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Written by Leanne Smith
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Wednesday, 26 April 2006 |
Now the sun's finally put his hat on, the sunbed shops are out of luck - but still there's plenty of tubes around, according to Leanne Smith, who this week turns her UVA-dazzled eyes on the development biz.
Spring has sprung
The grass has riz
Does anyone know what development is?
Now that the weather's finally picking up, there's a lot of hot air about development around, what with the BBC dishing out a million quid to cash-strapped regional production outfits, such as struggling indies, Endemol Glasgow and IWC (otherwise known as I Want Cash). You'll also notice the perennial crop of development workshops, such as Arista's The Business of Development, a snip at 250 pounds. So for all of you who can't afford the industry skinny - which I guess means anyone reading this - welcome to my no-shit guide to development.
Development's a torturous rite where writers get screwed by producers who get screwed by the likes of the Film Council and the regional film bodies because development - also known as 'soft money' - doesn't pay producers a wage, so they have to steal it from somewhere, meaning writers - also known as 'soft targets' - get mugged. By the way, there's no point asking the BBC to cough up - their stock excuse is 'we don't do development, we don't need to', which I guess accounts for schemes like New Talent that pay tyro scribblers less than minimum wage for episodes of quality BBC 3 dramas.
The purpose of script development, we're told, is to get a screenplay into the best shape to make it attractive to potential investors. In other words, it has to be commercial. Or at the very least it has to feature posh people in silly clothes falling over. Development Executives - usually called Natasha or Charlotte - are paid sizeable five figure salaries to oversee the mysterious process of turning gold into lead. Meanwhile the writer's lucky if they see a couple of grand, having already written a first draft for hee-haw because nobody reads treatments. But because Natasha's really busy with her 79 other projects, it takes her a while to read your second draft, let's say six months, by which time you're selling Sky TV packages at the local call centre to make a dent in your overdraft.
Then, having lied to your boss - a funeral usually works - to attend a script meeting, you're a little miffed when Natasha suggests 'useful' changes such as - we really need a love interest or isn't the ending a little too downbeat? To which your producer nods in agreement while you're chucking daggers at him, wishing it was his funeral. And after Natasha runs off to her next meeting (three bottles of dry white with her just-dumped girlfriend) - you and your producer pick over the corpse in the pub where, having downed six pints of cooking lager at your expense, said producer starts weeping inconsolably and won't stop until you agree to write another draft. For free.
This scenario, like a recurring nightmare, is generally repeated for a few years, buoyed up by your producer's delusional belief that he's got 45 per cent of the budget in place. Meanwhile, you've been promoted to call centre supervisor and in your spare time make abortive attempts at novel writing and despair over your creeping alcoholism. Your script, meanwhile, has been through eight drafts and the wringer which, for two grand, paid you an hourly rate of 7p.
So does development make a script any better? Getting back to the notion of commercial - just how commercial can a low budget movie be? Which is what yours would've been, if only it got past go. And if the budget's low, say in the 1-2 million quid bracket, who's prepared to throw cash to sell the movie? Just how many of these films ever paid back their investors? Virtually none would be a fair assumption. And it's here that public money falls down the pan, because if you can't make a low budget commercial film - one that has stars and plays on 400 screens or can even attract a distributor in the first place - why bother to make the script commerical?
In fact, why bother with development at all?
I'm sure if this was pointed out to our public film funders, they'd deny it, claiming they encourage risk taking, welcome new talent, support cutting edge films blah-di-blah. Just make sure your script deals with football/children/dodgy drugs/girls with big knickers/fart jokes/
kebab shops and has a part for Julie Walters. And don't forget the upbeat ending.
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