To sum up the last blog I consider competitions to be about 20% talent and 80% luck.
But what about when you start to send your work out there into the big wide world of producers and production companies? This, I feel, is a totally different ball game altogether. If you have done your research on the company you are sending your work to, created a good online profile, networked your butt off and made many writing friends and contacts in the TV and film industry, then you have significantly reduced the odds of success in your favour.
Networking is the biggest and most important part of this. Build up those contacts, meet new people, befriend fellow writers, it's the difference between saying you're a writer and making a living as one. The effort you put in may not pay dividends straight away, but years down the line someone you once met might remember you as a hard working, conscientious, friendly person just when someone has asked them if they know any good writers. If someone already knows you, or of you, and more importantly they like you, then luck doesn't even factor in to the equation. Your hard work and your affable nature will get you into more places than luck ever will. Or to put it another way, you make your own luck and the harder you work the more luck you have.
2 comments:
Opportunity also plays a part, I think.
Ten days ago a first time Producer placed an ad in the Screenwriters' Bulletin on the 'Shooting People' site, looking for a ten minute quirky horror script. I sent one in that I already had. He liked it and all looked good.
Then he emails me to ask if I have a Hustle-type short with an up-beat ending. I didn't so I wrote one. Two drafts and many emails later he's said that he'll film it in march/april when he 's back in the UK, with a BBC-attached director.
Of course until it actually happens it may all fall apart but were it not for me looking at the bulletin and the script call I'd still be scratching my ... head, wondering when anything will happen.
Because I saw his original post and responded then wrote something else he was looking for I've made a contact with an upcoming Producer and had work read by an established director.
Perhaps that comes under 'luck' after all.
How did the 'Traveller' shoot go in the end? How long before production is finished?
The Traveller went fantastically well, the editing is now in progress and I should get the trailer very soon.
Your opportunity wasn't down to luck, it was down to hard work and talent...because you applied for it and wrote him something when he asked. Well done, hope it comes together :-)
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