Alt Script: Five Good Reasons to Write a No-Low Budget Script
I believe that every screenwriter should have at least one no-low
budget script in their portfolio. Even if that writer’s sole ambition is
to write for Hollywood.
In this article, I want to lay out five good reasons why any writer
should know how to write no-low budget, and also why getting a no-low
budget film produced could be a writer’s best shot at the brass ring.
1. Writing scripts for No-Low Budget is harder than any other form of screenwriting
It may seem odd to suggest that something being harder to do, could
be one of the primary reasons for doing it. However, in the case of
screenwriting, it’s one of the best reasons. Show the industry that you
can do something difficult and you prove that you’re valuable.
No-low budget screenwriting is difficult precisely because of what
you can’t do, which is to create spectacle by spending money. A huge car
chase, you can’t afford it. A gun fight, you can’t afford that either.
Period costume or expensive prop builds, not in your price bracket.
Basically, the lower the budget, the more the drama has to come from the
relationships between the characters… or in other words, the success
and failure of the project rests totally on the shoulders of the
screenwriter.
Not only does the writing have to be compelling to carry
the story and to hold the audience, on top of that, the core concept of
the movie has to be strong enough to persuade an audience to chose to
spend ninety-minutes with you, as opposed to the multi-million dollar
movie with the big name actors and the mind numbing stunts.
Let me be straight with you, this is the very definition of difficult.
The good news is, if you can can persuade an audience your film is
worth the effort, and then give them a great filmatic experience,
without spending vast amounts of money in production, then there is very
little in this industry that you aren’t capable of achieving. The
creation of a high-quality, compelling no-budget drama is, for me, the
holy grail of screenwriting.
2. Showcase your voice and prove its worth
Everything in the movie industry is gauged by its ability to make
money. Most people in the industry, including many writers, believe this
means there isn’t room for unique voices. They believe that it’s
dangerous to write challenging, difficult scripts that step outside of
the norm, because the greater the risk, the less likely it is that
producers want to make it.
So, instead of becoming the best
screenwriters they could possibly be, they settle for becoming a safe
pair of hands. Their theory is that by showing the industry they know
how to play nicely, they will succeed. They also believe that the best
way to play nicely, is by providing the industry with a spec script
which hits all the standard plot points, which is on trend, and which
everyone feels confident in from a business point of view. A confidence
they have in the script simply because there isn’t anything in it that
can’t be explained by current script theory. Most of the teaching done
relating to screenwriting is “safe pair of hands” teaching.
Or, in other
words, what people teach is largely reverse engineered from previous
successful Hollywood projects. There’s nothing wrong with this approach,
unless, of course, you were inspired to write movies by the kinds of
artists who have always trodden their own and distinctive paths.
However, the “safe pair of hands” route isn’t the only way to make your
mark in the industry.
What people often forget is that the industry also supports talent,
regardless of whether they understand it or not, providing they believe
they can make money from it. Basically, the “safe pair of hands” rules
only apply to regular folks, not to the cash-cow mavericks. There is
nothing the industry respects more than mavericks who make them money,
but which they can’t understand or replicate.
If you look at talent
like: David Lynch, The Coen Brothers, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino or
even Kevin Smith, these guys colour well outside of the acceptable lines
when it come to choice of subject and in some cases the way they
approach screenwriting. And yet, in each case, they established
themselves as unique voices by making films the way they wanted to and
then making money with it. Once you can demonstrate that what you do
will make money, the industry doesn’t require you to play nicely, it
only requires you to make more money.
What this means, is that for some writers, writers who have a
distinctive voice, making a no-low budget movie can be the best way to
make that distinctive voice work for you, instead of working against
you. If agents and producers are telling you your script isn’t
commercial, you have two choices, you can either endlessly rewrite it.
Change your risky, distinctive script into something they feel is safe
and normal. Or, you can make it yourself and prove its worth.
For a writer with a distinctive vision, making your own films may be your best route into the industry.
3. There is more to life than playing by the industry’s rules
Not everyone is motivated by the idea of catching the industry’s
attention. There are other reasons for making films. It’s not all about
furthering your career or making money. Some people just want to make
the kind of films they want to make, often because they believe the
industry’s output is tediously repetitive or just that they have
projects they want to put in front of audiences, which the industry
won’t tackle.
I know this may sound like a radical idea, but commercial
viability isn’t the be all and end all of human existence. The idea of
art for art’s sake is a very real thing. Not only that, there are
audiences for all kinds of films, films that fall well outside of
industry norms.
So, for instance, there is a small global audience for
experimental filmmaking. Not only are there online groups, there are
also film festivals which celebrate the innovative and unusual. One of
my all time favourite films was shot on 8mm film by a couple of Eastern
Europeans. It’s not the kind of film you can see on Netflix, and I was
given my copy by the filmmakers themselves, at the Milan film festival.
It is a film that is unlikely to be seen outside of European Film
Festivals. But, it’s still a great film and the world is a better place
for it’s existence.
It’s called
Slow Mirror,
here’s the trailer for it.
Personally, I believe one of the best reasons to make a no-low budget
film is put aside the shackles of conventional thinking and to imagine
what it would be like if you could write without constantly worrying
about whether what you are doing conforms to the set of rules that only
really exist for spec script writing. It is entirely possible to write
exactly what you want to write, exactly the way you want to write it.
Even if it is your intention to concentrate on commercial projects
afterwards.
There is a lot to be said for giving yourself permission to
be unfettered and free in your creative life. Just do it. Make a film
for the hell of it and make it exactly the way you want to do it. I
guarantee that there will be some people who like what you want to make.
4. Learn What’s Possible
No-low budget script writing is all about figuring out what is and
isn’t possible. It means absorbing into your writing skills an
understanding of what can be achieved well in production, cheaply, and
what can’t. In many respects it’s the opposite of spec script writing,
where you imagine something and then go out to find the resources to
make your vision possible.
In practical terms, this may mean that your
entire project is constructed around one particular resource. Say for
instance you just happen to have access to an abandoned, ex-military
nuclear fallout bunker… or perhaps you are friends with a particular
actor. Writing to make the most of your resources is a completely
different skill-set than writing to spec.
Photo courtesy of filmindustrynetwork.biz
What this kind of writing and filmmaking teaches you, is a working
knowledge of production and what things cost. On top of that, it’s also
an exercise in hiding your lack of budget from your audience. In my
experience, one of the best ways to make your no-low budget movie look
like you’ve spent a fortune, is to base your story in an exceptionally
filmatic and free to use location.
When you think about it, this is a
fairly obvious way to approach screenwriting. Find somewhere real, that
your story would naturally inhabit, and write about what happens in that
specific place. This idea of setting my story in real, visually
interesting places, is something I learned through micro-budget
filmmaking, but which I now apply to my spec scripts as well. Trust me,
it a great way to work. Actually, don’t trust me, try it for yourself
and make your own mind up.
Understanding what things cost, how to work around the expensive
stuff, whilst retaining a movie’s cinematic integrity are all skills
that producers appreciate. Being able to save a producer’s budget, by
applying budget saving tricks you’ve learned in micro-budget filmmaking,
is a very marketable skill for a writer to have.
5. Find Your Own Audience
In the film industry, the second you delegate one part of the process
to someone else, you are giving them control not just of your current
project but of future projects as well. Let me explain that, because
it’s a difficult idea to take on board if you’ve spent your entire
career being told the opposite.
Imagine you decide that you are only going to write scripts and
therefore you are going to let your agent sell your scripts for you. You
have just made a decision to delegate the sales process. You write an
incredible script, which your agent uses to open a lot of doors. Your
agent does a lot of preliminary meetings and adds ten or fifteen really
useful producers and commissioning editors to her Rolodex.
However, just
as everything is going well with your project, Guy Ritchie announces
the release date of his new project, which just happens to be very
similar to your project. Suddenly, your great script has gone from being
hot to being untouchable (This happens all the time, by the way). As a
result of this turn around of fortunes, you and your agent have a
massive spat. She stops returning your calls. You are effectively
without representation again.
Now, because you delegated responsibility
for finding sales to your agent, your agent now has ten/fifteen useful
new contacts.
You don’t. Your project opened doors, but this hasn’t
helped your career one single iota, because when you delegated the
process of networking to your agent, your agent gained all the benefits.
If you understand the above process, you should understand the importance of being independent.
Fundamentally, the same phenomenon applies to any step in the process
between writer and audience. So, if you find your own producer, but
then delegate the sale of the film to the producer, you then fail to
make your own relationships with those distributors, which means your
fate will always be controlled by that producer.
The important thing to learn from all of this is that you do have a
choice at every single point in the process.
Some writers don’t want to
sell their own work, because they don’t have the people skills, so for
them an agent is a must. Some writers don’t want to learn how the
business side of sales works, therefore it makes sense for them to work
with producers who will do that for them. Some writers can’t imagine
self-distributing their own movie and forming a direct relationship with
their audience… so, they will always rely on a distributor to do that
for them.
It’s all about choices. But at least we should know that those choices are there to make.
Conclusions
I genuinely believe that any writer who is serious about their craft
should have at least one no-low budget script in their slate. I believe
this because no-low budget script writing offers writers a perspective
on screenwriting that isn’t given in any of the current tomes on “how
to” write for film. It’s not taught anywhere, simply because the “how
to” industry still sees writers as servants to the industry, as opposed
to artists in their own rights.
So, it teaches writers to be a safe pair
of hands, rather than to be bold and innovative. On top of that there
are a whole heap of useful, pragmatic skills to be acquired. Every
producer loves a writer who can write to a specific budget.
Ultimately, no-low budget screenwriting is about a writer deciding to
make the films they really want to make, regardless of whether they
make money or whether they will appeal to mass audiences. There is
something deeply satisfying about having a direct and honest
relationship between what you want to write, as an artist, and what is
presented to audiences. And, the truth of the matter is, the only way
you’ll ever be given the opportunity to develop a unique voice in this
industry is if you are able to prove that your unique way of working has
commercial value.
A writer who can create their own
Blood Simple, their own
Reservoir Dogs, their own
Eraserhead, or even their own
Clerks,
can pretty much write their own ticket. Writers like that get a lot
more freedom to make the films they want to make, than any writer who
has crawled their way through the spec script system.
Distinct voices in
the industry earned those freedoms, by taking the risks themselves and
creating their own audiences.
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http://www.scriptmag.com/features/alt-script-five-good-reasons-to-write-a-no-low-budget-script?et_mid=597812&rid=232834455
Two hundred years. But there seemed little chance, two hundred years
ago, that many people would remember either the novel or its author by
now. The draft that she produced at twenty-one was rejected by a London
publisher sight unseen. Other disappointments followed, and after a
series of personal upheavals, she gave up writing altogether. 
