We all know the phrase 'development hell' as it applies to the film industry. But you'll be surprised who else besides studio executives and independent producers spends a lot of time there – freelance journalists.
Frankly, if we spent as much time writing as we did developing material, we'd produce more content that Facebook.
Movie projects are born when someone has a great idea. Maybe they have a script they've written and really believe in. Maybe there's a novel or comic strip they can see great visual potential in and own the rights to.
If they're also a mining magnate or dotcom billionaire, they're ten steps ahead of most movie people – they can use their own money to get their movie made exactly the way they want. But most studio execs, indie producers or filmmakers work tirelessly to bring their project to life, often with nothing but belief in the idea to sustain it, forever waiting for The Call.
They have ideas and wish lists for casting, they imagine scenes and occasionally visit locations they fancy. They play their favourite songs and imagine them on the soundtrack. They tell people about it when the opportunity strikes, figuring they never know when somebody who hears the idea will know (or be) somebody important who can get something done. It's a process of occasionally stoking the embers of an idea alive, and it can take years.
It seems easy because we only ever see the success stories – they're the ones that get made, after all. But when they get made, it starts with a phone call or email that sparks off a period of unalloyed productiveness bordering on manic frenzy, a near-panicky period of the fevered business of creation. If you score name actors, they'll have only a certain period of availability. The skies might open up on the day of your big exterior shot. The financier's stocks might take such a battering their accountant convinces them to abandon media investments and go into natural gas fracking.
Even if things go right, the stories we hear from tiny productions of only a few grand right up to those costing hundreds of millions is always the same – there's never enough money or time.
And when your movie's finished, the distributor has the right to completely change it and edit it (unless you're clever or powerful enough to have final cut written into your contract – good luck if you're just starting out). They might buy the finished product and then bury it with no publicity and advertising budget whatsoever after deciding it wasn't worth the investment after all. The executive you've been dealing might leave or get fired, his or her replacement not nearly as excited by your movie as their predecessor.
The process above will be familiar to anyone who's ever written a magazine, newspaper or website article on a freelance basis. It starts with a great idea you think a) is worth sharing with the world, and b) you want to make a living out of.
We're sometimes jealous of our professional colleagues on staff at newspapers, magazines or major websites because they have a platform to write virtually whatever they want (no matter how vacuous or unoriginal) and they can bring the resources of their employers to bear to make it happen.
And not just material resources, either. If you want to interview some important people for a story, which do you think will get you further past their gatekeepers – telling them you're writing for The New York Times/Wired/South China Morning Post/Gawker or saying you're working on an idea you hope to get published somewhere?
After you come up with the great idea for a story, you'll enter the same development period a movie goes through. You'll do research, work a little on the structure, take a lot of notes, maybe have a document dedicated to marketing the idea to prospective buyers.
In some cases you might even write the whole thing just to see where it takes you and have a finished product ready to sell (upside; if somebody buys it it's all ready. Downside; if nobody buys it you've done a whole lot of work for no financial recompense – always shaky ground when you work for yourself).
You might have the perfect outlet for it, one that buys a lot of your work and gives you the go ahead quickly. Or it might descend into your very own development hell, one that can last anything from weeks to years (the oldest 'live' ideas in my stock of stories are easily a decade old).
Something will emerge that will give you a new angle or more material to contribute. You'll make notes as new ideas about it pop into your head unbidden. You'll read and discover more about the topic, find new angles, hear or read the words of people in the field who have the potential to comment or contribute. It will morph, evolve and change with your own tastes and knowledge.
Then one day out of the blue when you pitch or even mention it, you'll get The Call – a commission. Like a movie that suddenly finds itself with financial backing, you'll have an investor, albeit one that pays you when it's all over rather than funding the project up front (that is, pays you after you call and email them a few more times and then go through their accounts payable lady who's only at work Monday and Tuesday. Oh, and she's at a dentists appointment at the moment, can you try her back tomorrow?)
The project will move into the most intensive period it will ever see as you scramble to bring it to fruition. The publication is like the film distributor or financier – they'll probably never give you enough time or money to do it the way you originally conceived, so you'll work day and night to get it done, alternately panicking and cutting corners.
Resources you were counting on will fall through because they're not available until it's too late to use them. More recent developments might have rendered your original thesis outdated or useless. You'll have to kill countless darlings because of time, availability and other constraints but you'll probably also find new ways of doing it better.
Luck, talent and tenacity will see you turn it in before the deadline, and it's then out of your hands. Just like passing it off to a distributor who might bury it, decide to release it next year or re-edit it to get a PG-13 rating, the publication who's paid you for content now owns it, and they can do whatever they like with it.
By the time it reaches an audience an often-indeterminate time later (a process you'll likely have little to no involvement with) it might have been through the hands of an overzealous subeditor who's completely changed the subtext. They might spell your name wrong in the byline. If it's in print it might get chopped carelessly and bloodily in half because of a late ad booking, losing so much content it doesn't even make sense anymore.
Of course, we (aspiring producers and freelance journalists) all toil under such conditions because there's always a chance of being one of the lucky few. Your small indie movie might really catch on, build slowly because of great buzz and end up conquering the cinematic world. Films from Slumdog Millionaire to Beasts of the Southern Wild have done just that.
In the same way, your story might appear in its entirety the way you intended, with your prose intact and the resources you fought so hard to gather in time – interviews and comments by prominent people, images and video clips - present and well-displayed. It might similarly catch on, spread out far and wide throughout the social media universe and make (or maintain) your name.
But whatever your experience of the final result, next time you hear that a movie studio or production company is looking for a development executive, go right ahead and call them. You're well qualified.
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