Broken Projector tries to answer every screenwriting question ever

It's been a while since I plugged the Broken Projector podcast, but last week Scott Beggs and Geoff LaTulippe decided to take on the challenge of answering every screenwriting question you could hope to know.

More accurately, they created an archive of the questions they get asked EVERY TIME they open up for listener questions about screenwriting. It feels like they were had the same sorts of thoughts that led me to write this post last week about how to ask a useful question. Below is a breakdown of the episode question-by-question, with timecodes. It's worth a listen not just for the answers, but understanding the kinds of questions that get asked again and again, and why some of those questions will never have a satisfactory answer.

An intro note on methodology and where to learn formatting [0:00 – 4:15]
A way to rethink the questions you’re asking [4:15 – 9:10]
“Do I have to move to LA?” [9:10 – 11:28]
“How do I get an agent/manager?” [11:28 – 18:10]
“Where do I find scripts?” [18:10 – 20:45]
“What screenwriting books are the ‘right’ ones?” [20:45 – 24:00]
“How do I pitch?” [24:00 – 25:50]
“Should I go to film school?” [25:50 – 31:05]
“I just finished my first script. What do I do now?” [31:05 – 37:45]
“How do I get an actor/actress to read my script?” [37:45 – 44:35]
“How do I get a job as a TV writer’s assistant?” [44:35 – 50:05]
“How did you get your start?” [50:05 – 54:55]
“How do you come up with your ideas?” [54:55 – 59:10]
“What are agents/managers/producers looking for?” [59:10 – 61:05]
“What genre should I write?” [61:05 – 61:10]
“How do you impress a reader?” [61:10 – 63:15]
“How do you expose yourself personally in your writing?” [63:15 – 68:45]
Closing thoughts [68:45 – 73:30]

The podcast is embedded at this link, but you can also subscribe to One Perfect Pod wherever you get your podcasts.

Crossing the stream(ing service)s

This is probably gonna come off as one of those old man "get off my lawn" rants, but I've been thinking a lot about the cost of streaming services. I've had Netflix since before it WAS a streaming service. I've been an Amazon Prime subscriber for about three years now, but that was mostly for the free shipping and until recently they've never had any original programming that enticed me.

Hulu's been a thing, but until this year I never felt any pressing need to subscribe. As I'd never purchased a service JUST for the original programming, there wasn't motivation to start now. The fact that no real Hulu show had broken into the zeitgeist also lessened any urgency I might have felt.

This year felt like a real sea change, brought about by two factors: The Handmaid's Tale and the explosion of other streaming services. I want to be clear here - I think Netflix did the heavy lifting of legitimizing original content on streaming services, but when you already have that service for unrelated reasons, you don't really feel the shift as much. It still felt like the game was: Netflix - and then everyone else.

Let's take stock of the major players in that "everyone else," and their subscription fees:

Here are the monthly fees for the more notable streaming services:

Netflix - $7.99 (no HD), $9.99 HD, $11.99 HDX
Amazon - $8.99
Hulu - $7.99
YouTube Red - $9.99
HBO Now - $15
Showtime - $10.99
Starz - $8.99
CBS All Access - $5.99, $9.99 no ads
FX - $5.99
AMC Premiere - $4.99

The days of Netflix being a good one-stop shop for a deep library of content are numbered. As each of these networks and more launch their own services, they'll likely be taking back their content from other sites. It's the only way to add value to their product. Are you prepared to pay all of this and more a month?

Let's put the library aside for a while and focus on the value of original content. This is a list of all the Netflix shows which I watched in the past 12 months that I can expect another season of within the next 12 months or so:

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Master of None
13 Reasons Why
Love
Stranger Things
Grace & Frankie
Glow
House of Cards
One Day at a Time

That's nine shows right there. You can also add the next season of Arrested Development to that for AT LEAST 10 originals that I'll watch. Marvel also typically has 2 shows in a 12 month cycle. This past year I skipped Iron Fist, didn't finish Luke Cage and plan on watching The Defenders. Odds are I'll watch at least one of whatever they offer, so let's bump the total to 11. My wife watched Fuller House, so adding that gives us an even dozen original shows in the next year.

Or we could use last year as a baseline. These are the one-off seasons that I watched in addition to the shows in the last list:

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
Girlboss
MST3K: The Return
The Seekers

So that supports the notion of about a dozen original series a year. At $9.99/month I feel pretty good about that value even before you account for binge-watching any of the licensed library, or the many Netflix documentaries and acquired features, of which there are a lot. Even with some of the licenses rotating out now and then, overall I feel really good about paying ten bucks a month for access.

CBS All-Access has two tiers. $5.99 a month for limited commercial interruption and $9.99 a month for no ads. They also don't follow the Netflix model of dropping all the new episodes in a season at once. This is important because if you want to see each new episode in a 13 episode season as it comes out, you MUST subscribe for four months. If you're paying for no ads, that means that new season is costing you $40, assuming that's the only thing drawing you to the service during those months.

By next year, they will have TWO original shows: The Good Fight and Star Trek: Discovery.

I've been a Star Trek fan since I was ten. I own most of TOS on blu, all of TNG on blu and all of DS9 on DVD, along with at least half of the films on blu, DVD or both. I've watched every new season as it's come out since 1991. Hell, I even own a ton of the novels and behind the scenes books. I'm laying all this out to make it clear that I am fairly representative of the audience that CBS is chasing when they used the Star Trek IP to launch this service.

I will not be subscribing to CBS All-Access. There are 15 episodes in the season, so we're talking about four months of subscription. At the cheap rate, that's $24 for one show. The economics of that don't work out for me, as that's how much the bluray will probably be. I'd rather just wait for the physical copy and buy something I'd actually own.

When a service's exclusive originals are so sparse, it falls to the library to be even more valuable. I can see the case being made, "We're the home for ALL the Star Trek archive!" You might see the problem brewing though - long-time Trek fans are collectors. Like me, they probably already OWN most of those hours of television in some kind of physical format, so there's no incentive there to subscribe for that. The service also includes all of CBS's current programming (99% of which I don't watch), and older CBS/Paramount shows like Cheers, CSI, MacGyver, and so on. For some people, maybe that's enough to get their fee. (I doubt it, but I want to put the possibility out.)

I'll also allow that for new fans who come into the Trek tent with Discovery, it's not a bad idea to have the entire rest of the franchise at their fingertips to binge. Having said that, with only two new shows, the odds of total TREK virgins buying CBS All Access and sampling Discovery seems pretty low.

And this is just the beginning. FX announced this week they're starting their own streaming service, featuring their catalog at $5.99/month and there's AMC Premiere for $4.99/month. Of course, for now they don't have any original programming that will be exclusive to those services, so the incentive to buy that to watch, say, Better Call Saul is rather low. (At least until that's the only streaming service where the entire series is available.) As cable declines the cost of these a la carte services will become more important. I don't know how keen I am to pay $6/month per basic cable channel, essentially. There's a certain point where that cost would easily exceed the cable bill total for all those bundled channels and more.

But it's inevitable.

I'm curious how some of you feel about this. Which streaming channels are essential and what is your calculus for the value of a monthly fee?

Reader emails and the art of writing a good question

I haven't done many "reader email" posts in the recent past and there's are reasons for that. Some of the questions I've gotten have been on topics that I've already covered a lot on the blog, so they're answered quickly with a link to an existing post.

What's left after weeding out those are emails that often fall into one of two categories:

1) An email that asks a question too broad or abstract to yield a useful answer. This would be something like "Tell me how to break into the business" or "what are all the things I can be doing to make my script attractive to an agent?"

Those are questions without any concrete answers, and if they DID have answers, they would require a great deal of effort on my part to answer them. Entire books have been written about each of those subjects. Any effort on my part to answer them in the confines of the blog would likely result in even larger broad and sweeping generalizations than you usually find.

In both cases, the knowledge you want is out there - but it will take some effort on your part to seek out and absorb. When I sought answers to these questions, I researched the lives and careers of people I admired. I went looking for the story of how they broke in. Everyone has a different story of how they attracted an agent or how they got their first job. That diversity speaks to how there's no single way in other than persistence and building up your portfolio to the point where your work will stand out.

2) Long rambling emails that tell me your life story and take many detours that might include the origins of your latest script, the depths of your anxieties, the many disappointments and setbacks you've suffered in your career, and so on.

I know I run the risk of coming of like a dick when I get glib about this, but I assume that if this is how you're composing emails to me, it's also how you're writing to other people who are FAR more important than me. If your email has more than three paragraphs (BRIEF paragraphs), you're doing it wrong. I've been known to open an email, see a wall of text and say, "I'll get to it later" without reading it and I'm much less busy than anyone who can actually do something for your career.

Introduce yourself in two or three sentences. Use another two or three to establish you're familiar with the person you're reaching out to and that you understand their time is valuable, then quickly get to the point of what they can do for you. Obviously if there's a connection you share, like a common friend or the fact you went to the same school, obviously mention that. The point is to be brief, and yet still establish a connection in a few lines.

If you're a good writer, you can do that.

In the meantime, if you've got what you think is a good question, hit me up in the comments or at zuulthereader@gmail.com.