4CRYINGOUTLOUD
Channel 4 script executive offers his feedback...
4Talent has just announced a competition, The Pilot, aimed at budding (and no doubt, withered) writers to come up with ideas for a 23-minute drama capable of becoming a six-part series on a par with Skins, Shameless and, bizarrely, Cape Wrath. The twelve lucky winners will then be farmed out to one of three production companies – Synchronicity Films, Brocken Spectre and Move On Up – who then have to compete X-Factor style for a rubbish 90 grand budget, which for setting up a six-parter from scratch is sweetie money. Just don’t tell me Douglas Rae made Cape Wrath for 90 grand a pop.
Me, I just wish they would pay writers from the off, instead of demanding they clamber over obstacle courses by making them enter convoluted contests that involve working for free. On the PILOT scheme the entry requirements are hefty. Reading the terms and conditions alone is a day's work for a lawyer. Not only do you have to come up with an original idea for a 23-minute drama, a page of script for said drama but also a treatment for another five episodes. Yep, just like that. Of course, you don’t get paid for any of this toil unless you get chosen – and even then Channel 4 are a bit shy in the small print when it comes to hard cash. I wonder how much they’re not paying the would-be producers?
While many people, including Channel 4, see this as an amazing opportunity, I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling a bit jaded when it comes to these initiatives. What other business operates like this? Car mechanics? Neurosurgeons? Why is it okay to solicit unpaid work from writers, who can never be sure if their ‘rejected’ idea will turn up in C4’s schedules in 2010? Of course, you can’t make headway as a writer by being that paranoid, but to me this sounds like a re-run of the starving-the-slaves tactic because it not only punishes the writers by making unpaid work a condition of entry but the wannabe producers too by making them sit up and beg. And as we all know, you don’t get work out of starving slaves, but I guess it saves C4 a packet in overheads.
Rather than have any confidence in producers, Channel 4, like BBC Scotland on the Singles, is spreading its bets because, ironically, it doesn’t believe that by paying a producer to pay a writer they’ll come up with anything worth making. So in the guise of ‘opportunity’, they’ll get hundreds of submissions, most of which will be dross – but hey, it’s free dross, so who cares? In an overcrowded market where too many otherwise sane people fantasise about becoming screenwriters, C4 can sit back and let three companies harvest the good ‘uns without having to fork out as much as the cost of paper, let alone the time and talent.
Auntie Leanne’s advice? Reheat that old Singles pitch now. What’s to lose?
www.channel4.com/4talent/pilot/
posted by Leanne Smith at 12:04 PM
5 Comments:
It's funny how broken spectre etc etc get to be the 'expert producers' when i and many others didn;t see any open tender via Scottish Scream for the posts...but i guess it will always be thus...good comments and great blog site...oh and regarding C4 or BBC nicking stuff, a few years back a vg pal of mine was a researcher in at BBC Scotland whose job it was to precis unsolicited scripts, pass that onto the drama and comedy depts and then wirte back and say they had something similar in development so no thanks...but i don't think that is a systemic failure, just the individuals who hold the commissioning sway...one would hope at least...
Keep blogging the truth, many of us do care!!
Many thanks for that.
I agree, there should have been a tendering process for production companies but I guess some folk would argue that C4 can hire whoever it likes.
Checking the pro-co blurbs on the 4Talent site, seems to me that there are more experienced companies out there than Brocken Spectre. Good luck to them for getting the gig but two shorts and a bunch of stuff "in development" (who hasn't?) doesn't mean they can pull off a TV drama.
As for your BBC story - why am I not surprised at ideas getting nicked? In the end, it's who you know and nothing to do with talent.
Keep the comments coming.
I've never heard of one credible case of ideas getting nicked for real, largely 'cos it's bizarre just how many disconnected people write the same or similar things at the same time... I've lost count of the times certain stories have popped up in treatments and scripts I've read, it's unreal. And don't we *all* think we are so original?
But as for contests: is there not some merit in these contests and initiatives for giving people a deadline to work towards? Contests get my arse into gear in terms of producing stuff that I *know* people will want 'cos people are asking for it. Sometimes I enter, other times I use it as a platform to develop a certain idea. Sometimes I do both.
Or what about giving people part of a dream perhaps? Lots of people out there for one reason or another (usually 'cos they're doing the day job and bringing up a family), will never get an agent, never get decent contacts - and this literally is the only way forward for them. And hey, they won't win but they gave it a shot. And you never know...
Thanks Lucy,
I'm sure there's a lot of zeitgeisty coincidence going on in film/TV where similar ideas turn up at the same time, so I don't disagree with you.
But I have to question the legitimacy of these 'contests' - not from the writer's perspective - hell, any incentive's better than gazing at a blank screen with no deadline.
It's a shame that writers have to work on perpetual spec, just as it's a shame that our national broadcasters can't be a wee bit more imaginative when it comes to fostering untried talent.
The Pilot scheme has a lot to commend it, I'm sure, but C4Talent is too coy about what kind of commitment is required here, or how much writers can expect to be paid if (and it's a big if) it becomes a full-time job. Let's face it, 90K is small beer for a half hour of factual, never mind drama, on C4 these days. To ask writers to put few characters and locations in their script is already an admission of defeat.
I would never rob anyone of their dream. Nobody's twisting anybody's arm here, but I can't help but feel The Pilot isn't offering a way forward. In the end, I think you'll find even represented writers with credits are dusting off their old ideas for a shot at this. Besides, I don't know many folk who would give up their job/leave their family and move to Scotland just because they reached the next stage in a competition.
Good luck to them all.
Lx
23 people have, according to my stats today, have tuned into this one.
Why the lack of comment?
Don't you know there's a writer's strike going on in Hollywood? This affects you guys too, so look at my fellow bloggers and find out.
Or are you too scared, too fucking self-interested, or too busy letting off fireworks tonight to care?
Tell me later. Sorry for sounding off - BANG!!!
Lx
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