by Voyage | Jun 11, 2014 | Audience, Book to Film
Keys to Turning Your Book Into A Film Or Original Series – Part 4 Make Your Film Project Stand Out — Get Ahead on Time and Money In Part 3 of Keys to Turning Your Book Into A Film Or Original Series we talked about creating short form materials to help facilitate getting producers to read your work and this week we’re going to talk about why creating short form materials help a producer not just save time, but also save money. When a producer is deciding which projects to focus on, which aren’t projects to consider, and which projects to option and acquire, they’re largely considering three major things: What is their cost to bring the project to market? How much of an investment are they going to need to make? What’s the probable speed to market, meaning is the project efficient or inefficient? How much time will it take? Does the project meet the producer’s creative and market needs? These questions can help your film project stand out. A Closer Look at Costs The other thing to really understand is that producers in Hollywood are signatories of the Writers Guild of America. The Writers Guild of America is the union that manages all screenwriters and authors. In the case of a producer in Hollywood who’s the signatory to the union, when they’re looking at a novel to adapt, one of the first things that they’re likely to need to do is hire a screenwriter to develop the material into a treatment or screenplay. The minimum union scale for a writer in the Writers Guild of America is roughly...
by Voyage | Jun 4, 2014 | Book to Film
Hook them with a logline First and foremost, in order to sell a story, you have to know its logline like the back of your hand. Loglines are an industry standard of communication, so being a master of writing a logline is definitely a requirement. So what is a logline, exactly? A logline is a one sentence compelling and cinematic description of your story, its main character, that characters main objective, and the main obstacle they face. Your logline is the absolute essence of your story. Loglines are, by necessity, simple. But they aren’t always easy. While a logline is a simplified encapsulation of the main points of your story, fitting the essence of your story into an easily-digestible sound bite can sometimes be tricky. You have to make several important decisions: What does the audience absolutely need to know? What else can they infer from the page? What can you make them feel? What makes your story stand out from the rest? In order to be as effective as possible, your logline needs to do these three key things: 1. Answer their questions: First, it must answer the who? what? where? when? and how? of your story. This is the bare bones of the story you’re trying to tell. Without this, it can be difficult for a producer to determine what your story is even about, even if the concept may be clear as crystal in your own head. A good rule of thumb is to include one or two telling adjectives about both your protagonist and antagonist. It might be tough to pin down your complex...
