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Film school for the rest of us

A couple of days ago, I heard on the radio that college loan debt had exceeded credit card debt, which surprised me.

That said, I remember discovering screenwriting and receiving my first script coverage report how much even with an associate’s degree I had to learn about screenwriting.

Of course, my first thought was film school—not just any film school but NY Film Academy, but the excitement was quickly exterminated by the reality of how expensive film school was and how my wife and I could not afford it—even in a marriage with no children.

So, NY Film Academy—or any other film school, for that matter—was out of the picture.

Some experts in the film industry say that film school is a must; others like Sydney Pollack say it is not, just get out there and start shooting.

Well, thanks to screenwriter Carl Kurlander 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 than books-on. I would go a much less expensive route to learning screenwriting. I called this route “poor man’s film school.”

With poor man’s film school, I would learn screenwriting through script coverage, which is basically a report all screenplays receive when they go through the Hollywood system.

At the time back in 2008, the script coverage company I had chosen—and am still with today—was Screenplay Readers, and what was, I think, $59 a coverage report, pretty cheap, is up to $97 today—still pretty damn cheap.

“This Ain’t No Vacation, Sweetheart”, the second screenplay I had written, was the screenplay I would learn screenwriting with through script coverage.

Four drafts, a lot of notes, and $236 later I received a Consider for the screenplay through Screenplay Readers. 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, but, since only 4% of screenplays receive Considers, a Consider is good enough. Begin submitting it to studios and agents.

“This Ain’t No Vacation, Sweetheart” and script coverage got me off to a good start as a screenwriter. I was able to lay 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 a less than even a limited film school budget to work with.

Visit my blog: http://mattjanaconethewriter.blogspot.com/
 
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