Christopher Parker, CEO of Story Data, kindly agreed to answer my questions about his new site, what's in it for Screenwriters and how he sees it developing.

https://screenwritingopportunities.wordpress.com/2020/02/26/interview-with-christopher-parker/

Hope it's helpful to SSers.

Awesome! Good work, Anthony. Gonna read the interview now. :)

Interesting. I'm still not tempted to upload any of my scripts but worth keeping an eye on to see if they do evolve past the hosting element and what they manage to achieve.  Thanks, Anthony.

Thanks - great interview, Anthony - you are such a service to this site.

My initial test observations (you can pass these along to Christopher if you think they would be helpful to him).

The search areas are not robust. It contains a lot of elements that a producer just would never care about or search on (e.g., Character Name, Dialogue, Description/Action, etc.) are just not things producers would search on - they don't give a damn what the character's name is.  These things are here only because that is what the site can search on, not because they are search requirements. Christopher should check out Script Revolution and see on the data elements that are able to be added when a script is uploaded - like budget, time periods, ages suited for, special effects, etc, etc.  These are the things producers would care about. Those elements (and many more) need to be in the data base. i.e., there is very little of value that can be extracted from a script that would aid in a producer's search for a script that meets his need.

I really think he ought to be considering partnerships if he wants exponential growth with all of those sites that provide script hosting for free. i.e., they already have thousands of scripts - like this site - they should be partnering with them to offer the data base hosting for the scripts that are there.

The WGA stuff on his site is just silly - no one cares.

The "visible" to the public toggle switch in the edit section does not work.


Anyway - thoughts so far.

Thanks Dave, I'll be sending him a link to the thread so he can peruse and pick up on anything he thinks is useful... my own observation is that he certainly seems to be switched on and know what he wants for the site, and the fact that he's not charging writers or producers is refreshing!

But... it's not Christopher and Story Data that has the WGA requirement, that's Script Haven that do... they've yet to respond to my request for an interview... but the other two have so they're in the pipeline ;-)

Best

Anthony

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Thanks Dave, I'll be sending him a link to the thread so he can peruse and pick up on anything he thinks is useful... my own observation is that he certainly seems to be switched on and know what he wants for the site, and the fact that he's not charging writers or producers is refreshing! But... it's not Christopher and Story Data that has the WGA requirement, that's Script Haven that do... they've yet to respond to my request for an interview... but the other two have so they're in the pipeline ;-) Best Anthony

My confusion- thanks

Thanks for the interview - After reading it I signed up and uploaded some scripts.

Any site that will let me host for free is fine in my book.

Only having a couple of issues with the site so far - uploaded 5 scripts and each one had my name as the script title (some of them are my fault as I sometimes use a JPG with my title on the title page). I can edit the listing though, so not too bad.

Can't seem to delete any of them - keep getting an error message.

My scripts don't appear to be visible to the public - Don't know how to change that, or if I can - what's the point in hosting it if no one can see it?

Other than that, don't see the harm in having another place to host some scripts for free.

Quoted from Matthew Taylor Thanks for the interview - After reading it I signed up and uploaded some scripts. Any site that will let me host for free is fine in my book. Only having a couple of issues with the site so far - uploaded 5 scripts and each one had my name as the script title (some of them are my fault as I sometimes use a JPG with my title on the title page). I can edit the listing though, so not too bad. Can't seem to delete any of them - keep getting an error message. My scripts don't appear to be visible to the public - Don't know how to change that, or if I can - what's the point in hosting it if no one can see it? Other than that, don't see the harm in having another place to host some scripts for free.

I had the same problem on visibility - can't change it from no

Quoted from Matthew Taylor . My scripts don't appear to be visible to the public - Don't know how to change that, or if I can - what's the point in hosting it if no one can see it? Other than that, don't see the harm in having another place to host some scripts for free.

I've been in contact with them. Now you can change that - they fixed the problem. Go to your script - hit the edit in the dialogue box and you can change the visibility to yes.

Nice, well done Dave!

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Nice, well done Dave!

My pleasure

well, I think they better have 'yes' on default as opposed to defaulting 'no visibility'.

I'm not sure what the default is Kham, but mine was visible and I didn't do anything beyond uploading the script.

Quoted from AnthonyCawood I'm not sure what the default is Kham, but mine was visible and I didn't do anything beyond uploading the script.

Make sure you test that by searching for your script (any element). That's how I discovered the problem with mine

I've done a quick couple of searches Dave and Dr Psycho showed up, but I'll do some more checking as I didn't test all the search features.

Sounds like you're good. Mine didn't show up at all