A highly respected screenplay consultant draws most of his business from solicitations posted on film discussion forums.
“I'd be happy to look at your screenplay and provide you with studio level notes for a modest price,” he wrote.
The esteemed and established script doctor makes most of his money by telling aspiring film scribes on message boards about his services, most often unsolicited. The consultant's website, which looks like it was designed by a 3rd grader using Windows 98 for the first time, touts his vast network of contacts in the film industry. He also mentions the fact while attempting to draw business on internet message boards, instead of from referrals from said network.
“I'm an established and awrd (sic) winning producer with insider knowledge of what Hollywood Exectives (sic) cave (sic),” the owner of Horse Script Screenwriting Services wrote on a social networking website for budding entertainment professionals.
The skillful critiquer offered to provide development quality notes to the rookie screenwriters in the thread, the kind that the studios that he claims to be connected to—but who give him less business than posting on the internet—provide working writers for free.
“I'll give you the treatment you'd expect from a studio,” he said, referring to a business entity that treats artists as children and produces films that follow a strict set of guidelines designed to strip away originality.
After answering a poster's question with information available in dusty books on library shelves, the consultant boasting insider knowledge offered to critique the script.
“I'll use my years of experience to get your script ready for pitching for the low price of $299.00,” he typed, soliciting a product that cost as much as a semester long community college course, as a way to access his network of established producers.
He typed the advice on a networking website with features that allow screenwriters, producers and directors to communicate for free.
“If the script is camera ready, I'll send it to one of my numerous professional contacts that are hungry for scripts!”
Instead of networking with other aspiring filmmakers, the consultant offered to prepare the aspiring scriptwriter's screenplay to be pitched to Hollywood executives, who are notorious for only financing concepts that are assigned after vetting by market research firms, numerous board meetings and several months of therapy sessions with their shrink in Beverly Hills.
The consultant offered “invaluable advice” that would inform their storytelling “forever” for more than the price of a cell phone, a device used to record found footage horror films and micro-budget independent features.
When another user accused the consultant of violating the forum's ban on self-promotion, a moderator for the website, which is owned by the script consultant's friend, stepped in and explained that they encourage the “organic” way he solicited business.
Many users sat at their computers mulling over the thread, resisting the urge to post that it was about as organic as showing up to a blind date naked with a hard-on.
Comments
Many forums on scriptwriting are merely storefronts to sale aspiring writers that special something needed to be successful: pitch sessions, feedback, access to gatekeepers, special instruction, formulas, polish, coverage, notes, doctoring, trade secrets, encouragement, handholding, magic beans, etc. NOTE: During the California Gold Rush, great fortunes were made selling picks, shovels and maps to miners looking to strike it rich. The same is true now in a digital format.
The financial success of these sites also indicates (to me) there are simply too many scripts chasing too few buyers. If there were only 2 scripts available in the whole blue eyed kitty world and both of these were terrible, there'd be a bidding war.
Something that continually astonishes me is how cynically this industry operates toward amateur writers. Over the past five years, I've watched a talented writer go from placing as a finalist in almost all the competitions, to getting nines on the Blacklist, to now scouring screenwriting forums looking for consultancy work - because nobody is buying their scripts or giving them assignments. Every other post she makes is telling writers they need to pay a consultant or at least buy a BlackList evaluation (she is friends with the owner). That isn't a career, but sadly it's the best it seems many writers, even ones with a remarkable track record, can muster. It makes me think that something is seriously wrong within the system when someone is lauded as valuable yet ends up left to cannibalise on their peers. Either the wrong writers are being given awards, they aren't being promoted enough by the services that award them, nobody cares about the award they've received, or there simply is near zero market demand.
I also seem to have accumulated quite the list of script consultants who are being recommended on one site while engaging in flame-wars with working writers in another. It's incredulous to watch sometimes. What's worse is many also appear to have skin so thin they probably cast a shadow of a skeleton - yet regularly chastise writers for not being able to handle their harsh feedback.
I recommended a script consultant once. He was held in high standing and a friend of a friend. I only recommended him because the writer who approached me was adamant she needed a consultant. She paid her money. He made her feel so bad she quit writing. I feel guilty about it all the time and will never make that mistake again.
The common element in everything being mentioned is money leaving your pocket and finding its way in someone else's pocket.