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a) Be a well-known screenwriter who gets to work consistently with produced credits that fully reflect your vision, but are always poorly received by critics and audiences alike
Which would you choose, and why?
Sure, I'll be Skip Woods. I get paid like him, right?
Under Andrew's hypothetical scenario you do get paid both ways. Ah, okay, commission only for B. Steve, you just made me realise how relentlessly boring and aggravating B could be.
What's C?
P.S. Andrew, I notice you're still in NY. What are you up to there lately?
Let's just say my whole life is fluid right now. I'm not quite sure what the hell is going on. I'm in a mid-life crisis in my 30s.
For me, A is about getting control over your work, and taking enjoyment from the sense of achievement and control.
Whereas B is more about putting the audience before those very natural tendencies. Which is not to say one is somehow morally better than the other.
The reason I would choose B is not because I want plaudits, but being involved in film is a chance to make movies that touch people in the way that movies touch me.
Imagine being a part of The Dark Knight and knowing you've made something that people care about so deeply, versus making a movie like Transformers, where no one really enjoys it, and yes it's your vision, but are you really touching people in a meaningful way, you know.
That's the basic philosophical conundrum I was trying to get at
Like everyone else, I'd take pretty much any option that meant I got to write!
For me, A is about getting control over your work, and taking enjoyment from the sense of achievement and control.
Whereas B is more about putting the audience before those very natural tendencies. Which is not to say one is somehow morally better than the other.
The reason I would choose B is not because I want plaudits, but being involved in film is a chance to make movies that touch people in the way that movies touch me.
Imagine being a part of The Dark Knight and knowing you've made something that people care about so deeply, versus making a movie like Transformers, where no one really enjoys it, and yes it's your vision, but are you really touching people in a meaningful way, you know.
That's the basic philosophical conundrum I was trying to get at
Like everyone else, I'd take pretty much any option that meant I got to write!
I think this is a highly romanticised vision tbh.
The reality is that it's more like a factory job. You'd come in, write some stuff, then leave. Years later the film comes out, and the stuff you wrote may or may not be on the cutting room floor.
You're only doing the job to pay the bills and so your wife doesn't leave you. Plus, maybe one day you'll actually get to see something you do care about, one of your own stories, get made... if you pay enough dues. You don't care about Batman or any other silly comic book character.
Anything you did write that made it in to the film would be claimed by each and every other writer that worked on the film, but you wouldn't really care as none of you get credit anyway.. That all goes to the director and actors and the people who invented the characters in the first place.
In the time it took to shoot, edit and release the film, you'd have worked on dozens of other gigs and all but forgotten it. Your only goal would be to lever that glory to get your own stuff made, or at least to get another job to keep paying the bills.
I don't see that an uncredited, minor rewrite on a franchise has some profound meaning.
The reality is that it's more like a factory job. You'd come in, write some stuff, then leave. Years later the film comes out, and the stuff you wrote may or may not be on the cutting room floor.
You're only doing the job to pay the bills and so your wife doesn't leave you. Plus, maybe one day you'll actually get to see something you do care about, one of your own stories, get made... if you pay enough dues. You don't care about Batman or any other silly comic book character.
Anything you did write that made it in to the film would be claimed by each and every other writer that worked on the film, but you wouldn't really care as none of you get credit anyway.. That all goes to the director and actors and the people who invented the characters in the first place.
In the time it took to shoot, edit and release the film, you'd have worked on dozens of other gigs and all but forgotten it. Your only goal would be to lever that glory to get your own stuff made, or at least to get another job to keep paying the bills.
I don't see that an uncredited, minor rewrite on a franchise has some profound meaning.
It's definitely a fluffly, romanticised take on the industry; really meant mainly as a philosphical musing more than hardnosed take (although i don't disagree with your take).
Having worked production crew for a good few years (ranging from $200m+ productions to <£1m), the one thing you learn quickly is how cynical and sycophantic the industry is. It's an industry where beautiful things happen on screen, but you have to learn to navigate this by balancing the fluffy and the hardnosed. Part of the reason I chose to leave the industry (at least in the capacity of crew) is that it's a whole load of shit not commensurate with great reward. Crew (unless a specified creative department) is likely to get you to 1st AD or maybe PM after years and years of dealing with shitty people and patchy pay. No one grows up wanting to be a 1st AD or production manager, you know.
So with all that in mind, it's important to really understand the motivation for getting in, as this helps you to decide if it's all worth it, hence the binary choice of A & B. Going granular obviously necessary ultimately, but I think it's important to understand the foundational motivation before, as flawed and fluffy as the choices are!
Anyway, it's a good topic to chew the breeze on, I think.
Last time I worked on a big pic was one of the Marvel movies. ToI spent about twelve hours a day up a ladder on my own, occasionally turning on a light and I decided that was my time to bow out. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with it all, I just thought... meh..
I still turn up on sets sometimes if mates are working on something interesting..Game of Thrones or whatever, and I recently popped over to see some 'secret' Hbo series being filmed because a friend of mine was responsible for building an entire submarine as a set, but the novelty of the big movies, even Star Wars, has largely gone for me.
I'm glad I've done it though I've seen some of the best actors and directors up close and seen what the level is.
My original motivation was to make films with a group of friends, being creative, having fun and eventually getting really good, but that never happened.
What demotivates me these days is the sheer saturation of content, and the related paucity of the independent market. The days of making a film, then selling it are largely gone, now you've got to be a marketing expert alongside everything else. When I'm writing a script there's a large part of me being resistant as I'm thinking, do I really want to go through the rigmarole of pre-production, production, directing, editing and then get to the point where the real work begins and you've got to run an entire marketing campaign to get noticed?
The answer is still yes, but an increasingly large part of me is thinking, just write prose instead.
Last time I worked on a big pic was one of the Marvel movies. ToI spent about twelve hours a day up a ladder on my own, occasionally turning on a light and I decided that was my time to bow out. Not that there was anything particularly wrong with it all, I just thought... meh..
I still turn up on sets sometimes if mates are working on something interesting..Game of Thrones or whatever, and I recently popped over to see some 'secret' Hbo series being filmed because a friend of mine was responsible for building an entire submarine as a set, but the novelty of the big movies, even Star Wars, has largely gone for me.
I'm glad I've done it though I've seen some of the best actors and directors up close and seen what the level is.
My original motivation was to make films with a group of friends, being creative, having fun and eventually getting really good, but that never happened.
What demotivates me these days is the sheer saturation of content, and the related paucity of the independent market. The days of making a film, then selling it are largely gone, now you've got to be a marketing expert alongside everything else. When I'm writing a script there's a large part of me being resistant as I'm thinking, do I really want to go through the rigmarole of pre-production, production, directing, editing and then get to the point where the real work begins and you've got to run an entire marketing campaign to get noticed?
The answer is still yes, but an increasingly large part of me is thinking, just write prose instead.
Amen.
Got in for similar reasons myself, and that sense of the initial lure of being on set with well-known industry people fades pretty swiftly.
Agreed on content. Looking at the UK landscape, the Pinewoods, Sheppertons, etc are full of Hollywood making their product on the cheap, and then the money from a BBC, Film 4, etc is tied up in cliques, and increasingly in diversity targets. That leaves you having to master marketing to break through, as you say. I would say the relatively cheap costs to film on Canons, Reds, and even iPhones does help level the playing field to a degree, but you're still stuck with having to fight your way through that crowded market. Agreed that the filmmaker role has evolved significantly in past 10-15 years. Some good, some bad outcomes there.
RE: saturation; it's become impossible to effectively track content, especially as now we see Apple, Netflix, Prime all adding to the increased output from traditional tv and film players. There does seem a need to have a product that indexes that content for you, and aids you in choosing and ordering what you want to watch.
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Which would you rather?
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