by Voyage | Nov 30, 2015 | Entertainment Business, Pitching, Screenwriting Tips
How rethinking your writing can help you bounce back from rejection You don’t need me to tell you that rejections are tough. The stories we tell, the ones we really care about and want to see come to life, are our darlings. They’re the result of hard work and tough love. When you’ve got a story that you’ve slaved away on for weeks, months, or even years of your life, it can be crushing to take that project to a producer and be told it’s not what they want. Worse—they might not even respond to you at all! So how are you, as a writer, expected to traverse the minefield of rejection and criticism we call “Hollywood”? You only have a few minutes, at most, to capture their attention… So what do you say and do to get that producer interested in your book or script? First: don’t panic. Rejection is just as much a part of writing as hand cramps and eye strain. Even the greatest writers can get rejected at the height of their established careers. By nature of marketing to the changing landscape of film, not everything you write is going to find its audience on the first go around. It’s what you do next after your script gets sent back to your doorstep that really counts. Before you plan your next move, it’s important to understand the two types of feedback you can get from a producer… The useful… And the unreliable… If you’ve gotten critical feedback from a producer who’s read your script, you’re already a step ahead on the road to improving your writing’s marketability....
by Voyage | Oct 8, 2015 | Audience, Blog post, Entertainment Business, Font Page, Pitching, Presentations, Producer Interviews, Screenwriting Tips, The Expert Network
Inside The Comic Book Industry’s Latest Cool Thing… Let’s transport ourselves to a simpler time for just a moment… Imagine you’re back in middle school and your favorite limited edition comic book has just been released… You and your friends race to the local comic book shop after school to get your hands on the newest edition of “Captain America” or “Wonder Woman.” You wait patiently in line, with 25 cents burning a hole in your pocket… Finally, you get up to the counter and hand your pocket change to the clerk who slides over the goods. At last you get your hands on your coveted new comic book… And as you begin to flip the pages, a whole other world emerges… While this may or may not have been a reality for you, we can all agree that comic books and graphic novels have played an important role in pop culture and media. What you may or may not know is that there’s a thriving digital marketplace for NEW comics and NEW graphic novels with distribution and sales portals populating various corners of the Internet with readers of all ages scrambling to get their hands on the latest thing. And while we all know many of the blockbusters films we’ve come to know and love are based on comics from Marvel and DC, you may not know that comics and graphic novels have paid a very significant role in the development and sale of numerous other movies and TV series, some of which might surprise you… -30 DAYS OF NIGHT -CONSTANTINE -MYSTERY MEN – 300 -HELL BOY -THE...
by Voyage | Oct 8, 2015 | Entertainment Business, Producer Interviews
How to make your audience care about what’s important to YOU, and use your voice to provoke social action…not reaction What does it take to get an audience to care about ingrained political and global issues? How can you inspire empathy in your viewers? And what social responsibility does the creative have to their wider audience? Bonnie Solomon tackles these questions and more in our latest Voyage producer interview. Oscar Wilde once famously wrote, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” This is a quote that rings very true to the tone of Bonnie Solomon’s work dealing with hot-button, sometimes uncomfortable-to-talk-about social issues. But death, continues Solomon, is of course not the only possible outcome when you need to convince an audience that the truth is relevant and important to their own lives. “They’ll kill you,” says Solomon, “…or they’ll completely tune you out, and watch the Kardashians.” When your goal is to make people listen, you must grab their attention as soon as possible, or their inaction will make future change impossible. Audience boredom is certainly a frustration for many writers, and for Solomon it means that the urgency of her issues aren’t getting through to the people who might need to hear them the most. Of course, not all of us writers are social activists, nor do we specifically call on those themes within our own work. However, what is striking about Solomon’s work is how she strives to inspire a strong ethical sense in her audience, through only the language of film. Knowing how to engage an audience...
by Voyage | Sep 23, 2015 | Blog post, Book to Film, Entertainment Business, Pitching
(HINT: You don’t need a lit agent) When was the last time you were at the movies? If it was sometime in the past 50 years of so (please tell me it was!), then chances are you caught a flick that was based on a book. Book adaptations have always been a source of compelling content (think Jaws and the first Jurassic Park), but more recently, adaptations have become one of the fastest growing, most reliably profitable and attractive markets for producers in Hollywood (think Hunger Games and Harry Potter). Authors everywhere are gaining more and more traction with producers looking for compelling stories to be adapted for film and television… So where do you start? Traditionally, authors begin by looking for a literary agent who would then connect them with producers and agents in the entertainment industry, and act as their calling card to success in Hollywood. Well I’m here to tell you that is not [always] the case… If you are a well-known author who already has a large following of fans and readers, then this traditional route will be effective for you because a lit agent has pull with producers. A lit agent’s job is basically to make a producer’s life easier by acting as a middleman between writers and producers. But… If you are an author who is just starting out or still working to figure out how to gain traction for yourself and your book(s), then going the lit agent route is not your best option. Here’s why: Literary agents are very focused on the projects that will provide an easy transaction with guaranteed...
by Voyage | Sep 11, 2015 | Entertainment Business, Producer Interviews, Screenwriting Tips, The Expert Network
John Crye, Producer Find out how to make Hollywood producers want to work with you again and again by building producer rapport using advice from industry veteran, John Crye. As part of our ongoing series, which asks our producers about their work in the entertainment business, I talked with John Crye, a current Hollywood producer and Voyage team member, about his work in the industry. Here you can read some of his own personal advice on building producer rapport in Hollywood, what a writer can do to make a producer’s life easier–and get them to fall in love with your script while they’re at it. Crye–the former director of Creative Affairs at Newmarket Films, who had a hand in acquiring such modern-day classics as Donnie Darko, Memento, and Whale Rider–has more recently moved on to independent writing, directing, and producing. In his many years in the entertainment business, he’s learned a lot from experience about the production world and the professionals who inhabit it. I asked him about any advice he had to give to writers thinking about entering the business, from the perspective of someone who had not only written himself but also worked extensively with writers as a producer. A common theme tended to reappear in his advice: understanding your producer’s needs is crucial to getting your story made in a way that’s satisfying for everyone. In the most basic terms: you need to make their job as easy as possible. So the question remains: why do YOU need to make their job easy? Aren’t THEY supposed to work for YOU? While a producer is indeed there...
