[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Matthew Kalil, Screenwriter/Author/Instructor: You turn from being an artist/creator in the room to somebody with one of those blowup things that flap in the wind to try and get attention for your car wash.
Film Courage: Can you talk about the challenges around getting work read? You have a finished screenplay, you’re in the phase of now putting it out there.
Matthew: I met with someone yesterday, this friend of mine who’s just had a movie (a South African movie) that screened at the Chinese Theatre [Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, CA]. It was great and she’s done so well, her fourth feature film.
I told her about this project that I’ve got. I love this project. It’s a novel that I’ve loved since I was a child, like very young. I’ve written an adaptation of it. Now I want to get it made.
The first thing she said to me was:
Do you have a lookbook or a pitch deck?
And I was like:
I don’t. I haven’t done it yet, I’ve just finished the script.
I think that sadly the way it’s working at the moment, at least it’s happening in South Africa, but I think it’s happening here as well. People don’t really want to read scripts anymore, they want to see your lookbook, they want to see images and characters. I think that you have a vision for your project that you’re going to make and so it’s about collaboration and speaking to illustrators or maybe getting some images that are copyright free or maybe even getting somebody to illustrate something for you or getting hold of a designer.
Where we move from screenwriter to promoter of our work, it’s a difficult phase. Personally I just want people to give me money to make my damn art adaptation book, just give me millions of dollars and I’ll make it. It’ll be beautiful, trust me. That’s never going to happen right. People want to see that you have a vision. That’s where the lookbook comes in as something that’s sort of an in between phase because I think it can be very limiting to…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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About:
Matthew Kalil is a writer, director, script editor, author and speaker. He has written and co-written over 40 produced episodes of TV and has received various grants, development funding and awards. Matthew’s productions have been screened and broadcast in Canada, Denmark, Morocco, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, the United States and the United Kingdom. Since receiving his MA in Screenwriting, he has been teaching, writing and mentoring students for over 20 years. Matthew has developed a unique system of screenwriting theory that helps beginners as well as established screenwriters get in touch with their creative core. His book, The Three Wells of Screenwriting, published by Michael Wiese productions with a foreword by Christopher Vogler, has been describes as a “breakthrough in the writing craft.” His workshops have touched and inspired thousands of participants and his gentle and insightful script editing guidance has helped many writers realize the stories they were always trying to tell. A charismatic speaker, Matthew has enjoyed presenting many times at the London Screenwriting Festival, the Cape Town International Animation Festival and the University Film and Video Association. Matthew is currently an Assistant Professor at the David Lynch MFA in screenwriting in the USA.
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