What Makes A Screenplay Marketable? by Wendy Kram
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.ย. 2024
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#screenwriting #screenplay #script
Simply put:
High Concepts get people's attention
Execution makes them stay
Word of mouth and Marketing already takes care of the first part.
Execution is all in the writer(s) and director(s).
A Marketable Screenplay is giving something the Marketing Team can easily use, sounds good in short phrases, and keeps the viewers attention (wither that be a gripping story, an audience goal "i really want this character to do this thing Now" or a story question "what's in the box!")
I don't think that's what Wendy Kram is saying. A marketable screenplay is not necessarily something that "sounds good in short phrases". A marketable screenplay is a screenplay that has compelling characters, compelling situations, and great dialogue.
High Concept speaks effortlessly to a much wider audience thus making it perfect as a cinema project. Falls under the "show me the money" category
Thank you.
I think good storytelling and good writing makes a screenplay marketable. I am currently working on a "coming of age" screenplay about a plus-sized woman, who lives in NYC and has a job as a nude model for the art classes at Columbia University. She and a female friend of hers, who is also plus-sized, get an opportunity to pose in a men's magazine that caters to plus-sized women, but she has to overcome two obstacles: her conservative parents, who think plus-sized women aren't beautiful and say that their daughter, and women like her, are unhealthy.
Jon Griffin Sounds too niche to me...
Maybe it is and maybe it isn't but I writing it to get the message out there that even plus-sized women are beautiful.
@@jonathangriffin8060 sounds really interesting. I hope the screenplay is going well.
@@kissmyasthma3155 In what way? You have to admit: There aren't too many movies with a plus-sized woman as the lead character; especially in a dramatic screenplay. Usually, they are the girlfriend of a thin female lead or the butt of many jokes. Hopefully, this movie, if and when it gets made, will squash those movie cliches and get the message out that plus-sized actresses can carry the lead in a dramatic film if given the chance.
Keep going!✊🏾 that sounds dope
"Let me define High Concept" ... Doesn't define high concept at all save for a bunch of vague examples, then prattles on for 10 minutes
demondojr: High concept means that if an average person would look at a movie poster or see the name of the film, they would highly likely surmise what the film was going to be about. Low concept means that the audience wouldn’t necessarily know what the movie was about if they saw the title on a marquee or if they saw a poster of it.
High Conceptual is different than High Concept. High conceptual
films would be intrinsically unusual worlds or dimensions of parallel universes or worlds/realities, etc.: The Matrix; Inception; Coherence; Pi; Primer, etc.
Examples of High Concept:
*Ghost
*The King & I
*Gladiator
*Lawrence of Arabia
*My Big Fat Greek Wedding
Examples of Low Concept:
*Pulp Fiction
*Little Miss Sunshine
*Sideways
*Fargo
*Citizen Kane
I took her examples as a movie idea that is instantly appealing "lose friend in LV after bachelor party and have to find him in 48 hours" it sounds fun and urgent
Very organic and natural discussion with some good examples.
Thank you for generously giving of your time and advice.
i think any script which is well-paced and realistic is good enough to be marketable.
Thank you
I love these videos!
Spiderman, with a tarantula.
It's like Die Hard in a Office Bldg 🏢... 😎
Thanks for pointing out Sacramento is not a small town. The City has 600,000 people and the metropolitan area has almost 3 million people, and it's larger than Cincinnati, Las Vegas, Kansas City or San Jose. And New Orleans and Salt Lake City. It's not a small town and no longer has the feel of a small town. That was true 40 years ago, but no longer. She needs to visit!
Love Sacramento! Would go there as a kid many summers and enjoyed seeing The Capital/downtown, the river, and Fanny Ann's Saloon/Old Sac, etc. :) Also fondly remember a small town called Tracy, CA nearby.
You're welcome to come back and visit! PS, huge fan of Film Courage. Probably my favorite channel!
Some consider "small" by size or land. Others go by pop, numbers, growth 🏘📈🗂, history. Orlando, Orlando.gov is "small" by some standards but has huge growth in Orange County. Jacksonville FL seems large(by size) but downtown has parcels & vacant lots, few people.
This is all good, but lots and lots of movies are made just because of what visuals: explosions, chases, fights, etc that they offer. Yeah, they're looking for a unique characters- but unique look. They care about superficiality. They have different ethnicity, different race -- but the same essential character.
simple but insightful comments
Listening to film courage interviews revives a lot, it really helps.
Love to hear that you are gaining energy from our channel. Thanks watching and the positive words.
Think this 'Hangover' is taken from a UK film.
Or, if you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bullshit..ok, meanwhile how MANY more cop shows, hospital shows, firemen shows, yadda yadda will we get?..what they want is the SOS from the same writers over and over..rarely does a new writer break in to the 'club', once you're in, you're in, then its rehash city.. The people that make the decisions are basically the least creative people you could ever meet..and judging scripts is 100% relative on whos reading it..one person may hate it while another person loves it, its luck for the most part...example, ill give One but i could give MANY more..movie PRETTY WOMAN was turned down by EVERY studio, even the studio that eventually produced it, Touchstone turned it down the first time they saw it, they saw it first i believe..Gary Goldstein shopped that thing around to Every studio and may his way back around to touchstone and basically said if they didn't make it he wouldnt work with them again..the thing made 150mill !!
so come on, its all arbitrary and luck of the draw..there are tons of very good writers, actors, directors, etc etc that will never get a chance because they aren't in the right place at the right time, as for me, ill write my own content, produce and shoot it myself and take it put of these clowns hands..
The IDEA has to be bigger than the story itself.
After 4 minutes I still don't have a clear idea as to what high concept means. All she's doing is listing films most of which I have not seen. What is it about the plot or structure that makes it high concept? I'm going to watch the whole thing but I really wish you would get to the point and save me some time
If you would like more on high concept, this video can help - th-cam.com/video/c3vE5jpfBI0/w-d-xo.html
High concept: just by the title alone, it draws the public’s immediate attention and the public knows right away what the film is about.
Example: Jurassic Park (What if Dinosaurs roamed the earth now with us? That they could be brought back to life? It’s a highly compelling premise.
Another example is Wedding Crashers. The audience knows what the film is about.
Low concept would be a title or film that is moreso character driven: My Dinner With Andre; Friends; Cheers-it doesn’t actually convey what it’s is really about. The title might be more ambiguous to the audience.
It just means an incredible/different idea that's very marketable.
There are several aspects of a script that make it marketable too many to mention... The common denominator that I see in great stories is if it successfully brings out emotion in the audience. Movies that make you cry, inspire, hate, laugh, movies that strike an intimate nerve in your soul and generate emotion will always be hard to pass up in my opinion.
Cesar interesting points. An exercise I like doing is pretending I'm walking down the street and a movie has let out and everyone seems so stunned, almost everyone thinks this is the greatest movie ever, some are just speechless and overwhelmed with emotions, which makes me curious. So I ask all these imaginary people what did you just see? What made this movie so great, and I try to learn from them what makes a movie great.
Subtext is great, but I've had producers not be able to remember simple details literally 3 inches down the page. It's unfortunate that you can spend years writing something, but the decision to buy it will be determined by someone skimming over it. Subtext is for the established - not for new writers...
Sorry ma’am, but High Concept has NOTHING to do with franchise movies/sequels/movie brand power.
It’s where the premise of the movie, the set-up of the plot, and/or the predicament of the protagonist is so well CONCEIVED, that you want to see such a story even without knowing the PARTICULARS of the execution - the genre, the actors involved, the personalities of the main characters, the sensibility of the writer and director, the style of cinematography, the movie’s franchise, if any, etc.
So, it’s high “concept” in that the IDEA of the premise is compelling all by itself, and the appeal of the story owes A LOT to the brilliance of its CONCEPTION, apart from the details of its execution.
Of course, the execution CAN be terrible and ruin the actual movie, so that people leave saying that SOUNDED so good, I can’t believe it TURNED OUT to be so bad.
High Concept examples:
Speed (yes, she got this one right). City bus must do at least 50 MPH thru congested LA or it’s wired to blow up, unless our (emergent) heroes foil the psychopath responsible, all without leaving the wheel.
Back to the future: Witty, talented male teen inadvertently goes back in time to the time/place of his parents’ falling in love, but Complications ensue as his future mother gets a crush on him instead, jeopardizing his future existence.
Boyhood: film a real boy over the course of his actual childhood, reconstruct it as a semi-scripted feature film with known actors as the parents, who have been integrated into the boy’s life over this same span of time.
Memento: Protagonist with no short term memory who must foil his own murder AND the scenes of the movie will be presented in reverse order. I believe the reverse order thing is so WE cannot use our own memories of past scenes to solve the problem, thus we are in the same mental predicament as the protagonist.
Usually the concept is highly original: either something familiar in life that has never been put on film, or something real but so unfamiliar we just “have to” experience it, out of sheer curiosity, (and film is the best medium for voyeurism), or it’s something that breaks the rules of reality and can ONLY be shown thru the contrivances of film, or possibly in a fantasy novel.
What makes a screenplay marketable is a compelling story, characters you care about and good dialogue. However these elements will not necessarily get your script sold. Like William Goldman said, ‘Nobody knows anything.’ How else can you explain so many lousy movies getting made by major studios, while the Oscar for Best Picture almost always going to small independent features that explore the human psyche. You know the kind of film that no one wants to finance on the get go.
Lady Bird only got made because Greta wrote it and directed it. It would have never sold as a spec.
Glad it was made. Wish there were more films like Lady Bird.
Take a look at the scripts that sold in 2017, around 60 scripts. They were either thrillers or biopics, mostly scripts that were on The Blacklist. Those are marketable scripts, assuming that by "marketable" she means you might be able to sell them. Having a voice is great, it might get you an agent, but the script probably won't sell. Take a look at the types of scripts that do sell. A lot of them aren't even that well written. "Hollywood buys stories, not particular scripts written by particular writers."
Someone's bubble will burst soon...
Marie B . I'm confused. lol
Gene Waserman. Projection much? .. and I don't mean projection screen. Badump!
She sounds like she’s about to cry
The Terminizer: An Erotic Thriller
Love Film Courage.
Film Courage, THANK YOU SO MUCH for all these amazing interviews and advice. I appreciate you guys so much
Thank you for watching, Alexis! We appreciate the kind words.
She does think of herself that she knows everything. Look at Marvel's movies Wendy Kram! Are their scripts really good? I think they're not. But they make billions of dollars.
Yet she makes her living in this field, so she can provide insight.
Long video.
Bunch of examples.
Why do I think of Nancy Pelosi when listening to her?
Because they both sound full of shyt!
no not necessarily because it's alot of movies with high concept such as in horror but alot of those scripts suck and is not executed properly but people bought the script and made the shitty movie anyway because it has high concept or a global appeal and those movies become commercial success but the critics hate the movie
What about a movie like Dual
Limited dialog ,the script wouldn't read all that well
She’s the reader for me. Thanks Karen!
i think she confused the premises of Slumdog millionaire, with the Million dollar baby movie which is the one that she´s describing (the boxer, Hillary Swank, with her trainer, Clint Eastwood). Slumdog millionaire is an indian movie that won an oscar, i think for best foreign pic. (not sure) that features a young Dev Patel.
You're also confused. Its not an indian movie, a few indian actors, Yes, but not an indian movie. It won THE best picture Oscar, not foreign.
@@shaun8392 like i said in the post, (not sure) if it´d won best picture or foreing picture. I guess you googled it and there it was. I also checked and it won best picture. The lady in the interview confused both movies. Wasn´t wrong about that..
@@alexlerner3403 I actually did google :) You're right about the lady though.. just corrected its not an indian movie. Cheers
Thx u
What a misnomer: If something is recognizable, then it's no concept at all. Concept should be about audience having to conceive of something the movie could be about, and the higher the concept the more thinking is necessary. Movies like Memento would be High Concept in that regard. Complex, bold, demanding.Low Concept would be stuff that needs no reasoning or unjunction, like Hangover. Hollywood uses it the other way around. Not a native speaker, but I don t get why it's used that way.
I thought high concept meant big budget, explosions, action. Not necessarily a well written script.
Writing a marketable movie means executing the dog part in a Christmas movie with artistic aplomb. Kind of like writing a hit kitty litter commercial jingle is dependent on one's abiity to find a rhyme for "most advanced clumping system".
If your cats sometimes miss when
they take a dump and piss then
get our most advanced clumping system.
Where my money?!?
Who is this woman?
Wendy Kram: producer/script consultant.
6:15 total contradiction...meh