[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: When did you begin studying Netflix TV shows?
Script Doctor, Writing Coach, and Author Daniel Calvisi: A few years ago, definitely when I was coming out developing my book on TV, Story Maps TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot where I broke down the structure of one hour pilots from a lot of different networks and streamers and stuff and I definitely wanted to have some Netflix shows in there. In that first book I broke down House Of Cards which was their first big show that they produced and distributed. That was a big benchmark for them. Now they’ve had hundreds of shows since then of course but yeah it’s fascinating. Writers always ask me about that and they’re like Netflix has a thousand shows, how can I get mine in there? which is a normal question but it is extremely competitive. The thing is everybody wants to get on Netflix. Even the established filmmakers and established TV people and for a while, I don’t know if they’re still doing it, Netflix was overpaying the market for everybody, they were paying anyone more than other companies were giving them. It’s actually kind of in their company rules if you’re an employee of Netflix and you can prove that someone who does your same job at another company gets more money than you, they will raise your salary up to that level, at least that’s the way they started. Reed Hastings put in that rule when they first started.
Content-wise they’re a huge studio, they’re a huge factory, they do every genre imaginable so it’s an exciting place. Their financials are crazy, everybody’s kind of like We don’t know how they fund so much stuff, billions and billions of dollars of content but somehow they do it? They’re a big dog definitely.
Film Courage: What have you learned about the structure of Netflix TV shows?
Dan: They distinguish themselves from definitely the major networks, the broadcast networks in that they…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
DANIEL P. CALVISI is a Script Doctor, Writing Coach and the author of Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay and Story Maps: TV DRAMA: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot. He is a former Story Analyst for major studios like Twentieth Century Fox, Miramax Films and New Line Cinema. He coaches writers, teaches webinars on writing for film and television and speaks at writing conferences. Many of his clients have worked with the top networks and studios in the industry, such as Netflix, HBO, Warner Brothers, Disney, Sony, ABC, Showtime, Apple TV+ and more. He holds a degree in Film and Television from New York University. He lives in Los Angeles.
MORE VIDEOS WITH DANIEL CALVISI
BUY THE BOOK – STORY MAPS: How To Write A GREAT Screenplay
BUY THE BOOK – STORY MAPS: TV Drama: The Structure of the One-Hour Television Pilot (Volume 4)
CONNECT WITH DANIEL CALVISI
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