Screenwriting : Things I Don’t Need in My Coverage by Jesse Shanks

Jesse Shanks

Things I Don’t Need in My Coverage

One thing I don’t need to be told in my coverage, is the criticism that it might be too expensive to produce my script. I don’t give a flip how expensive it is. That’s somebody else’s problem.

Jason Mirch

Hey Jesse Shanks - you make a good point! Write what you want to write and tell the sorry that you want to tell. The only thing one must keep in mind is that bigger budgets can limit the number of buyers, which is sadly just a reality of the market.

Jesse Shanks

On a related note: I don’t need to know that my script might not fit with the current climate of “creativity” in the business. So what? I am chasing a great film, not a hack job that fits into a cubbyhole.

Jesse Shanks

Hi Jason, Both my comments were tongue-in-cheek mostly. I was hoping that people might chime in with some things from coverage that are slightly irritating for humor's sake. I was just musing about the idea that production companies make these $200 million bombs with cookie-cutter, cliché-ridden scripts and then I get told my screenplay would be too expensive. A reader for coverage has to know that the person who has written and submitted a script has spent countless hours pondering the obvious things like cost and climate or that the "audience needs to feel the characters and suspense" and is desperate for some technical writing criticism. I was just spoofing it.

Martin Reese

I get it Jesse Shanks. Admittedly I have my $100 million space opera script on that back burner. LOL!

Angela Cristantello

Martin, I would pay all the money to see your space opera. And if I had $100 million (/$1 million/$1000) I'd certainly help you make it :)

Craig D Griffiths

Jesse you can write more cheaply.

It can be valuable feedback if that is the only thing holding a sale back. Think of this metaphor, Fish and Chip is a good meal. But does the fish need to be line caught Salmon from Vancouver or can it be Hake.

Martin Reese

Thanks for your encouraging words Angela Cristantello !

Jim Boston

Amen, Jesse! AMEN!

When the judges the folks at We Screenplay hired to critique the entries in this year's Diverse Voices competition saw "Pixie Dust," those judges told me that having the twelve main characters perform all those songs would run up the cost of making the film.

I was incensed.

Result: I don't enter screenwriting contests anymore.

I doggone agree with you!

Jesse Shanks

It goes to the heart of what “critical thinking” is and the lack thereof in most folks.

Dan MaxXx

Jim, screenplay contests shouldn't consider "budget"; they aint making movies. Judge scripts by storytelling craft. On paper, nobody gives a shit if your characters fly G6 jet versus commercial plane; judges need to focus on storytelling, not book keeping.

The only folks writers need to listen to are ppl making movies for a living; production company salary readers. I mean there's coverage (paid services), and there's coverage (by prod co/producers). Choose the latter.

CJ Walley

Budget is critical at an indie level but it's not exactly hard to adapt most scripts to suit constraints. It's just words and they're digital at that. I don't see why so many people seem to treat them like they're carved into stone.

My biggest beef with readers commenting on budget is how few of them have the knowledge/experience to back it up. It's something you really only learn from making movies at a producer level or studying the accounting for existing productions. However, even then, two producers can have entirely different projections on costs due to what they can make happen for the lowest amount. A big part of producer culture is bragging about how much cheaper you can get something done.

On my first film we had coverage done by a sales agent to help solidify the pitch to investors and, while the reader gave a glowing recommend, they commented we couldn't make it under a certain amount. We made it for one-fortieth of their number. This is a reader who'd made a life-long career out of giving coverage for the likes of New Line, about as experienced and knowledgeable as one gets.

Cheryl Hughes

Jesse if you are a rockstar screen writer who can command a big budget then awesome, but if not, you gotta think about the nickles and dimes. Dream big in a budget.

Jesse Shanks

This is all gets away from my original points about script coverage. No script emerges from a void. All potential screenwriters (whether rockstars or not) know about budgets and trends in the industry. That is all flogged endlessly on blogs on the hundreds of screenwriting sites. The screenwriter needs criticism of style, character and thematic elements, in other words, a technical analysis, not a speculation on producing the script. If the script is good enough, the cost is moot and if it is not, then the cost is moot.

Cheryl Hughes

I guess what I take from that note in my script coverage is that if it’s too laborious then it won’t get made and that is true. Even if it’s soooo awesome there are other soooo awesome scripts that don’t have that large budget. In the end it’s as much about making money as it is about writing, and the more money laid out is less money in the bank. They are looking to make an easy profit. If you’re not getting everything you want in your script coverage, ask for a refund and find someone

Jesse Shanks

My thought was not to complain about script coverage. I started with a “complaint” in the sense of providing what I did not want in order to elicit what I do, which is a round table on the art of said screenwriting. If you look back to my various posts, you will see I tried to steer back to that. Meaning back to these are the things I want coverage on. Have I created a world? Is my style consistent? Is the vocabulary of my language appropriate? My argument is that every second wasted on those obvious issues takes away from the script quality evaluation I am seeking in coverage. Mine have been useful and perfectly fine with good notes on technique. But I do grit my teeth a bit on some notes. Thus the slightly sardonic post that began this. Screen time is so fragile and wispy and the written page is so turgid and slow. I like to think about the nature of capturing cinema lightning while my feet are dragging in the mud.

Cheryl Hughes

I get what you are saying regarding giving notes on obvious things like budget. But, if that’s all they have to comment on everything else must be amazing. Getting notes is frustrating. The best advice I ever got in my lifetime was…Listen to the orchestra not the instrument.

William Martell

No.

Cost is your problem.

100%.

The purpose of a screenplay is to become a movie. A screenplay is a part of a movie and it needs to fit, or it's garbage - it has no use. If a script costs too much to be practical - if there's no way that it can become a movie? That's a very serious problem. Even if they just read the screenplay as a sample, it's also a sample for the practical considerations.

Jesse Shanks

William, I appreciate your comment. It does draw a line. Or does it? Do you choose your setting so that it will be cheaper? If your character is hard or expensive to cast, do you write it out or change it? Can you imagine whether your producer is clever or a poor purchaser? Is your director a perfectionist who forces endless retakes or reshoots? Where does your line end up? If someone tells me that it’s too expensive to produce, I accept that as their opinion. But it certainly doesn’t invalidate my choices. A smarter producer might be better anyway because whether a script is garbage has nothing to do with how much it costs. If you want to tell me that the script is not good enough to spend the money on, that would be more useful. So like my original point still stands: To tell me my script is too expensive to produce is wasting my time as a screenwriter looking for feedback.

Craig D Griffiths

I have to back Big Willy on this (reference to a post a few years back) on this. If I am dying of thirst a glass of water is worth millions. If your scripts has no way of getting close to making money it is a waste of your time to write it. This clever producer has an option. To completely rework your script or just go to the next script in a pile of a million that is of the same quality and can be made and be profitable - I know what I would do.

There are hundreds of things you can do to lower a budget. This is an indication of your skill as a writer as well. Simple things, not just VFX and crowds. Something as simple as INT. NIGHT is far less expensive than EXT. NIGHT. Water is your enemy in budget. Do you need the crowd or the sound of the crowd. Luther Season 3 was going to cancelled. They had no money to finish the season. They went to rewrite it and use existing sets, but the sets had been demolished. You can shoot in London (on the streets) as long as there are 3 or less people in a scene, 1 camera, 1 sound person and no video village. So that is what they did. When you watch it, you don’t see it, until you hear Idris Elba in an interview talk about it.

So you can tell a great story cheaply showing a mastery of skill. Yes Luther season 3 would have been more expensive originally. But that is the luxury working for the BBC gives you.

Dan MaxXx

so nobody here write spec scripts as writing samples? Might as well be producers if all you got is one screenplay and thats all you want to do. You dont need outside coverage/feedback.

Cheryl Hughes

All about the bennies on the dough-ray-me

Jesse Shanks

That is an appropriate ending for this thread of discussion. Thanks all. Craig, those tips are good stuff.

Kiril Maksimoski

Jesse, I'd say you don't need coverage at all, but end of day everyone decides for himself...I don't know bout you folks, but coupla guys in here I'd listen to carefully....very carefully...and as far I know they charge nothing for their comments...

CJ Walley

I detail some budget related writing considerations when writing in my blog The One Rule Of Writing For Independent Film

It's a very contentious topic however and, in the bigger picture, potential profitability is tied to market appeal just as much as production cost. A low budget script isn't that appealing to produce if the audience size and distribution channels are limited.

There's some oddball stuff that most screenwriters are simply never going to catch. Want to shoot a simple feature in a back yard in LA starring a teenage SAG actor with the correct permit? Boom, you just added $30K in fire marshal and tutor fees to the budget and can only shoot five hours a day.

As mentioned in the blog, anything over 90pp is potentially a big issue for indie features. How many readers are picking up and commenting on that?

Maurice Vaughan

Hey, CJ. How are you? Thanks for sharing the article. I read it. It has a lot of useful info that I didn't know. There's a part that says "Large sums of cash have to be sourced from official suppliers but still aren’t costly to rent out." Can't you use prop money? Prop money is very cheap online.

CJ Walley

There's certain rules you're supposed to follow with stuff like prop money and identification materials so you aren't technically involved in counterfeiting. Bigger productions can't get away with side-stepping them. We had a nightmare getting our FBI badges on the last film due to delays in supply. Everything has to be sourced from approved suppliers and accounted for on set.

I'm great. Third feature went into production this week.

Maurice Vaughan

Thanks, CJ Walley. I looked up movie prop money and found this: https://propmoney.movie/ It tells more about using movie prop money. Movies on Netflix, Hulu, etc. use the money. I'm rewriting a feature script where two bags of money are used.

Congrats on the feature going into production.

Jesse Shanks

Thanks Kiril, CJ and Maurice and other commenters for taking the time. I'm glad I got this out here in this forum because I have received some real food for thought. I am going to do some thinking more about how a budget can be a source of inspiration rather than a hindrance to the creative process.

Maurice Vaughan

You're welcome, Jesse Shanks. When I write scripts, I keep the budget in mind. Not to be a hinderance. Keeping it in mind helps me avoid including unnecessary characters and things.

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