Classroom 34

Career Guide to Professional

Screenwriting for African-Americans

February 2011

For More Information Visit Classroom 34 @

http://www.classroom34.com
 Professional Screenwriting Career Profile
Screenwriters are responsible for crafting the words that are spoken by actors in film, television and video
games. A screenwriter's primary function is to create intellectual property in the form of screenplays of
scripts. Screenwriters write scripts that are turned into movies or TV programs. They begin by
brainstorming for ideas and follow up with in-depth research, which usually includes Internet and library
research as well as interviews. From this point, material is selected and the topic narrowed appropriately
until the actual writing process begins.

Screenwriters work either on speculation (also known as "on spec") or on assignment. When working on
spec, a screenwriter writes a script and shops it around to prospective buyers and studios. If working on
assignment, a screenwriter has been commissioned by a buyer to write a script. Most screenwriters work
on spec. Not only must a professional screenwriter write a script, he or she must also create a logline, or
premise, and pitch the script through a presentation.

Screenwriters often work with directors and producers who keep them on schedule. A screenwriter needs
to make up a 'shooting script' that contains instructions regarding the shots, lighting and camera angles.
The screenwriter may need to rewrite the script numerous times during the course of production. Those
writing for a TV show need to come up with a script weekly.

Job Requirements

In order to be a successful professional screenwriter, one must possess certain skills, among which
writing and research skills are key, along with creativity and talent. There are no particular educational
requirements for this field, as experience, self-motivation, ability to take criticism, a strong portfolio of work
and creative talent are the main prerequisites. Screenwriters generally have experience as freelance
editors or writers and some may have a bachelor's degree. They need to acquire a understanding of how
a film is made and be knowledgeable about film language. The majority of professional screenwriters
normally live and work in Los Angeles or New York, near the major film markets.

Salary and Compensation

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, salary and wage employment in the video and motion picture
industry as a whole is anticipated to increase 11% in the next decade. This is due to the increasing
number of satellite and cable TV channels that need programming and the demand for films, DVDs and
videos for Internet and in-home use. This growth maybe offset by the increasing number of films made in
other countries and motion picture piracy, which leads to loss in revenue. Screenwriters can anticipate
stiff competition, since high-paying, glamorous jobs are fewer in numbers and have more applicants.

The average professional screenwriter salary is based on the different compensation available for various
screenwriting jobs. According to a 2010-11 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, screenwriters fall
under the "Authors, Writers and Editors" category. Professionals in this career field earn an average
salary of $53,070. According to the Writer's Guild of America, as of January 2011, the minimum amount
earned for selling an original screenplay and treatment is $62,642. An original treatment, or outline of a
script, can be sold for a minimum of $28,382. Rewriting an existing screenplay can earn a minimum of
$20,554 for the screenwriter.

Screenwriters are generally paid a lump sum if they sell a script. Those working in television as a staff
writer may make two to five thousand a week. An accomplished, in-demand movie screenwriter can make
between two and two and half million for a project. But, those making six or eight figures for a script are
few indeed.

Writers Guild of America

Due to the contractual nature of professional screenwriting, members of the profession can join a union
known as the Writer's Guild of America (WGA). This union helps negotiate salary for screenwriters while
also offering legal counsel and insurance benefits to them. Movie, television and game studios will often
not work with a screenwriter who is not a member of the WGA.

Residuals

In addition to upfront income for a script, treatment or rewrite, a screenwriter may earn what is known as
residuals. These additional payments are negotiated with motion picture companies and television studios
by the WGA on behalf of the screenwriter. This amount is based on movie DVD sales or television show
downloads or reruns. Residuals are not earned during the theatrical run of a film or during the first airing
of a television show. According to screenwriter John August, residuals are the trade-off for selling the
rights of a screenplay to the studios.

20 Characteristics of Highly Effective Professional Screenwriters

1. Passion
2. Desire
3. Confidence
4. Enthusiasm
5. Commitment
6. Creativity
7. Observational Skills
8. Listening Skills
9. Research Skills
10. Empathy
11. Optimism
12. Discipline
13. Persistence
14. Perseverance
15. Resilience
16. Determination
17. Dedication
18. Patience
19. Marketing Skills
20. Entrepreneurial Mind Set
 Why Writers Get Residuals by John August

Published: November 11, 2007

Source: http://johnaugust.com/

Article:

My Pencils Down article got a lot of links, which led many first-time readers to the site. Most had little
experience with screenwriting or the entertainment industry, so it’s no surprise that the concept of
residuals was, frankly, odd.

My friend Jeff often jokes (half-jokes, I think) that he wishes he got residuals on spreadsheets he made in
2003. He’s articulating a familiar frustration: Why should screenwriters get paid extra money years after
they finish their work? After all, plumbers don’t get residuals. Neither do teachers, secretaries or auto
workers.

So I want to explain why writers in film and television get residuals, and why they’re at the heart of the
ongoing WGA strike.

The standard analogies

Let’s say you’re a Nashville songwriter. You write a song that Carrie Underwood records and takes to
number one. You get paid royalties for writing that song: albums sold, radio plays, the generic Christmas
Muzak version. A hit song is worth a lot of money. A moderately successful song is worth a moderate
amount of money.

Or let’s assume you’re a novelist. You’re John Grisham, and you write a legal thriller that half the folks on
a given flight are reading. You get paid a royalty for every book sold. Like a hit song, a best-seller is worth
a lot of money. A book that doesn’t sell as well earns the author less.

In both examples, the way an artist makes money is not necessarily upfront (writing the book or song) but
over the course of years. These creative works are annuities that keep generating money, for both the
writer and the publisher. Every year, copies are sold. Every year, writer and publisher make money.

I’ll stop here to say that if you don’t think songwriters or novelists deserve royalties, I’ve lost you.
Everything else I’m about to say is predicated on the belief that a creator (i.e. songwriter, novelist) is
entitled to profit from the success of his or her work. If you disagree — if you think that once the publisher
writes a check, all bets are off — thanks for reading this far. We’re done.

If you’re still with me, let’s play hypotheticals. What would happen if songwriters and novelists didn’t
receive royalties?

It would be a lot harder to make a career in either field.

Most songs don’t become hits. Most novels don’t become best-sellers. Songwriters and novelists may
only create new, money-generating work every few years. Royalties are what pay the bills in the
meantime. Without royalties, very few people could afford to write songs or books for a living. These
pursuits would become hobbies for the rich, or patrons of the rich. (And in fact, Western literature was
largely written by the people who could afford to write.)
→ Royalties allow for a middle class.

Publishers aren’t interested in financing the American dream, however. They simply want books and
songs to sell to the world. They have a straightforward and related interest in keeping royalties flowing:

→ Royalties allow for a larger pool of talent.

Without royalties, there would be fewer people who could maintain a career as a songwriter or novelist.
There would be fewer songs and books to publish. It’s in the industries’ best interest to keep writers
writing, generating new work to make the publishers money.

Residuals are royalties with special sauce

Writing a screenplay is a lot like writing a song or a novel. The writer goes off and struggles to compose
something that is a perfect combination of fresh and familiar, which will hopefully appeal to a large
enough proportion of the intended audience. Just like songs and books, most screenplays never make a
cent for their creators. Books sit unpublished; songs go unrecorded; screenplays remain unproduced —
locked forever in 12 pt. Courier.

But a few make it. A few become movies.

And in the process of converting written words to filmed entertainment, a bit of legal sleight-of-hand takes
place. I’m going to oversimplify it to make it comprehensible, but the longer, more accurate version
matches the shape of what I’m about to explain.

Whether you write a song, a book or a screenplay, you’re protected by copyright. More than that, you’re
acknowledged as the Author of the work, which has important (but eye-glazingly complicated)
implications under international law, including certain inalienable creative rights. When movie studios read
your screenplay and decide they’d like to make it into a film, they hit a few snags. Two examples:

1. As the Author and copyright-holder, you the writer control the ability to make derivative works,
such as a movie. Or a sequel. Or a videogame.
2. Some of your inalienable creative rights as Author (e.g. “no one can mutilate or distort the work in
such as way as to be prejudicial to the honor or reputation of the author”) are potential nightmares
for a company about to spend $100 million on a movie distributed worldwide.

So a compromise was made.

Screenwriters would sell the “authorship” of their screenplays to the studios, and allow themselves to be
classified as employees. Original works would thus become works-made-for-hire.

In exchange, screenwriters would get a host of benefits and protections covered by the Writers Guild of
America (the WGA), which as a labor union can only represent employees.

The WGA would also collect royalties on behalf of screenwriters. Royalties were renamed “residuals,”
since only “authors” collect royalties.

If this strikes you as a kludge, you’re not alone. It’s graceless and awkward and weird. It’s completely
unlike what happens in playwriting, even though playwriting and screenwriting are close cousins.

I’ve described the process in terms of a screenwriter working on an original script by herself, but the same
basic machinery applies to adaptations or television shows. Staff writers sign contracts which perform
similar legal judo, making their words the company’s words.
In exchange for higher guaranteed payments (“minimums”), residuals don’t start accruing in a work’s
initial window (theatrical release for a movie, first broadcast for a TV show), but rather down the line,
especially when it comes out on home video.

That’s what the current WGA strike is a largely about: the residual rate for home video, and especially
work distributed through the internet.

You’ll note that the studios aren’t talking about eliminating residuals altogether. Even in one of their earlier
proposals for “profit-based residuals,” they were acknowledging that writers are entitled to them. Without
some form of residuals, the charade of authorship-transference ceases to be mutually beneficial.

What’s more, I suspect that the wiser members of the entertainment industry recognize what publishers
have long understood: you want to keep a lot of writers on hand. You never know which one is going to
create the next Desperate Housewives.

Residuals are like the research and development fund for the industry.

Why you don’t get residuals for old spreadsheets

Coming back to my friend Jeff, let’s look at why that spreadsheet he made in 2003 doesn’t earn him
residuals.

When he created it for his boss, he was an employee of the company. Copyright-wise, everything he did
for them was a work-for-hire. They owned it outright.

When a screenwriter writes a script, she’s transferring this bundle of authorship rights to a corporation. In
exchange for these legal and creative rights, she gets paid an upfront fee and royalties (called residuals).

Readers from the technology and medical fields might recognize an analogous situation with patents and
intellectual property. It’s not uncommon for an inventor to get paid per unit for the right to use some
proprietary innovation. So it may help to think of screenplays as “literary inventions,” subject to a strange
but industry-standardized procedure to protect both creators and corporations. It’s not pretty, but it gets
the job done.

Why gaffers don’t get residuals

While the process of making a movie begins with the screenwriter, it ultimately involves dozens —
sometimes hundreds — of professionals, from grips to gaffers to art directors to truck drivers. Most of the
people working on a movie receive no residuals. Is that fair? After all, these people work long hours,
sometimes in very difficult conditions, and make a huge contribution to the finished film. Why don’t they
get residuals?

Because residuals are royalties paid to an author. They’re not a bonus. They’re a guaranteed payment to
the writer in exchange for giving up copyright and authorship claims.

In the heated rhetoric surrounding the strike, both sides have made misleading claims about the
economic status of writers in Hollywood. The studios like to portray writers as greedy millionaires, while
the WGA holds them up as middle-class victims of corporate fat-catting. Neither is accurate. Most writers
aren’t millionaires — yet the Hollywood middle-class would be the envy of most of America.

The reductionism to “the rich fighting the super-rich” misses the real issue: the internet will replace
television, and the industry needs to come to terms with what that entails. The WGA strike will end with
compromises over the residual rates. The eventual IATSE strike will be about the definition of what a
“program made for the internet” means, how much their members must be paid, and when overtime kicks
in.

How to explain this to your buddy Brooks

The take-home lesson, in case you need to explain to a friend who blames “greedy writers” for why The
Daily Show is in repeats:

• Writers get royalties: for books, for songs, for literary works.
• For legal reasons, studios want to be considered the “author” of a movie. So screenwriters
transfer “authorship” to the studios, in exchange for a bunch of rights, and residuals.
• The studios and the WGA disagree about what rate is fair for work distributed over the internet.
• Since internet distribution will eventually replace DVDs, a bad rate would result in a pay cut for
writers.
• That’s why there’s a strike.
 Active African American Professional Screenwriters (Feature Film)

Name Type Writer Credits Films

Joe's Bed-Stuy
Barbershop: We Cut
Heads, She's Gotta
Have It, School Daze,
Do the Right Thing,
Writer-Director- Mo' Better Blues,
Spike Lee 13
Producer Jungle Fever, Malcolm
X, Crooklyn, Clockers,
He Got Game,
Summer of Sam,
Bamboozled, She
Hate Me,
Madea's Family
Reunion, Daddy's
Little Girls, Why Did I
Get Married, Meet The
Browns, The Family
Writer-Director-
Tyler Perry 9 That Preys, Madea
Producer
Goes To Jail, I Can Do
Bad All By Myself,
Why Did I Get Married
Too?, For Colored
Girls
Killer of Sheep, My
Brother's Wedding,
Bless Their Little
Charles Burnett Writer-Director 6 Hearts, To Sleep with
Anger, The Glass
Shield, Namibia: The
Struggle for Liberation
Friday, The Players
Club, Next Friday, All
Ice Cube Writer-Producer 6 About the Benjamins,
Friday After Next, The
Janky Promoters
Hollywood Shuffle, I'm
Gonna Git You Sucka,
Kenan Ivory Wayans Writer-Director 6 The Five Heartbeats,
White Chicks, Little
Man, Dance Flick
Harvest: 3,000 Years,
Writer-Director- Bush Mama, Ashes
Haile Gerima 5
Producer and Embers, Sankofa,
Teza
 Boyz n the Hood,
Poetic Justice, Higher
John Singleton Writer-Director 5
Learning, Shaft, Baby
Boy
Carmen: A Hip
Hopera, Like Mike,
Michael Elliot Writer 4
Brown Sugar, and Just
Wright
The Wood, Brown
Rick Famuyiwa Writer-Director 4 Sugar, Talk to Me, Our
Family Wedding
Hollywood Shuffle,
Robert Townsend Writer-Director 3 The Five Heartbeats,
The Meteor Man
Antwone Fisher Writer 2 Antwone Fisher, ATL
Down to Earth, I Think
Chris Rock Writer 2
I Love My Wife
Gina Prince- Love & Basketball,
Writer-Director 2
Bythewood Secret Life of Bees
Gregory Allen Remember the Titans,
Writer 2
Howard Ali
The Best Man,
Malcolm Lee Writer-Director 2 Welcome Home
Roscoe Jenkins
How to Be a Player,
Mark Brown Writer 2
Barbershop
Reggie Rock
Writer-Director 2 Biker Boyz, Notorious
Bythewood
House Party, Bébé's
Reginald Hudlin Writer-Director 2
Kids
Girl 6, Their Eyes
Suzan-Lori Parks Writer 2
Were Watching God
Tina Chism Writer 2 Drumline, ATL
Writer-Director-
Ava DuVernay 1 I Will Follow
Producer
Medicine for
Barry Jenkins Writer-Director 1
Melancholy

Dee Rees Writer-Director 1 Pariah

Geoffrey Fletcher Writer 1 Precious

George Tillman Writer-Director 1 Soul Food

Writer-Director-
Julie Dash 1 Daughters of the Dust
Producer

Kasi Lemmons Writer-Director 1 Eve's Bayou

 Kriss Turner Writer 1 Something New
Michael C. Martin Writer 1 Brooklyn's Finest
Nnegest Likke Writer 1 Phat Girlz
Robert Adetuyi Writer 1 Stomp the Yard
Sophia Stewart Writer 1 The Matrix
Writer-Director-
Tanya Hamilton 1 Night Catches Us
Producer
Theodore Witcher Writer-Director 1 Love Jones
Love Don't Cost A
Troy Bailey Writer-Director 1
Thing
Writer-Director-
Victoria Mahoney 1 Yelling to the Sky
Producer

Additional Resources

For a comprehensive list of resources for screenwriters visit Classroom 34 @

http://www.classroom34.com