A couple of months ago, well, more than a couple of months ago now, I heard on the radio that college loan debt had exceeded credit card debt. Wow, that surprised me.
That said, I remember when I had discovered screenwriting. I remember writing my first feature screenplay—I also remember receiving my first script coverage report. Even with an associate’s degree and good basic writing skills I had to learn about screenwriting, particularly structure, and that meant film school.
Of course, the first film school that sprung to mind was New York Film Academy, but the reality of how expensive film school was quickly deflated all my excitement. My wife and I simply could not afford it—even in a marriage with no children.
So, New York Film Academy—or any other film school, for that matter—was, pardon the pun, out of the picture.
I had heard some pros in the film industry say that film school was necessary, but then I felt a whole lot better after I had heard what other pros like Sydney Pollack had said—just get out there and start shooting.
Well, thanks to screenwriter Carl Kurlander (“St. Emo’s fire”) I had a solution to my film school tuition problem, and that solution fell somewhere between books-on and hands-on—more toward hands-on or “butt-on” after what mystery novelist Lisa Scottoline had said so bluntly about writing—“Apply butt to chair.” I would go a much cheaper route to learning to screenwrite. I called this route “poor man’s film school.”
With poor man’s film school, I would learn how to screenwrite through script coverage, which is basically a report all screenplays receive before and when they go through the studio system.
During the time—this is going back to, I think, the winter of 2008, the script coverage company I had chosen—and am still with today—was Screenplay Readers, and what was, I think, $59 per coverage report—pretty damn cheap, I think—is up to $97 today—which is still pretty damn cheap.
I sent in the second screenplay I had written “This Ain’t No Vacation, Sweetheart” for screenplay coverage—I did not send in the first feature I had written “Abstinence” written in for screenplay coverage probably because I was already onto the second—and the second one would be the one I would learn how to screenwrite through coverage.
Four drafts, a lot of bitter sweet notes, and $236 later I received a Consider for the screenplay. A Recommend, which I did not mention, is the highest rating a screenplay can receive. It is also a very rare rating and very difficult to get—only a handful of them were given out through their entire time in business—but, since only 4% of screenplays receive Considers, a Consider is good enough and what they would give the green light to to submit to studios and agents.
“This Ain’t No Vacation, Sweetheart” and script coverage got me off to a good start as a screenwriter, enabling me to build a good foundation as a screenwriter.
Poor man’s film school might not work for everyone, but it worked for someone like me who had limited financial resources to work with.