You may have heard the line “it's not what you know it's who you know”, somebody may have told you this as a reason why you will never make it in the movie business. Well ok, but it's the same in every business, no matter how good you may be nobody wants to work with someone that they know nothing about. Think about it for a second, if you were going to spend $50,000 buying something wouldn't you like to know as much about the people selling it and the creation of it as possible? Wouldn't you like to know that you are investing wisely? Or would you hand the money to a complete stranger who may or may not have the goods?
There's no doubt that this is a business built around relationships, you never know who is going to end up with the power to say yes to you... it could be me someday, equally it could be the guy or girl who starts in the mail room. So it's important to be social in this business, and I don't mean propping up a bar in on Hollywood Blvd (although sometimes that is acceptable!). How you get out there is a tricky one, everyone does it differently and there are a million options so lets take a look at some of the basics. Cold calling is scary at the best of times, but what if you look at those calls as calls to friends? The people who answer the phone usually are not the ones who have the power right now, they probably will soon though so be nice and get to know them... be social.
The obvious way to meet people in the industry these days is to use social networks... Facebook and Twitter have changed the way we can contact these people and I know at least two people who got a script into the hands of producers after they struck up a friendship on twitter. Remember though that if you us facebook or twitter to connect with industry folks then you need to keep your content clean, try and focus it on your work too. Both facebook and Twitter also have great groups with where you can meet fellow writers and industry folks #scriptchat and #scriptTip on twitter are two of my favorites.
Many writer groups will hold meet ups or get togethers, and you should get to them if you can, I can't tell you the value of sitting in a room full of writers and talking about the work you do, your goals etc etc, it really is a fantastic experience. Most important is that when you join a group you don't just sit back and wait to be invited to something, make friends within the group, offer advice, ask for advice, stimulate conversations about the art... soon you will find yourself an important member of the group and will be at the head of most events run by that group.
And so to round off my ramble for the day (I didn't prep this post, you can probably tell!) I'll leave with one small paragraph about how you should think when you are trying to “get out there”.
Imagine that you are the production exec, you have a pile of scripts on your desk which you know will mostly be bad. You have hundreds of queries to get through, again most of them written badly. You're head hurts from reading crap, you want to smash some heads together and ask “Why?”, but then you open a script that has a catchy title, the first page is great, the second too. You were going to leave early today but maybe you'll read the first twenty pages of this script, and before you know it you've just finished a great script, a diamond amongst the coal. Imagine how good that must feel, and imagine how you will feel when you get the call from that producer to tell you that your script is great! Trust me it's a great feeling.
Write on!
Dave The Screenwriter
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