsolicited manuscript by a penniless undiscovered writer?
You ask me if I’m being purposely obtuse, I have the exact same question. I’m throwing out a flawless theoretical in order to put my project on a spectrum. I’m not actually asking you to theorize about the scenario of half the planet throwing a trillion dollars at Hollywood to make a movie. How more clear could I possibly make this theoretical before throwing in supernatural events or acts of God?
(cont.)
People talk to each other. Corporations, universities, entertainers, organizers, millionaires, billionaires…
What big movie was ever made without the basic process of collaboration between 2+ people or entities? A movie about dancing has to feature dancing, hence movie people and dancing people have to collaborate to make the movie. A film taking place in Alaska has to be filmed in Alaska (generally), hence people who know about movies and people who know about Alaska have to work together to get the movie made.
I feel like I’m putting this in kiddie-talk. To be crystal, if a player who *could *be involved in a movie that called for their skills, is interested in a movie idea, that creates project weight for that movie. If I interest people who could function in some aspect of the movie-making process, that gives my idea to make that movie a better one to invest in. What about this is confusing?
There’s not much difference between finding an unorthodox method of submission, and fitting an unorthodox project into a standard submission. It’s about the same thing, or at least both are difficult.
What’s different about a developed formula that cures cancer, and a “cure that’s developed”? This is getting just linguistically silly. I’m obviously trying throwing to throw out the most extreme scenario possible, a project backed so thoroughly and that’s so valuable it would be all but impossible to ignore it. Why would I go all the way to mentioning a cure for cancer and then split unfathomable hairs about the existence of a formula being different than the manufacturing process to produce the formula and sell it?
It’s putting a toll on my faith in your advice that you can’t process a simple theoretical like “a project backed by a cure for cancer” without picking apart my infinitesimal wording to completely bypass the point of the theoretical.
Well, a little clearer than that, at least.
Honestly, the only thing that does seem clear about your notion is that you feel entitled to having some unknown agency, studio, or producer to review your incomplete script and mishmash of attendant products to tell you how brilliant your ideas are and provide you with the crack team of talent who will assist you in every way in order to see your parkour-themed cancer-curing vision into a finished work of masterpiece cinema, accompanied with Bono screaming in Spanish. What everyone here is telling you is that no studio in existance is going to give some unproven writer that kind of creative control over the production of a film they are funding. See the documentary Overnight, focusing on the rags-to-riches-to-ful on asshole story of Troy Duffy, scriptwriter and director of Boondock Saints, a film that was supposed to be the next Pulp Fiction and ended up being a low budget B-grade shoot-em-up.
If you really demand that kind of creative control, you need to go the route of Melvin Van Peebles, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Shane Black, or Robert Rodriguez, and be intimately involved and responsible for every aspect of your production from financing and filming to editing and distribution. But realize that all of these guys don’t rely on any half-assed work products and waiting for accolades; all of these people are accomplished writers who know how to write a gripping screenplay (which you would know if you actually studied,their scripts…which you should do). You seriously need to put down your “Screenwriting for Dummies” book and take a class (a real class, not one of Robert McKee’s weekend screenwriting seminars) where you actually have to write, amd write, and write, and write, and write, and then accept criticism and go back and re-write until you get it right.
Yes, writing is hard–certainly much harder than linking Youtube videos or making storyboards–and accepting criticism is as ego deflating as your worst bad date. But you will never learn to write, and will never finish a screenplay or story unless you write, and keep writing until it feels like you can’t squeeze another word out of your brain. Creativity is all well and good, but in a necessarily collaborative project like film, it has to be in a form that someone else can make sense of and apply; hence why format is crucial. You…must…write. Any excuse for not writing and not completing your work is just an acceptance of failure. All of your other products and ideas are fine…once you’re successfully pitched your story. But you must write the story. The notion that your ideas are in some intermediate medium that will be translated by someone else is nonsense; you must be able to convey them into words on the page, just as a researcher has to provide a complete analysis of experimental data to validate a,hypothesis or an engineer must draft a specification in order to build a product. You must write your ideas, on the page, completely and comprehensibly; nobody else can do it for you, nor would you be satisfied with the product if they did.
Stranger
I don’t understand how I’m being any more obtuse than assuming I’m asking who in Hollywood accepts obviously illegal projects. I’ve said I’m designing a framework to bring all sorts of components and people together into a massive mainstream product. Where in hell does someone pull the assumption that I’m proposing to steal it all in place of obtaining proper rights and permissions? In addition to completely immoral, I would have to be the stupidest person on Earth to propose putting other people’s media in a major motion picture without obtaining the rights to the media. How can anything be more obtuse or insulting than calling me the most immoral and stupid person who’s ever grazed a message board?
My line of thinking was more wondering whether some medication might be helpful, but apparently you’re just shooting for gigantically verbose word salads of pie-in-the-sky metaphors for your dream project. So my apologies for being unable to sift through all that and find the important details.
By the way, you’ve received a ton of very constructive advice and resources in this thread from some very helpful people. I hope you don’t let that go to waste.
Yeah, but the thing about securing rights is that often you can’t secure rights to what you want. It ends up being too complicated, too expensive, taking too long, and typically involves a lot of different personalities each with their own agenda.
If you were pitching this project to a Hollywood mover, and you told them the rights weren’t secured yet, but they will be (
), that Hollywood mover would probably end the discussion right there. Until you have every single thing you need locked down under contract, by knowledgeable lawyers, there is no project to pitch. You gotta get the rights first, then proceed with your script, pitch, project, whatever.
YOU’RE the risk. That’s what you don’t seem to be getting. You don’t have a track record in the industry. That makes you an unknown quantity. Your very involvement with the project is ITSELF a risk.
A patentable technical procedure is an entirely different beast than an idea for a movie. You may in fact have a useful invention that Epson wishes to acquire. That says absolutely ZERO about whether or not a movie about that invention or employing that invention is a worthwhile investment.
Yes, exactly. Years ago I was pitched a lovely little game that was designed to be an homage to a classic older game (let’s call it “X”). After the pitch was finished the conversation went like this:
“Have you acquired the rights to X?”
“Well, no. We’ve looked into that. Unfortunately the company that made X went out of business in the 90’s. However, there’s a holding company who owns the rights and I’m sure if you helped us negotiate … .”
“Stop right there. If you acquire the rights, let us know. Do you have anything else to show us?”
Dude, think about this.
If you somehow convince somebody to back this project of yours, and you don’t have all your ducks in a row, they will lose a shitton of money.
You are doing a singularly terrible job of convincing this board, who will lose nothing by assuming that you’ve got a pretty little duckrow set up - and therefor aren’t hypersensitive to the idea that you might not - that you do, in fact, have said ducks in a row. Or know for sure where they all are. Or even fully understand what a ‘duck’ is.
This is evidence of one of two things:
- You don’t, in fact, have all your ducks in a row, and aren’t aware of most of the ducks you’re setting yourself up to herd.
- You have trouble communicating what’s in your head and will never be able to produce this project until you learn to do that, even if you do, in fact, fully understand what it entails, and have worked out how to achieve that.
Whichever it is, trying to lay it on everybody else is another warning sign that you’d be a bad investment for those folks who’ve got a shitton of money on the line, because you’re presenting yourself as somebody unwilling to work with anybody to get your shit together, and giving the impression that when it fails, you’ll do your damnedest to throw everybody else under the bus.
You need to step back, consider which option is true, and seriously work out how to fix it. (If it’s the second, losing the attitude that you’re so much smarter than everyone else would be a start. Making someone do all the work in understanding you and making them less likely to think you’re worth even meeting halfway is a bad combination.) Then worry about how you’re going to get the ear of the people with the money.
I have a friend who thought like you, only not quite so bizarrely. He had this fixed idea of how Hollywood worked, and thought he could waltz into somewhere and pitch his amazing animated TV series idea (that isn’t all that amazing, or original) and they would fall at his feet, give him loads of money to make it all himself, and then he would be able to delegate a team of geniuses to do all the work while he sat back making occasional creative decisions from on high.
I’m not sure why he thought that was how it worked (though I didn’t really know how the system worked either until recently, and even then it’s in flux right now with new media messing things up a lot) but he actually flew to Hollywood with his plans under his arm ready to pitch to anyone and everyone. He had no completed scripts, only half of one, and a treatment of the main storyline (though he did have episodes 1 - 100 all figured out, in one-sentence sound-bites), plus a few character designs. What he didn’t have was any experience, any production studio, or any money.
Or, as he subsequently discovered, an idea worth a damn, as he came back with no further mention of this misadventure and no further discussions with us about his TV show.
The point is, the system doesn’t work in your favour, it doesn’t work the way you wish it would, and your persistent stubbornness to accept that is not making you look any more favourable towards those who are in the Industry and see poor misguided wretches who wander in off the street like you every week.
If Harvard gave you $600 million you wouldn’t need Hollywood. You’re looking for someone to give you money - if you have money, you can hire whoever you want. Pitching a movie is asking for money.
Yes, they are. You’re proposing something unorthodox while asking someone for a lot of money. It’s going to be difficult.
I assumed otherwise because you never said anything about obtaining the rights to these films in any previous statement. All you said before was that there were films like this all over the internet, and that you assumed that no one had any intent of using them for a Hollywood film.
Here’s the thing. If you go to those people, who you claim have the talent and technical skill to produce I-Max quality films, and say you want the rights in order to sell them to a major studio, their initial reaction will be - what the hell do I need you for? They could go to Hollywood on their own to sell the product and cut out the middle man.
So you want a real answer? You go get your cancer cure made and proven and I assure you that there will be a bidding war for your story.
Good Luck
Why would I even once say something as rhetorical as “I’ve decided to propose this project be done legally”? You would have a point warning me about copyright law, etc., if proposed something that could possibly be interpreted as needing clearing, such as writing a screenplay in the world of someone else’s book. If I propose utilizing people’s exact video(s) in a theater, what else could I possibly be implying than to negotiate with them at some level of the process? It’s common to insert “This U2 song plays here” in a screenplay. The screenwriter doesn’t have to contact U2 to begin a negotiation for the submission of a suggestion that a negotiation be initiated, neither should the default assumption of the person writing the that line, be that they’re implying to use the song illegally.
Look, people, I know my posts are long and it’s an involved thread, but it’s really tiring to have to go back and re-state things I’ve stated because the words weren’t actually read. I said there was professional footage out there, not full Hollywood-ready films.
This type of misinterpretation recently landed me a major blow. I was in contact with a world-champion freerunner who gave me a general green light to utilize his media for the invention component of the project. When I eventually sent a detailed letter to the legal department of his contractor to negotiate finer print, it was forwarded to one of his managers who didn’t have the time/skillset to properly digest it. His surface glance concluded I was engaging in fraud, and he threw me out the window with orders to cease contact with the athlete.
There were other factors–such as that I exhausted the athlete with trivial/confusing updates and non-sequitur advice about SEO–but the thing that kicked it over the top is his manager had no idea what the hell I was talking about, and I had no credentials to back anything up. The athlete saw value in my idea because it was relevant to his thinking processes and hence he could recognize the value instantly, but it was irrelevant to his management and legal department who only saw an annoyance.
The point here is how can I solicit the interest of people who have the skill/time to actually read what I’m writing, when people on a message board are warping simple posts? I heavily appreciate all the feedback, it’s quite useful on the whole, but when I have to go back and state things I said to correct a false interpretation, this says something about the importance of finding a surgial method of pitching my framework.
Look, here’s an epitome example of a cinematographic FR video (3run in New Zealand). It would look stunning in a theater, but there’s no plot, dialogue, themes, story arc, and it’s under 6 min. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to string together 2 hours of this stuff and charge admission, but even if it profited, it wouldn’t be a global blockbuster.
If a solid screenplay had called for all this exact footage to be filmed and edited into a story-driven framework with all the major elements of a successful blockbuster movie, it would be on its way to theaters right now. That’s the crux of this framework as I’ve presented it here. You’ve given me lots of ideas on potential routes to follow, but you can see it certainly can’t go through a screenplay-only submission process.
Thank you all for your help. Yes, I’m appreciative but I can’t continuously state it. I’m only responding to every third point I want to respond to. You’re replying faster than I can type.