Film Financing Begins with A Great Script
People tend to gloss over the need for a great script in a film package. The assumption seems to be that any script will do. The truth is, a script actors and directors love is a script that will get funding on the very best terms. Actors, and their managers, are always looking for great roles, and they make tactical decisions to charge a little less or work a little longer in order to get them. Why? Because great roles are what great careers are built on.
Perhaps more importantly, good talent will reject bad scripts out of hand. An actor brings with him every role he has ever played in every film he has ever worked on. A single bad role can wreak havoc on a great career. So a great script with great roles is “bankable” even if written by a first time writer.
How do you get a great script? You write or buy one. If you are a writer, or have one on your team, you can generate your own script. If you know a good writer, or can find one, you can buy a script. The key thing to understand is that even a really great first draft of a script needs to be honed and tightened to make it something amazing. Why does it have to be amazing? Because at 40′ tall and 90 minutes long, a mediocre script is very easy to see. If you have a good script it makes sense to spend weeks or months making it a much better one because you never get a second chance to get it right.
Your first step is probably to get notes from people with special expertise about the themes and topics in your film. For example a script about Nascar should get read by Nascar folks because they will give interesting and relevant feedback. They are your target market and their opinions counts.
To make a good script great, have readings for it using professional SAG actors. This gives you and your writer the opportunity to hear the script rather than read it. You may want to have several readings for it so you can make a series of sequential edits that tighten it up over time. Readings will let you solicit notes from actors as well. You can hire actors for $25-$50 per key actor per reading by going through www.craigslist.com orwww.BackstageWest.com. You can ask actors you pay if it is ok to record them so you can review clips and audio later. You can pay directors for notes on a script as well.
If you get the same notes over and over again, chances are the audience will have the same problem with the film that folks have with the script.
You may think all this is way too much hassle. It is kind of heretical to think that screenwriters need more than a computer to do their job. But film is a collaborative process. When actors and directors love your script you have a property of significant value. Little Miss Sunshine, Juno and A Few Good Men were great scripts long before they were great films. Make sure your script offers actors great roles and you’ll find your film much easier to fund and much more profitable when produced.
Documentary filmmakers may not need a script, but they should develop a very detailed outline of who they are going to talk to, what those people are going to say, what images people need to see, and what the revelatory flow of the documentary will be about.
You need to be able to tell your funder exactly what your film is going to say and how it is going to say it in order to get funding quickly.
Some filmmakers, particularly documentary filmmakers, do not do this. They prefer to set off to the Arctic with a camera to take pictures of penguins or to go to Cuba to explore health care. These folks usually have enough of a name and track record to demonstrate their method works and often they have enough money of their own to invest that they don’t need funding from an outside source. If you absolutely need funding from an outside source, then your documentary needs a very clear, very firm outline.
