Last night I thought I would try an event from the New Producers Alliance - yet another of those small outfits that London seems to have limitless numbers of.
The reason I went to a development session was that I had been thinking about doing a bit of development on the side, almost for fun like. And did I change my mind on this or what?!
The night was called 'Script development for script developers' and had four on the panel, an independent film companies 'Head of development' (there was just her) plus a BBC films editor, an experience producer and AD and a newbie film maker who had just scored a grant.
The most interesting thing about the night was the career path for a Script Editor in this country. Basically you became someone's PA (for about £1 per week) and then made the connections and rise slowly to the top. To earn about £25k if you're lucky. It's a young persons game, that's for sure! There is bucket loads of this here but what makes it slightly incidious is that these entry positions are paid nothing or next too, so the only people who can afford to do them tend to be the well-off in the first place. Publishing has this in spades, and media too.
So about half way through the night I woke up and I just thought I was being stupid - why bother with script development career if you have anough talent to write? Everyone says 'we need writers, we need writers' - and then makes it difficult to enter the market, but that's another story.
So I had to ask myself why I was even contemplating this idea. The reason is, of course, that I am so heartily sick of my day job that I want to scream. I can't scream becasue I am sitting at the desk of said day job and people might take it the wrong way... And I guess I know what I have to do really (write fucking great scripts and 'sell' them) and I also know how long it all takes. It also casts doubts on my scheme to do an MA in development - is this just another way of procrastinating? A great way, but never the less....
This revivies a feeling of nostalgia for my Melbourne days where I did nothing more complicated than work in the candy bar of a small indy cinema and write. Lovely time really, but I didn't need much in the way of money, not like now.
Sooooooo... back to the keyboard... always on with it, moving forward, make a plan and stick to it!
But I will trot along to the NPA again, they were good value: http://www.npa.org.uk/index.asp?pageid=home
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