All,
Posted a response to a company looking for scripts. I try to get stuff out there and read - shorts and features, as much as possible. More than often it's to indi producers who are just looking for short scripts. But sometimes it's production companies with listed web sites.
On this occasion I sent a mail to Creative Entertainment & Media Inc.. (
http://www.creativeentertainmentmedia.com). Got a response of:
Thank you for your email. I'm Matthew King-Ringo, Director of Programming & Development with Creative Entertainment & Media Inc. We are an accredited, award winning Production Company located in Los Angeles, CA. We have a mandate to provide original, entertaining programming for the U.S. and Europe and we’re open to reviewing content that has been filmed and edited as well as all genres of show concepts.
Please review our website at:
http://www.creativeentertainmentmedia.com &
http://www.myspace.com/creativeetmedia As far as your projects go, I would need to get a Non-Disclosure Agreement over to you before we could discuss/review your projects and the possibilities of us moving forward with them.
Feel free to contact me via email or my direct line if you have any questions.
So far so good. Looked legit enough.
Printed. Signed and sent back the NDA.
Next they wanted to read max 3 loglines/synopsis. So picked three of my features (Utopia-1, Blood Brothers and Locker 13).
Response was favorable.
You have some good concepts here. Go ahead and give me a call on my
direct line at your earliest convenience.
Only alarm that went off in my head here was me ringing them. I explained I lived in Ireland and set-up skype credit and made a call (nothing to loose and for me it would be an education anyway).
Spent 30 odd minutes talking with him on the phone. 15 minutes in I was planning on hanging up because it appeared if I didn't have a budget outline they would need a line producer to put together (as they didn't employ a line producer). So to choose one of my scripts, they would weaver their fees and they would send me a proposal. At this stage I just asked straight up. Do I send you my script and you look over it first. He wanted to see the script, so I forwarded. Within an hour I get a proposal excel form - looking for sum of $2,000. No obligation on my behalf, but if I don't want to proceed, they don't progress and good luck with your career.
Now I've just sent a script that couldn't have been read - a War/Action Drama - it's gets listed in the excel sheet as Action/Thriller (LOL!) and they want 2K from me to do up a budget listed as budget consulting fees. I could have sent them a 90 page script that might have been so bad it wouldn't even get read. But dive in and pay $2,000 and lose it.
Looks like another case of the writer getting totally ripped off if they proceed.
On the plus side a 30 min call from Ireland to California cost less than 50 (euro) cent on skype.
