by Voyage | Aug 10, 2015 | Audience, Book to Film, Entertainment Business, Pitching
The Key to Getting Your Project into Production For creators like us, generating content comes pretty naturally (excluding the occasional writers block of course). That’s why we do what we do. But as you probably have experienced first hand, writing and conceptualizing isn’t always the hard part; it’s money. Finding investors who are interested in funding your project can be incredibly difficult. It’s the ultimate catch 22 in a creator’s life—investors want to give money to projects that are well known and bound for success, but a project can’t become well known and successful without money from investors. If you don’t have a very generous great uncle waiting in the wings to donate to your creative project, I have the perfect solution to help you out with this age-old dilemma… ***Crowdfunding*** Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising many small amounts of money from a large number of people, typically via the Internet (google.com). Whether or not you’ve heard of crowdfunding before, I’m here to tell you that it should absolutely be on your radar as a tool to finance part (or all) of your project. Websites like Kickstarter.com and Indiegogo.com give you the chance to get your project or ideas off the ground without having to go out and solicit investors the traditional way. These crowdfunding platforms by nature create a reciprocal relationship between investors (who pledge money) and creators (who offer various perks to backers who donate). And it works because everyone is benefiting from the partnership, and the momentum that comes with having so many supporters is exactly what you...
by Voyage | Aug 5, 2015 | Audience, Entertainment Business, Screenwriting Tips
How to untangle the web “Googling yourself” has sort of become the punchline of the digital era—it’s degraded as a vain and silly pastime of the erstwhile millennial. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Far from just an ego trip, Googling yourself can be crucial to building your online presence as a writer. I’d like to encourage you to Google yourself right now. Take a moment, I’ll wait. What are some of the first pages that pop up. Your social media sites—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, your personal blog? Or is Google drawing a big blank? There is a time and a place for the reclusive, mysterious, off-the-grid writer—but falling into that description can be dangerous for the up and coming. The Internet makes it easier than ever for producers, directors, and financiers to find out what you’re all about. And social media searching has become more and more commonplace as a tool for weeding out the unprofessional or unmotivated writers from the writers with serious passion and marketability. Make no mistake: the question on the forefront of a producer’s mind is going to be “how can I market this?” If your website or blog has any sort of following, it means your Internet presence comes with a built-in audience AND that you’ve already got a huge advantage over the throngs of other writers trying to get noticed! It gives the producer a sort of “cheat” into your market—they’ll thank you for having less work to do to create a finished product that people will watch. With so much riding on the kind of persona you exhibit online, there’s...
by Voyage | Jul 13, 2015 | Entertainment Business, Screenwriting Tips
5 questions you must immediately ask yourself upon finishing the first draft of your script Congratulations! You’ve finished your script! Now what? Well, give yourself a pat on the back and take a moment to appreciate your labor of love… Now roll up your sleeves and make a fresh pot of coffee because it’s time to get back to work! The first thing you should do immediately upon finishing your first draft is think about your next draft, and that means asking yourself some tough yet necessary questions. No, we don’t mean, “What’s for lunch?” (although that’s a pretty important question too). We mean that you need examine your draft with a keen and honest eye in order to zero in on its strengths and weaknesses. That way, you can make your second draft all the more intriguing and marketable. As you probably already know, this town is filled with scripts…producers and agents are literally buried in them. And on every desk there are lots of good scripts, but there are not a lot of great scripts. If your script doesn’t grab the attention of the producer, agent, or director in the first 5-10 pages, you can assume that he or she is going to move on to the next one in the sky-high stack on their desk/kitchen table/floor (you get the picture). But here’s the problem…re-writes can seem about as daunting as doing your high school math homework. But don’t worry because we’ve got your back! To help make your script a standout on Mr. Producer’s desk (while also avoiding the feeling that you’re back in Algebra I), we’ve come...
by Voyage | Jun 25, 2015 | Audience, Entertainment Business
One of the worst things that a screenwriter or an author or any content creator can do in their career is operate in a vacuum or think that they’ve got to figure everything out on their own and learn everything by themselves. For some reason, content creators take it upon themselves to think of their pursuit as a lonely one – like this romantic image of a writer stuck in a hotel room in a foreign country writing by himself. If you’re a content creator looking to achieve a result in Hollywood, then you’re going to be really well served to not just learn on your own, but learn from other people’s mistakes and successes and then leverage that learning into your own career. What Makes a Good Mentor There’s a world-renowned success psychologist named Martin Seligman and one of the things that he modeled or created was a framework for identifying who’s a mentor. In other words, who’s worth listening to and who’s not? He said a mentor, a quality mentor who can help you achieve a significant result or a significant outcome, has to satisfy one or more of the following three things. 1) They have to have done successfully what it is you’re trying to do. 2) They have to have helped others achieve success – helped other successfully do exactly what it is you’re trying to do. 3) They are world renowned experts in the field. Anyone who does not satisfy one or more of those equations is not a mentor worth listening to. If they’re not meeting one or more of those equations, they’re...
by Voyage | Apr 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
Voyage Media is proud to announce that our documentary, Valley Uprising, is set to premiere on the Discovery Channel this week as the headline of the newly launched “Elevation Weekend!” Featuring vintage footage of this once fringe lifestyle and the breathtaking Yosemite landscape, Valley Uprising provides an in-depth look at seemingly unknown aspect of American history… “We have a purpose…only through climbing can you find yourself,” says one of the featured climbers in the surprising and riveting documentary Valley Uprising: Yosemite’s Rock Climbing Revolution. The men and women featured in this film have a passion for climbing that is palpable, and jail time and living on the fringes of society are minor details in their minds… as long as they can be on that mountain. Don’t forget to tune into the Discovery Channel on Saturday, April 25th at 8 PM EST to see this remarkable film for yourself. Watch out “Shark Week,” the Yosemite Valley climbers are coming for you! Archives December 2024 (2) November 2024 (2) October 2024 (3) September 2024 (2) April 2023 (1) January 2023 (1) December 2022 (1) October 2022 (1) June 2020 (1) April 2020 (1) February 2020 (1) January 2020 (1) October 2019 (1) August 2019 (1) June 2019 (1) January 2019 (1) April 2018 (1) March 2018 (1) February 2018 (1) January 2018 (1) December 2017 (1) November 2017 (1) October 2017 (2) July 2017 (4) April 2017 (1) February 2017 (1) January 2017 (1) December 2016 (1) November 2016 (1) October 2016 (1) September 2016 (2) June 2016 (1) May 2016 (1) April 2016 (1) February 2016 (3) January 2016 (1) December 2015 (2) November 2015 (1) October 2015 (2) September 2015 (2) August 2015 (2) July 2015 (1) June 2015 (1) April 2015 (1) March 2015 (1) February 2015 (2) January 2015 (3) December 2014 (2) October 2014 (1) September 2014 (3) August 2014 (3) June 2014 (2) May 2014 (5)...
by Voyage | Mar 24, 2015 | Entertainment Business, Screenwriting Tips
Getting Lucky in Hollywood Los Angeles is the entertainment industry mecca, and while it’s helpful to live in the city to gain traction and success, it is not entirely necessary. Our team has compiled 7 tips and strategies to help you stay relevant in the eyes of Hollywood producers, especially if you don’t live in LA. 1. Create A Social Media Presence For Yourself Social media is the simplest, most inexpensive, and accessible way to build a brand for yourself. Make it known to your followers/friends who you are and what makes you tick. Develop your unique voice, and build an audience with it! Having the ability to market yourself is becoming about as important as your project itself – if you don’t sell it, who will? Creating an online presence using sites like YouTube, Twitter and Facebook is a great way to connect with an audience, engage with like-minded people and stay up to date with the goings on in the Industry. Another viable option is to create a blog! You never know who may stumble across your personalized site and like what they see… Take Diablo Cody, for instance. She started out putting her thoughts and ideas on a blog, which ended up catching the eye of Hollywood producers. She later went on to write the screenplay JUNO, which won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in 2008. Twitter is another great forum to showcase your creative ideas and get noticed. The hit TV show “$h*! My Dad Says” began as the Twitter feed of a semi-employed comedy writer, Justin Halpern, who moved back in with his...
by Voyage | Feb 24, 2015 | Book to Film
Unless you’ve been hiding your head under a rock, then you know how hot Book Trailers are… All the major publishers use them to promote their books – Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, and others… And self-published authors now follow suit, with trailers of their own. Book trailers simply make sense when it comes to book promotion… People are much more likely to buy a product when they see a video about it Trailers are visually exciting and entice readers more easily than text They can be used effectively on all the social media platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter, Instagram, etc. They act as a great centerpiece to an author website Unlike paid ads, they live forever, garnering more and more organic views over time As an art form, book trailers are just beginning, but already it’s easy to see what separates the great ones from the lackluster. A great book trailer is cinematic. They are filmed and edited by talented professionals – often with original footage, talented actors, professional voiceover, and exceptional filmmaking. A great book trailer piques a reader’s interest and makes them want to see more! Even celebrities and Hollywood heavyweights have taken notice of this new art form and its power to attract an audience… Check out this trailer for Neil Patrick Harris’ Choose Your Own Autobiography, starring none other than NPH himself. Or this trailer for One More Thing by B.J. Novak, starring B.J. Novak (“The Office”) and Mindy Kaling (“The Office”, “The Mindy Project”). And then there’s some cinematic book trailers that rival those of big-budget movies, shot using 4K...
by Voyage | Feb 11, 2015 | The Expert Network
Whether you love to do it or not, marketing your work is a necessity if you want it to reach people. So you’ve got all your marketing materials together, a logline, a treatment, a clever synopsis. Your pitch is ready to go, but you’ve forgotten one vital thing – visuals. We live in a primarily visual age. One where Instagram has overtaken Facebook as the premiere social media platform to be on, and one where Facebook has reinvented itself to showcase user photos in an effort to keep up. Twitter has shown that moreover, people digest text in smaller and smaller bites. They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and if you’re in it to win a shot at seeing your film on-screen, that has never been more true than right now. Why is visual marketing so important? Rouse an emotion. People make choices on feeling – capture a producer’s emotions, and you’ll have a better chance of capturing his signature on an option agreement Complement your worded materials in a way that: A. tells a story and then B. shows a story – this is a winning combo that works! Visuals tell a story in microseconds (a picture speaks a thousand words – multiple pictures can speak millions) Click Here to see examples of visual from our film project marketing Consider the film GRAVITY, directed by Alfonso Cuaron and starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. GRAVITY’s tagline is simple enough: “Don’t Let Go.” It communicates a simple message, and may or may not capture attention on its own. But then let’s take that tagline, and pair it...
by Voyage | Jan 23, 2015 | Book to Film
What do “Hunger Games,” “Harry Potter,” “Jurassic Park,” “The Godfather,” and “Gone with the Wind” all have in common? Obviously, they’re all major big-screen successes, but did you know that every one of these film properties is based on a novel? Would it surprise you to learn that many of the most commercially and critically successful movies of all time started on the pages of a book? Seven of the top ten highest-grossing movies of all time (when adjusting for inflation) are book adaptations, and in 2015 alone, nearly half of the Oscar nominees for Best Picture are book adaptations (including The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game, and American Sniper). So why aren’t you adapting a book for the screen yet? Here are 4 reasons why your next screenplay should be based on a book: 1) “True Stories” are hot right now! Audiences love movies based on real life events, and the pile of autobiographies and provocative life stories just waiting to be adapted is infinite. Just watch the dollar signs appear in the eyes of development executives as you pitch your project – they’ll perk up faster than you can utter the words, “based on a true story.” 2) Adaptations carry more weight than original screenplays in Hollywood A book provides an established concept with solid characters, which saves both time and money. Bottom line: from a buyer’s perspective, an adaptation will be taken much more seriously than an original screenplay. Regardless of how popular the source book actually is, an adaptation implies that an audience already exists for the story and that it is marketable. 3)...
by Voyage | Jan 21, 2015 | Blog post, Uncategorized
It’s been a big year at Voyage and I wanted to take a moment and thank you for being a part of our growing family of creators! Without you, none of what we accomplished would have been possible. We set some big goals in 2014 – we wanted to get some films made and we wanted to expand our ability to make a real difference to creators (and their projects) around the world. Toward that end, one of our successes was officially launching our “Originals” program, specifically designed to partner with select creators to bring their projects to market and arrange for packaging, financing and distribution. We took on 14 new film and television projects in the program this year, all of which are now partially packaged or financed and in various stages of development. A couple standouts include producing and releasing our award-winning and highly profitable film, VALLEY UPRISING, and bringing the scripted TV series, UNBRIDLED to market and securing the participation of 2 well-known and respected showrunners. You can read more about our Success Stories here. We’re also proud of our partnership with Amplify Releasing/GoDigital, which enabled us to guarantee distribution to some of the film projects in our Originals Program as well as for several clients who took advantage of our new distribution business plan / strategy service, “Distribution Deep Dive”. Our Professionals Program is in its 3rd year and took a surprising and unplanned twist. Not only does the program continue to serve as the incubator for projects that enter our Originals Program, but it also now acts as a crucible for nurturing and identifying...
by Voyage | Jan 14, 2015 | Uncategorized
TOM CARTIER ON METHOD WRITING These days treatments and presentations can’t be run of the mill considering what’s at stake. They need ideas that haven’t been seen before. The toolkit used to tell stories is getting refreshed almost daily but it all still starts on a blank piece of paper. It’s going to take bold, imaginative thinking to stand out. What’s more, this creativity has to be applied to the new medium of the Internet where anything goes. Being a writer, faced with these daunting thoughts, I always rely on my creative process, which applies a salad of different philosophies to the challenge of coming up with big, new ideas. One school of thought believes the best, most original thoughts, especially when writing images for the screen, come from the subconscious. James Cameron once said he had a nightmare about an invincible robot hitman sent from the future to kill him. Hence, The Terminator. I too subscribe to this theory and diligently write down any visions I’ve had while sleeping. Although at times it’s difficult to remember what I’ve dreamt, I find it a vital process. As we enter an age where graphic photo-realism can be applied to almost any concept, where there are 10-second horror film banner ads, no avenue to original ideas can be overlooked. But I also like to have a grounding sense of the reality of a concept. I like to dig into the most granular, un-thought-of details about a subject before execution. And I’m a firm believer that reference like clips, films, books and photography is just the start. As much as possible, I’ll...
by Voyage | Dec 30, 2014 | Uncategorized
This has been a very busy year for us here at Voyage Media! Our clients are making huge strides in getting their projects made and manifesting their careers as successful Hollywood writers and filmmakers. So, as the end of the year approaches, we would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the year and showcase some of our esteemed clients and their wonderful project successes! VALLEY UPRISING Creators: Nick Rosen & Pete Mortimer Nick and Pete came to us with a rough cut of their documentary. They joined our Professional’s Program to solve some core creative problems with their storyline and ended up creating an amazing, award-winning documentary. Voyage ended up executive producing the documentary with narration by Peter Sarsgaard. The film has won the GRAND PRIZE in all five festivals in which it has competed. Valley Uprising is also available on Blu-ray, DVD, or digitally through the Sender Films website. UNBRIDLED Creator: Marilu Norden Rising through the ranks of our Book-to-Screen program, Marilu had one of our producers and screenwriters adapt her award winning book and true story into a one-hour TV drama. We also worked with Marilu to create a stunning visual pitch lookbook, which helped the project picked up by two successful showrunners!. The project is now being shopped around to TV networks as a Voyage Original. STRANGER Creator: Shaun Cunningham Shaun signed up for an Insider Strategy Session for his film project, Stranger. The script read great so we decided to set the project up in our Originals program, together with co-producer, John Crye.. What started as a seed turned into a...
