The production company or the producer’s primary function is to see the film in dollars and in time, using the script as a blueprint to make the film. If you don’t have film production experience, in my opinion, you’ll forever be a writer “at 30,000 feet.” That is, you’ll never gain the insight into what it takes to put together a film, frame by frame.Īnd without that insight, your writing will likely never be attractive to producers, because producers live and breathe that insight. And you learn what it takes to speak a thousand different “languages” - from art department to production office to P.A. You learn very quickly why a poorly-written or too-dense block of action can slow down a production, costing everybody time and money. Learning how a film is made is absolutely mandatory because writers must understand, instinctively, what their words mean when they put them on the page, and why it’s vital for everything on that page to be clear to all members of all the various departments and cast.īy working on a film for any length of time, you learn very quickly, for example, which lines of dialogue are important and which can be excised. It only matters that you get some experience under your belt and learn how a film is put together, from soup to nuts.Īnd it’s not optional. It doesn’t matter what you do on the crew - writer, director, grip/electric, makeup, or P.A. Getting aboard a film shoot of any shape, size, or budget - whether it’s for a script you wrote or for a script someone else wrote - is any writer’s first essential step. These days, whenever someone asks me those questions, I respond with questions of my own. I’ve run a script coverage service since 1999, and, as you might imagine, I’m asked those questions above… ALL. In fact, if you have drive and persistence, and can back those up with talent, it’s actually pretty dang straightforward. That said, breaking into the film industry as a screenwriter or tv writer isn’t impossible. Why? One key reason:īecause, uh, well, everybody wants to write for the film and tv industry. But, as you might’ve noticed, get paid for writing for the film and tv industry is not an easy thing to do. These are the eternal questions asked by aspiring screenwriters everywhere.

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