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Lesson 1
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12 Replies
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Title: Jake’s Project and Market
Genre: Action Adventure / Thriller
Title: Escape Social
Concept: Four strangers decide to help kids escape from a child slave-labor camp in downtown LA.I think the most attractive parts of this story are the physically dramatic struggles and anguish the kids bravely overcome, and the sacrifices given by people trying to rescue them.
I choose to target managers first with this project to show different characters, traits, writing ability in a local and mostly contained setting, with a $1-$5M budget. Dark, but hopeful, 18-28 demographic overcoming the current issue of a child slave-labor camp.
I learned that a pitch, a logline, and a query letter can all somewhat help shape an outline and story.
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Lesson One:
Down to Heaven
Romantic comedy
Logline: When a good-hearted medical student’s bride dies minutes before the wedding, his guardian angel hops into her body and enrages the bride’s vengeful ghost.
Concept: A guardian angel, Annabelle, falls in love with her charge, Charlie, and finagles her way onto Earth by entering his finance’s body when she dies moments before the wedding. Annabelle discovers the heaven she is missing, when she falls down to Earth and into his arms.
Target: Producers interested in romantic comedies
What I learned today: Conceiving the a concept, and how they differ from loglines and hooks.
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Paul Sokal’s project and market.
1. Genre: Drama
Title: Who Will Live?
Concept: What if a committee of lay people decided who gets to live and who will die?
2. This story, inspired by real events and untold in cinema, reveals how a small invention, for the first time, turned a universally fatal disease into one that is survivable, affecting 800,000 Americans today.
3. I feel like I need someone to help guide me in my new career and connect me to people who will consider my body of work and make films from my scripts. Therefore, I am targeting a manager.
4. I learned a pitch shouldn’t be a “book report” and should focus on why it makes good business sense to invest in my movie.
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TITLE– Spaceman and the Freakshow; GENRE– Young Adult Sci Fi; CONCEPT– 14 year-old
social misfit tries to prove her new neighbor is an alien.
I think the most attractive thing is the lead character’s personality.
I’ll take it to Producers who have made YA movies before.
What I learned today is to think like a Producer
Roger Stone Project. TITLE– Spaceman and the Freakshow; GENRE– Young Adult Sci Fi; CONCEPT– 14 year-old social misfit tries to prove her new neighbor is an alien.
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H. Vince’s Project and Market
Power Players – 2023
Lesson 1: How To Get 50 Script Requests!
What I learned from doing this assignment is…
How I have written the concept many different ways. It may sound good in my mind and make sense to me, but I really need the producer, the manager to tell me how they perceive what I’m conveying to them.
GENRE: DRAMA/THRILLER
TITLE: MENTAL
CONCEPT:
What if a professional woman found herself in a closed-door non-physical mentally abusive relationship with her boss and tries to escape but cannot?
In one or two sentences, tell us what you think is most attractive about your story:
Audiences hear and see stories mostly about abusive power relationships that are physical unlike this one that is mental.
An admittingly mentally ill business owner doesn’t recognize the effects his actions take on a right-hand person.
Tell us which you will target FIRST — managers, producers, or actor’s production company — and why you picked that target:
I have already targeted production companies first in a roundabout way through a paid accessible website to no success. I picked that target because I initially thought I would get more exposure to many production companies at once. I decided to cancel my membership for them to “host” my script.
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Elizabeth Cochrell, “Mother Love”, Producers
1. Give us your Genre, Title, and Concept.
This feature is a Family Drama entitled Mother Love where an unhappy teenager finds her calling as a dog whisperer when she runs away from her rich stepparents to be with her biological mother who turns out to be a stripper MMA fighter who struggles to pay the bills.
It’s a story about how the quality of a mother’s love impacts the life of her children and the importance of finding purpose in life in order to be happy.
2. In one or two sentences, tell us what you think is most attractive about your story
Both men and women will enjoy the beauty of Michelle’s exotic dance and the courageous excitement of her MMA fighting as she re-connects with her teen daughter Rebecca who blossoms, loses weight, and succeeds with her dog whispering business after running away from her rich pretentious stepmother. Teens, animal lovers and all who stand for the Me-Too Movement will be outraged for those emotionally and sexually abused in this story and finally satisfied when the depraved well-heeled family members are poetically defeated by all of those they have mistreated.
3. Tell us which you will target FIRST — managers, producers, or actor’s production company — and why you picked that target.
I would target producers who have done drama and martial arts films for Netflix, Amazon Prime and Paramount because this is a medium budget film. The locations are local and I feel they would know the best actors and directors for this film that are here in the Los Angeles area.
4. Answer the question “What I learned today is…?”
I learned that the message I want to get across is more clear to me when I think about what is attractive about my script.
It also helps my characters become more realistic to me when I imagine popular actors doing the roles.
Lastly when I have specific actions to follow the possibility selling my script becomes more real and I become more serious and motivated to work on it!
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Edward Leschke Project
Title: The Cocktail Party
Genre: Political comedy
High Concept: A Washington DC cocktail party fundraiser is thrown by a Republican woman but her husband is a Democrat and a bit of a troublemaker.
Target: Producers.
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ASSIGNMENT ONE Stephanie O’Leary TUSK Cosmic Horror
Title of Script: TUSK
Genre: Cosmic Horror
Concept: All God’s creatures have their place / On the Earth, perhaps in space
If their hungers match our own / Might they seek our flesh and bone?
MOST ATTRACTIVE ABOUT THE STORY: While a Cautionary Tale, the story is also an exploration of Identity, Sentience, Boundaries, and Spiritual Beliefs.
WHO I’LL TARGET FIRST & WHY: I’m incredibly lucky to already be working with a Producer. I happened upon a free talk he gave on-line on why Horror has become such a popular genre and what he was looking for through a development company in L.A. I felt my short story was a good match so I decided to pitch it, hoping he might be interested in it as a short film. I was STUNNED when he asked if I’d considered expanding the material into a feature (the original is told in 3<sup>rd</sup> person, my protagonist didn’t even have a name, and there was no real backstory leading up to “the inciting incident.”) The past 2 years have been a crash course of re-reading Script Writing books, watching YouTube tutorials, analyzing TONS of movies, converting the existing story into script format, and creating an entire First Act world for this sobering tale to be firmly anchored in (yes, Joshua has the patience of Job!) I’m close to completing the script and hope to get better at crafting pitches; while I have occasional moments of clarity, distilling a two-hour film down to its most provocative essence isn’t my strong suit.
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY IS …
Concepts are key to creating intrigue and suggesting atmosphere.
I need to get better at distinguishing the differences between pitches, hooks, tag lines, and “trailer moments.”
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Vincent Saia
Project and Market
1. War Movie/Black Sheep Squadron/A story of a man sinking to his deepest valley and climbing to his highest peak.
2. It is the inspiring story of a man who was his own worst enemy and overcame his demons to become a hero of legend.
3. I wish to target managers first because that is what would be best for me from a business perspective. They would have a vested interest in getting the best deal for me in terms of money and (if possible) participation in the production of the project.
4. I learned today that I must keep my competitive instincts sharp in order to give my work the chance it deserves.
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Title: Amelia Project and Market.
Title: Ida
Genre: Drama
Concept: The story of Ida B Wells, a journalist, author and civil rights activist who singlehandedly brought the atrocities of lynching to the public in the late 1800’s.
What is attractive: Ida B Wells was the original badass. A woman of conviction and determination, she stood her ground during an incredibly oppressive time for Black people in this country and published the truth about lynching in America. She should be a role model for all women, black and white.
Who to target first: I would like to target a strong actor for the lead role. I would do that through managers. I would also target producers. If any of my shortlist actors has a production company, I would target that too.
What I learned: I learned to look at a pitch as what the producer needs rather than what I am selling
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Title: Piece of Local History
Genre: Horror
Concept: Fourteen-year-old Azuri knows there is something amiss when she first enters the renovated house her parents bought through a realtor specializing in homes where something horrendous happened. Little does she know she will soon be reliving the painful death of its former teenage resident, as well as the deaths of multiple teens from the local area and the other side of the world.
Most attractive thing about it: Character-driven, hopefully appeals to teens as well as adults.
Learned the difference between a pitch, a hook, and a logline.
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Lesson 1 Assignment, (posted), 7/28/24
*Lesson 1 Assignment, reworked 7?30/24
Susan Arnout Smith
GENRE: Light Workers (a genre off-shoot of Faith Based)
TITLE: GOD’S PHOTO ALBUM
CONCEPT: A teacher at a Hawaiian school, gutted over the loss of a child, is being consumed by the Dark, and God sends an Angel down to get her back before her Dark consumes others.
*CONCEPT: I realize based on new lesson material that what I called my ‘Concept’ is really my Logline. Here is my
Concept 2: • What if humans choosing daily between Good and Evil can affect Angels and move the dial on human history?
WHAT’S MOST ATTRACTIVE ABOUT THIS STORY: Based loosely on a true story to which I have the rights, it is a movie of its time, reminding each of us that the war between Good and Evil takes place daily within our own hearts, and that our choices have consequences that affect the world.
WHO TO TARGET FIRST: Specifically producers to get an option agreement, but I’ll keep my ‘synchronicity antenna’ alert to possible actor matches for the role of the Angel.
WHAT I LEARNED TODAY: After taking numerous classes from Hal, I came to see a pattern in dropping out before I finished the class. Many things led to this outcome, which aren’t necessary to detail here. I am committed to doing and finishing this class in an orderly way and using every part of the lessons to further my writing goals of getting this project optioned and produced.
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