Thanks to whomever mentioned this board...

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Just wanted to pop in and say thanks. I found the other un-moderated site and literally left it the same day...what a god awful site.

Anyway, to whomever recommended this one...thanks!

I'll continue to poke my head in and see what's goin' on.

So far I've seen some great questions and answers here...

What's everybody's personal opinion on TriggerStreet? I have mixed feelings about it, but hell, getting feedback from people at the same stage I'm at has been far more useful then some crap advice I received from a real director with TV and 1 film credit...
Well the ideas weren't crap, but he basically said my movie was like another movie (it's about 1% the other produced film) and then he says add "this" subplot for more strife and conflict. The suggested plot if added in, turns my screenplay into the one he said it resembled by 50 more percent!!! Sorry if that was vague...I'm still flipping out because the worst advice I've received so far about this first draft came from an industrial professional and I'm feeling like an idiot for ignoring it.
sparkalina

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]Just wanted to pop in and say thanks. I found the other un-moderated site and literally left it the same ... so far about this first draft came from an industrial professional and I'm feeling like an idiot for ignoring it.[/nq]
Welcome. And don't feel like an idiot for ignoring lousy advice.

There is a ton* of crappy advice floating around the industry. People are employed to suggest *changes to your work, and not all of them are very bright.
However...
You often hear changes you don't like, and you resist them, and you figt them, and you want to maintain the purity of your creation or something... but often you'd be wrong to ignore that advice.

And... if you work* in the biz you are often *required to make changes that make no sense.
No one really knows anything.

"I write with one hand, but I fight with both."
Victor Hugo

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Just wanted to pop in and say thanks. I found the other un-moderated site and literally left it the same ... been far more useful then some **** advice I received from a real director with TV and 1 film credit...[/nq]
I got better reviews on Triggerstreet than the early days of zoetrope, but there are so many writers in that group who are science-fiction/horror/action genre oriented, it's tough to get well-informed critiques on dramas. Also, you have to have a LOT of time to read and critique other scripts in order to generate the numbers needed to "win," but it's better than nothing if you don't have a good class, or writing group to work with.
[nq:1]Well the ideas weren't ****, but he basically said my movie was like another movie (it's about 1% the other ... so far about this first draft came from an industrial professional and I'm feeling like an idiot for ignoring it.[/nq]
Never feel bad about ignoring bad advice, especially if it doesn't resonate as true, because if it doesn't feel accurate, you won't be able to implement the changes anyway, so for you at this time, it's not good advice. Hope that makes sense. It can be hard in the beginning to tell the difference between your instincts and your intense desire (if you have it) to believe your script is brilliant (or ****)...you'll get better at making that distinction the more you write. It's like being twelve and asking "how will I know when I'm in love." Eventually, you'll know. Not meaning to sound patronizing, just remembering my own love & writing learning curve here

Re: bad advice. there will be a LOT of it, from professional corners as well as others. Actors and directors have very specific things they are looking for, and even the best director can at times fatally fail to understand key story structure issues.
Whenever anyone "doctors" a script for me (suggesting specific changes), I ask "oh, what problem is that fixing?" because what's of interest to you as a writer is what's broken. You may have a better idea of how to fix what's not working, if indeed anything wasn't working.

Best of luck, and welcome!!
Mysti

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Just wanted to pop in and say thanks. I found the other un-moderatedsite and literally left it the same day...what ... so far about this first draft came from an industrialprofessional and I'm feeling like an idiot for ignoring it. sparkalina[/nq]
Well, if you ever manage to become a professional, you'll find that the business of receiving notes that don't make much sense will never really go away.
What I try to do when I look at a note that starts to raise my blood pressure (and that happens quite a lot) the ones where I want to say but that doesn't make sense you just said in the note here that I shouldn't I stop and remind myself that the people who are writing the notes aren't writers. In fact, it's quite common for people, in a sort of pre-emptive fashion, when they're giving a suggestion to say, "Well, the dumb version of this idea is " and often they're right what follows frequently *is* an incredibly dumb idea.

The trick is you have to not listen to the suggestion, that is, to the suggested fix. What you have to do is to try to figure out what the underlying concern is. That is, the reason that they're giving you the note is because something about your script is broken. But what that is may not even be the thing that they're telling you about. And that makes perfect sense. They're not writers. So it may not only be true that the suggested fix may not be right the thing that's broken may not even be right.
But what is pretty much always right is the concern because when a professional tells you that something about your script isn't working he's telling you that there's an obstacle to getting your script sold (or if sold, made).
The suggestions he's making are simply hints that you need to look at to try to figure out what the underlying concern is. Once you figure that out, then it's your job to address that concern.

What the director put his finger on is one of the basic conundrums for someone trying to sell a screenplay that studios want things that are brand new and yet, at the same time, just like something that was hugely successful.
Too much like something hugely successful it's derivative. You lose.

Too different and they have nothing to compare it to that is, nothing hugely successful to compare it to and say to themselves, "Wow, this thing is just like that thing that was just hugely successful (and yet different) thus if we make it it too will be hugely successful."
So if you ask yourself why a movie like "Van Helsing" got made well, you had those two big Mummy movies both hugely successful and then there's "Van Helsing" which is to the new Mummy movies what a movie like "House of Frankenstein" was to the old Mummy movies a kind of all-Universal-monster extravanganza. You see? It's like some movies that just made a lot of money yet different.

That's the thinking. Of course the movie bombed like Nagasaki, so try now selling a movie anything like "Van Helsing" or for that matter even a movie with the letters "van" in the title and see where it gets you.
So when the time comes to look at your work in terms of its chances of selling (and that time, at some point or other must inevitably come) you have to look at it in those terms. Does it have those necessary "successful" elements that is, that "comfort level" that the buyers (and to a great extent audiences as well) need and then does it do something new with those elements or does it just recycle them in a way that is simply mechanical?
What it comes down to is this if a similarity to an existing successful movie is simply that a similarity without an exciting or novel variation it will hurt you. Because, in the aftermath of any successful movie, every screenwriter in town digs through his closet and yanks out a screenplay that's similar and sends it off. If yours is simply similar, it will just be another similar screenplay.

So (and obviously I'm simply projecting) perhaps the mutually contradictory notes stems from this on the one hand, he's trying to address what amounts to a strictly technical issue a structural problem and there are often only so many optimal ways, within a particular story, to fix such a problem and he's obviously not looking to do a lot of work, so he grabs the way that was used in the first movie that comes to mind the movie he was just talking about.

So just think about the underlying concern the structural issue don't worry about the particular suggestion he used. He just pulled that out of the air. There are probably a dozen equally valid ways to solve that particular problem.
On the other hand, the other issue (again, not knowing the movies involved, I may be just barking up the wrong tree) could be more of a problem. You suggest that your script and this movie are only one percent similar.
What you have to realize is that at the level that the decision is made to buy a screenplay, they are virtually never being read. They have been reduced down to a couple pages of coverage and a title page that contains a logline your script reduced down a single line that encompasses the premise. At my old job, my boss didn't even want to read the coverage we only sent him the front pages containing the log lines. If a log line interested him, he'd have one of us read the script and based on our reading of the script, we'd tell him whether it was worth pursuing or not.
What percentage of your screenplay would that single line represent? And yet, at a certain point in it's life, it will stand or fall based on that line.
And if that sounds onerous to you, you have to look at it from their perspective. If you can't tell them why they should want to buy your script in twenty seconds or thirty seconds how (they would claim), after spending twenty, or thirty, or eighty million dollars making this movie from your screenplay are they going to be able to explain to an audience why they should go and spend ten dollars to go and see it in a comparable amount of time?
If you say I can't explain to you in thirty seconds why you should want to buy it you have to read the script they'll answer my audience the people I have to sell the movie to aren't going to be able to read the script. If you say, I can't do it in thirty seconds it's going to take ten minutes before you fully understand what's great about this idea they'll say the same thing "I'm not going to have ten minutes to explain to the public why they should go to see this thing. I'm going to have thirty seconds in a TV spot or two minutes in a theatrical spot. I'll have images in a poster the face of star. That's it." That's what has to bring people in.
In addition, of course once they're in, the movie has to work - but it also has to work at that first level the level of being compelling at thirty seconds or you never get them in.

Or more precisely, you don't get the movie sold.
NMS

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