Coverage & Script Editing

[Scrivener]

This is up on other threads but it seemed timely to post it in a thread of its own:

These are the bare meat and three veg for preparing a script report. If these factors are not there in the screenplay then how can a script editor or coverage provider comment on each of them?

1. Structure and Timeline,
2. Story, Genre, Narrative Perspective, and POV Blocking,
3. Plot, Plants and Alternative Pathways,
4. Character and Character Dynamics,
5. Setting,
6. Dialogue,
7. Visual Grammar,
8. Subtext,
9. Sub-plots,
10. Log Line, Pitch, Synopsis, Treatment.

These are what a Script Report deals with so it would be in your best interests to have a shot at making these factors as clear as possible in the script.

You have to expect that your screenplay will be tested this way.

Here is a Hollywood Checklist for Reading and Evaluating Screenplays - there are others - but this gives you an idea of what 'problems' might pop up in front of a Reader's eyes. It originated from the desk of Terry Rossio - to the best of my knowledge. It has a high degree of crdibility. A competent reader doing coverage will then identify each problem, give you a reason why it is a problem and suggest possible solutions - depending on what you have paid for. Simple coverage will identify one or two issues in each area. The more 'in-depth' the coverage then the more the report will emphasise reasons and solutions.

This list has been around for a very long time - it has been refined by various houses providing coverage, but is a tried and reliable system. If you do a forensic and 'distant' analysis of your own script using this list, BEFORE you send it out for coverage, then you are more likely to get a 'recommend'. Now you know what it is that coverage providers look for. Give them what they are looking for.

CONCEPT/PLOT
1. High concept; big canvas for films; intimate drama for TV.
2. Imagine the trailer. Is the concept marketable?
3. Is it compelling? Screenplay should deal with the most important event in these particular characters, lives.
4. What's at stake? Life and death situations are the most dramatic. Potential for characters’ lives to be changed.
5. Screenplay should create constant questions: Will he make it? Did he do it? Hook an audience with a ‘need to know’ and they will watch the rest of the film.
6. Original. Please, no more screenplays that start with a character waking up in the morning, so we can see what kind of person he is by the junk he has in his room and his walls. No more genre parodies.
7. Is there a goal? Is there pacing? Does it build?
8. Begin with a punch, end with a flurry.
9. What are the obstacles? Is there a challenge for the heroes?
10. What is the screenplay trying to say, and is it worth it?
11. Audience wants to see people who care, not two hours of gimmicks.
12. One scene where the emotional conflict of the main character comes to a crisis point..
13. Hero must have a choice, the ability to affect the outcome.
14. Non-predictable; reversals within major plot and within individual scenes.
15. Once reality parameters are built, do not violate. Limitations call for interesting solutions.
16. A decisive, inevitable, set-up ending that is completely unexpected. Best example, of course, is 'Body Heat.'
17. Action and comedy emanate from character, not from off stage.
18. Is it believable? Realistic?
19. Happy ending or at least a definite resolution one way or other.
20. Cast-able parts. Roles that stars want to play.
2I. Young characters. Older audiences can relate to young people, because they were young once, and young audiences can relate too. But young audiences have trouble relating to older characters.
22. Heart. Good screenplays have strong emotions at their center. An almost subliminal quality; need to read between the lines. Films with heart - 'The World According To Garp', 'Diner', 'Local Hero', 'American Graffiti', 'Terms Of Endearment', etc., and, of course, 'It's a Wonderful Life'. Heart can be negative emotions: 'Body Heat', 'Chinatown'. Avoid mean-spirited stories.

TECHNICAL
1. Story construction and structure; three acts, two major plot reversals.
2. No scenes off the spine of the story; no matter how good they are they will simply die and destroy the momentum of the film.
3. Screenplay should direct the reader's eye, not the camera.
4 Begin the screenplay as far into the story as possible.
5. Begin a scene as late as possible and end as early as possible. A screenplay is like a piece of string that you can cut up and tie together - the trick is to tell the entire story using as little string as possible. No shots of cars driving up to houses, people getting out and walking to the door. Use cuts.
6. Visual, Aural, Verbal - in that. order. The expression of someone who has just been shot is best; the sound of the gun going off is second best; the person saying 'I’ve been shot’, is only third best.
7. The Hook; inciting incident. you've got ten pages (or ten minutes) to grab an audience.
8. Triple repetition of key points: get through the story as quickly as possible, but for the audience’s sake, work on the essential points two or even three times.
9. Echoes. Audience looks for repetition. Useful for tagging characters: 'Annie Hall' ('La De Dah'); 'Indiana Jones, (‘I hate snakes'); in 'Body Heat,' Lowenstein's dance steps.
10. Not all scenes have to run five pages of dialogue or action. In a good screenplay, there are lots of two-inch scenes.
11. Repetition of locale - mark of a well-structured screenplay. Helps atmosphere; allows audience to get comfortable. Saves money.
12. Small details add reality. Research.
13. No false plot points; no backtracking.
14. Silent solution; tell with pictures. Reference: the last seven seconds of, North by Northwest. Si Spencer reminded me of a great example of this in the opening sequence of M Night Shyalaman's 'Signs' - Mel Gibson wakes alone in a double bed, looks at a picture of himself in a dog collar with a wife and two kids, hears a scream, walks down the hall to check on his daughter's room and walks back passing a bleached patch on the wall in the shape of a crucifix. In less than two minutes we know he used to be a vicar till some trauma lost him his wife and as a result he lost his faith. And all without dialogue. (that is what I mean by a 'plot point')

CHARACTERS
1. Character entrance should be indicative of character traits. first impression of people is most important. Great entrances: Rebecca De Mornay's character in, Risky Business, strolling into the house, posing in front of the open window; Indiana Jones in 'Raiders', leading the way through the jungle, using his whip to snap the gun from a traitor's hand.
2. Barrack for characters; sympathetic. Recent example of this: Karen Allen's character in 'Starman’. Screenplay opens with her watching a home movie of her dead husband. From that point on, it is no contest; the audience is hopelessly sympathetic and on her side - all in less than a minute of screen time.
3. Dramatic need - what are the characters wants and needs? Should be strong, definite, clear to audience.
4. what does audience want for the characters? Are we for or against this character, or could we care less one way or the other?
5. character action - what. A person is is what he does, and not what he says.
6. Character faults; characters should be 'this but also that' ; complex. No black and whites, please. Characters with doubts and faults are more believable.
7. Characters can be understood in terms of 'what is their greatest fear?' Gittes, in 'Chinatown' was afraid of being played for the fool. In ‘Splash’, the Tom Hanks character was afraid he couldn’t fall in love. In 'Body Heat' Racine was afraid he'd never make the big time.
8. Character traits independent of character role. A banker who fiddles with his gold watch is memorable, but cliched; a banker who has a hacking cough and chain-smokes is still memorable, but more realistic.
9. Conflicts, both internal and external. Characters struggle with themselves, and with others.
10. Character 'points of view' distinctive within an individual screenplay. Characters should not all think the same. Each character needs fo have a definite point of view in order to act and not just react.
11. Run each character through as many emotions as possible - love, hate, laugh, cry, revenge .
12. Characters must change.


If you want the very best deep coverage around anywhere then follow up on Phil's offer or Si Spencer's service.

Phil Gladwin is at:
http://www.screenwritinggoldmine.com/coverage.htm


Si Spencer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_Spencer
and
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3097342/
Not all of Si's stuff is up on IMDB.
Si can be contacted through Phil.

These two are seriously in the very top cadre of Script Doctors in the world. You will get every cent's worth and more and learn much more about screenwriting than you will ever get from books - but you probably need the theory in the great books under your belt to make the most of what Phil and Si will reveal. Having read a truck load of screenplays and seen lots of movies will help you get the most out of their professional insights.

Hollywood Lit Sales and Scriptwriter Central are trustworthy for coverage.

http://hollywoodlitsales.com/

and

http://www.scriptwritercentral.com/


From their site:

A professional story analyst ("reader") will read your feature-length script 80-120 pages (no books for this special) and will analyze it in a coverage report of 3 pages single-spaced. Comments section will be two pages min. No synopsis is included.

This report will contain the following:

Logline (1-3 sentences) summary of your story.
Comments (includes strengths and weaknesses regarding, structure, dialogue and character. A few suggestions on how to improve script).
Grid Rating of: Premise, Storyline, Structure, Characterization and Dialogue
Overall Rating of script: Pass, Consider or Recommend (with your permission, we will alert the industry about your material should it get a consider or recommend). We are not agents or producers and will not take a percentage of any deal. We make the introduction and step aside. No follow-up calls to the industry regarding your script will be made.
Turnaround time is 2-3 weeks. We will notify you by e-mail when material and payment are received.

Scripts over 120 pages will be charged an additional $1 per page over the 120 page count.

Their coverage is of a very high standard.


For what it is worth I usually do a script edit by simply applying a three part analysis to a script.

I test the script for stuff that is obviously giving me a sense of disquiet in a simple coverage and point to it in the following way:

1. There is a problem here (I spell out the problem so that the writer can get a sense of it - reworked in plain english
2. It is a problem because (I set out my reasons and concerns I have)
3. This can be remedied by (I make a suggestion or two about the issue)

The problems can be of any kind - story logic, character, plot, descriptions, technical craft stuff - and so on. I usually use the ten point list at the top of this post.

If the stuff is there to work with I try to do a 'four act' log line to capture the full story arc. You expect a change to occur over the arc of the story - but it is not essential in some stories.
No fancy footwork - that can come later.
I use the SCOOD technique:

Situation: When uranium is being smuggled out of Australia in large quantities,
Character: Brave Special Operations operative, Major James Walsh
Objective: Learns how it is being accomplished. But little does he realise that
Opponent: The brutish Osmo Bun Ladel
Disaster: Is planning the destruction of the United Nations building with a suitcase sized Atom Bomb!

The adjectives 'bad' and 'brutish' are placeholders and label a 'type' of main character and often a 'type' of antagonist or nasty.

Often in the SCOOD approach you leave the MC's and the Antagonist's task or job description stand for the adjective so you would leave the actual adjective out - but they are implied. You would not use this approach for a 'selling' log line. That would be tighter, but this approach helps everyone who sees the script to come at it from the same place and think twice before meddling with it. It is a form of self-protection for the writer when the script goes out for coverage.

Simple Coverage is usually about three or four pages - (really the main four or five key issues - big ticket items)

Script Analysis is usually much more detailed - using the same method - every problem is identified and an explanation given about why it needs fixing and a suggestion about how to fix it. That is about ten or twelve pages.

Script Doctoring is when I work with the writer to take a script to where it is ready for a producer to read - or for actual production.

Remember, whatever you submit to a producer is going to be rewritten by a crony in any case - who may even be a good writer.

The point of telling you this is that you can do a lot of the work yourself using this three step technique.

A useful technique is to creatively visualise a conversation about your story between a favourite character from a novel or screenplay/ movie and your protagonist. The favourite character for the film or novel asks the hero what the hell he/she is meant to be doing each step of the way. "Hey come on, get off your $%^, your (stakes character) is in the nure. What are you going to do about it?"

That little trick solves many a problem and gets your protagonist to DO stuff.

Most script editing services offer coverage and a range of more rigorous and detailed analyses on a script.

Logline (1-3 sentences) summary of your story.
Comments (includes strengths and weaknesses regarding, structure, dialogue and character. A few suggestions on how to improve the script).
Grid Rating of: Premise, Storyline, Structure, Characterisation and Dialogue

This list would be on a 'Script Sheet' for the readers.

That is why I use the three part approach (problem, reason, solution) - it targets very specific issues. You don't really need to know in ten lines that your structure is OK. It is more valuable to find, for example that the sentence, "Mildred is long legged and blonde" or "Garth is five axe handles across the shoulders." is not advancing the plot (problem - reason), rather that "Mildred smiles as all the heads turn to gape at her long legs as she get out of the President's car." (solution).

The three part approach is much more powerful than the Script Sheet approach and a lot of it can be done by the writer a week or two after the script has been completed - taking that time to gain distance from the script. So you would make a pass for each problem - about ten readings of the script - say, kill all declarative descriptors, such as the Mildred one above. Cut dialogue that adds nothing to advance the plot, particularly dialogue that provides redundant information or is 'radio talk' - "I told you previously that our relationship was going to the dogs." - change to "Screw you, Jack." with an action such as a slamming door or a flying plate.

A coverage reader will only read the script once, making notes as they go, whereas you can make pass after pass and fix most errors - provided you can get into the head of a READER not a WRITER as you do it.

Will they send you a Script Sheet? Why not ask?

[davidartiste]

Scrivner, this is by far the best thread on this site. thank you soooo much!

[Nathan Buxton]

Great info that isn't very widely available. I have linked to this thread from my blog.

[KarenMBryson]

Thanks so much for this post. I am copying this one to my files! (I may even print it out, which I rarely do because I hate wasting paper!)

[Michael_C]

And this is why I love this place.

MC

[Lynn]

Wow! Thank you so miuch Scriv! I will definitely print this one out

Lynn

[manfred von]

you are yoda incarnate, my man;
thank you.
m.

[Magnus]

Great! Thanks!

[Reg]

Amazing thread. Thank you so very kindly Scriv.

[Scrivener]

I would lay a hundred bucks to a pinch of snuff that the folks who have found this helpful have a screenplay at the stage where they are wondering how to make it better. That is very exciting. I wish you well. Don't forget to mention the Goldmine in your acceptance speech.