AGENTS

Yesterday we met the men in suits at ICM - Shan Ray (Motion Pictures) and Eric Hornie (TV ) who generously talked us through the system in the US for an hour and today we had a meeting with the gorgeous Irish agent (there are only two in La apparently) David Flynn at United Talent who was very open about how things work.

Points to bear in mind..

In this hard market, films most likely to be picked up are four quadrant films. Films that work for families, men, women and teens .

Keep writing spec scripts ALL THE TME - even if you're a staff writer on a show - get up early; keep writing your own material.

Staff writers - the first rung of the ladder on a series won't get to write a script for a year but can be on $10,000 dollars a week.

We also got a pretty bleak run down of the figures at Toronto of 650 films in the market, 620 didn't have a US distributor and only 6 were sold.

Toronto film festival Film guardian.co.uk



25 Sep 2009: Adam Dawtrey: The Darwin biopic has finally secured an American distributor, but its very limited release suggests it is time the British film industry stops being so ...
www.guardian.co.uk/film/torontofilmfestival


Over with United and one important change in the US is they now get THE BRIT LIST which is a list of top twenty unmade scripts (rather like the BLACK LIST in the US) that agents/dev execs think are the best scripts out there. We asked who chooses and they're a mysterious gang a bit like the mystery shopper....

Another tip was to enter festivals with your work - a reccuring theme here - and the good ones will get found - not necessarily made - but will get you work and representation..

He also recommended writers be more hard working about getting their own stuff out there. See all the BAFTA short films and contact the directors of the ones you like and take them out for coffee and talk about what they want to do next. See if they're a good fit...