You already have the power and the ability to succeed in the film and television industries, though you might be missing some tools.  Know that you are your own company, and you are your company’s CEO.  It’s statistics that give CEOs the 20/20 hindsight, and the forecasting power to make informed strategic decisions to drive their company’s success.  So, let’s explore what statistics are important to your career, how to keep track of them, and how to turn those statistics into actionable data.

Despite my experience, and considering there are so many ways to skin a cat, I commonly say “don’t take my word as gospel,” but there is one absurd quote I have heard too many times to count: “A good script sells itself.” This concept is, at its core, flawed.

Definition: Sell (/sel/) – verb: give or hand over (something) in exchange for money.

This definition inherently requires there be more than one party to a “sell” transaction, so before a sale can take place, “something” must be introduced by the selling party to the buying party.  It is this initial introductory communiqué, and every subsequent communiqué between seller and buyer that is collectively known as  the selling and marketing process.  It is the seller’s job to get the buyer to even first consider the product before the sale can take place.

Take for instance, any recognized brand in existence.  Coca-Cola is one single product; they spend nearly $3 Billion per year in advertising, have had 61 different slogans since their inception, and have executed countless commercial advertising campaigns. Again, Coca-Cola is one product.  

Coca-Cola’s executives do not change their commercial advertisements out of boredom, or just for giggles; it’s because ads can lose public relevance, and bottom line: one advertisement can sell the same product better than another.

Our industry is no different. Why do you think the studios have different trailers and posters for movies they release? And these are films already produced! So if studios have to sell their movies, why would anyone think a screenplay would sell itself? Screenwriters are selling a "product" in hopes of it turning into a different product--a movie, however at all times during the life of a film production, someone is always selling something to someone else.

Smart scripts don't sell scripts. Smart writers sell scripts.

Selling a product requires knowledge on how to sell.  In our business, since reading scripts takes time, and there are many scripts to consider, there are several items that producers and executives take into consideration before actually committing their time to reading a screenplay.  In some circumstances, these “considered items” could be as simple as an introduction, referral, or a writer’s previous track record of produced films and television shows.  However, for unproduced writers, and for the vast majority of produced writers as well, the most commonly requested items include: logline, synopsis, treatment, and resume.

What does this mean for you?  This means that every logline, synopsis, treatment, and resume is considered a selling point to getting executives to read your screenplays.  Knowing that  Coca-Cola finds certain ads sell their product better than others should translate to you as follows: 

Certain loglines, synopses, treatments, and resumes will sell your scripts better than others.

Scientifically Improve Your Loglines, etc Through InkTip.com

In order to scientifically improve your loglines, synopses, treatments, and resumes (hereinafter referred to as “Ad Variables), you have to be able to track the success of each version or draft of these.  To do that, executives actually have to read them.

[Shameless plug time :-)] InkTip.com is a great place to test and improve your loglines and other Ad Variables.  Listing a screenplay on InkTip.com makes  your Ad Variables and your screenplays available to thousands of filmmakers and executives, and it’s this kind of exposure that you need in order to fine-tune your sales approach for each screenplay.

Rule #1: Track everything.

For those of you who have at least one script currently listed on InkTip, or are planning to, download the InkTip Writer Analysis Tool here:http://www.inktip.com/welcome.php?cid=IWAnT&pg=InkTip_Writer_Analysis_Tool.xls. 

(If you do not have Microsoft Excel, you can get an idea of what the document should look like so that you can build your own here: http://www.inktip.com/welcome.php?cid=IWAnT&pg=InkTip_Writer_Analysis_Tool.pdf.

This spreadsheet is already set up for you to start analyzing the success of each of your Ad Variables, and is specifically designed for use with InkTip.  You’ll notice that this is set up to keep weekly statistics on all of your Ad Variables, where the far-left column represents the “Week Ending” (W.E.) date.  I put some fictitious numbers in for the first three weeks, so that you can see how the right-hand columns will automatically generate your statistics, and the chart tabs located at the bottom of the Excel window titled “Logline Success Rates” and “Synopsis Success Rates” will also automatically generate.

You will also need to create a document titled “Daily Log” to note and track all changes to your Ad Variables and your screenplay.

A new InkTip_Writer_Analysis_Tool spreadsheet and Daily Log should be created for each script you are selling (I recommend you create dedicated sub-folders on your computer for each script where you can keep these documents organized).

For those of you who currently have scripts listed on InkTip.com, login to your account, and click on “New Logline Views” on the left.  Using the “Date” column, now count the number of logline views you have had for each week, and fill those figures into the InkTip Writer Analysis Tool (IWAnT).  

Do the same thing for your synopsis, treatment, resume, and script views by clicking “New Script/Synopsis Views”.

In your IWAnT Column G, you will fill in the number of entertainment professionals with whom you have started conversations. Every conversation initiated should be counted. These conversations could include emails, phone calls, in-person meetings, carrier pigeons, or smoke signals if you're into that.

Once you have all of your data filled in, and at least four week’s worth of data, you can now start making some changes.

Rule #2: Only make changes one at a time.

Now that you have some statistics, you can use the charts in the IWAnT to look for weeks where your logline was more successful at getting executives to also read your synopsis, and weeks where your synopsis was more successful at getting executives to download or read your screenplay.  

The stats columns to the right of your IWAnT (in red) are pretty straight forward, and can be understood as follows: 

Logline Success % = the percentage of logline views that lead to a synopsis view.
Synopsis Success % = the percentage of synopsis views that lead to a script download… and so on.

The stats can be read as the higher the percentage for any column, the more successful the  variable you used at that time.  So if you have a high stat for your Synopsis Success % stat, but a lower stat for your Logline Success % stat, you should be focusing on perfecting your logline in order to increase script downloads.

After analyzing your stats, if there were weeks that were particularly better than others, you should ask yourself what changes you made or actions you took during those time periods.  More often than not, measurable spikes or drops in your synopsis’ success-rate will be based on changes to the synopsis itself—likewise for your logline’s success-rate.  However, it may sometimes surprise you the kind of impact seemingly unrelated changes can have on your overall success.

For instance, perhaps your logline success rates have been steady from Week 1 through Week 15, but in Week 7 you changed your logline without it having an impact in your synopsis viewings one way or the other.  However from Week 8 though Week 15 you noticed a slight uptick in screenplay downloads.  This could mean that your new logline is so good that execs are skipping your synopsis and going straight to the screenplay, and you can confirm or debunk this by looking to see for drops in your synopsis reads.  However, if all the stats are normal, and the only increase is in the number of scripts read, this could indicate that though your original logline was getting people to read your synopsis, its style or tone was inconsistent with your synopsis, and was thus making execs feel like they weren’t reading what they wanted or expected, and therefore declined to read your screenplay.

In other words, this would further indicate that the change you made to the logline in Week 7, while attracting the same number of producers, in fact attracted a different group of producers who were more likely to be attracted to your synopsis, thereby leading to more screenplay downloads.

This all leads back to the importance of your brand new Daily Log!

Just like your IWAnT, in your Daily Log, you should keep track of every change you make or action you take in relation to your screenplay each week.  However, follow Rule #2: only make one change at a time, and allow that change to take effect for at least three weeks before reverting back, or making any other changes.  This is for two important reasons: (1) you need to allow enough time for each change to take effect, in order to be able to see a measurable impact, if any, and (2) by changing more than one thing at a time, you won’t know which change had which impact.

I know many of you are going to wonder early on, what are some good stats to strive for, so I ran the numbers on a listing that I consulted on for the purposes of this article.  The first few weeks were slow, so I started making edits to the logline, synopsis, and resume.  I tracked every change in a Daily Log, and despite my experience, I even had to revert back on some modifications because the statistics suggested it.  In the six months I had it listed on InkTip, my logline resulted in synopsis views 21% of the time, and my synopsis lead to a screenplay download 67.6% of the time.  Considering the large number of script downloads, with no offers on the table, it appears that this screenplay may need some work, as it is not finding its producer-audience.  If I, or the writer, believe this screenplay to already be in excellent shape, then it could be advisable to modify both the logline and the synopsis to better match the style and tone of the screenplay.

Similar statistics should be kept for any email marketing you do, where you would instead be more likely to track the following Ad Variables: email copy (the message itself), logline, synopsis requests, script requests, and options/sales/hires.  Since executives on InkTip.com and at the Pitch & Networking Summit are specifically there to read or hear pitches respectively, there are different protocols to follow in emails—as they are unsolicited.  This paragraph truly necessitates its own entire article in order to address strategy, but for the time-being, you should refer to “Part IV: Learning to write… emails for success” ( http://www.inktip.com/sa_article_page.php?cat=sa&scat=resources&pg=74) for some ideas on other statistics you should be keeping in your email marketing efforts.  The same can be said for snail mail queries.

Scientifically Improve Your Pitches Through the Pitch & Networking Summit

The Pitch & Networking Summit [I’m laying these plugs on thick today… you love it] is a great opportunity to not only put some of your logline, and synopsis fine-tuning to work, but also an opportunity to fine-tune your pitches and your table strategies.

Download the InkTip Summit Writer Tool here: http://www.inktip.com/welcome.php?cid=IWAnT&pg=InkTipSummit_Writer_Analysis_Tool.xls.

(If you do not have Microsoft Excel, you can get an idea of what the document should look like so that you can build your own here:  http://www.inktip.com/welcome.php?cid=IWAnT&pg=InkTipSummit_Writer_Analysis_Tool.pdf.

It is not likely that you are going to be able to stay on top of filling this out on your computer while at the Pitch & Networking Summit, since you’ll thankfully be busy, but you should take notes while pitching so you can fill the Summit WAnT out later to see your results.

The Summit WAnT is pretty self-explanatory, but is just customized for the Summit.  You will notice that there is a far-left column to keep track of pitch session number, and the column to its immediate right is for the number of companies in each session.  This is very important to keep track of since the Pitch & Networking Summit is the only pitching event that brings nearly 300 execs to each event with an average 2 to 3.5 companies seated per table.  For statistics purposes, you will end up with incorrect figures if you do not make note of how many companies/executives you pitch at each table.

Unlike the InkTip.com WAnT, you will need to fill out a new tab at the bottom for each different strategy or pitch you are testing, since each tab is measuring the aggregate results.  There are four tabs located at the bottom of the spreadsheet available in the above download.

To fine-tune your pitching, you should come prepared and rehearsed with two to three different pitches.  And just as before, when you’re testing one pitch or strategy, you should try to not change too much from pitch to pitch.  You might even choose to just use the same pitch every time, but change the way you introduce yourself, or the amount of time you just shoot the breeze before actually pitching.  The key is to be mindful of what you’re doing—take note of it—but never at the cost of being comfortably yourself.

The advantage at the Summit, is it’s a one day event where you’ll be able to pitch roughly 35 companies, all looking for scripts and writers.  Pitching this many interested companies would take an estimated three or more months of sending out email and snail mail queries.  Plus, pitching at the Summit will yield far more reliable statistics since the executives are there for the sole purpose to hear your pitches.

All this said, keeping records at the Pitch & Networking Summit is not nearly as important as being comfortable.  So, if you’re unable or uncomfortable taking such detailed notes, not a problem.  Just be sure to make a concerted effort in being mindful of what you’re doing and saying, and make mental notes on the reactions you’re getting from the executives.

Conclusion

I’m aware that these might be some very new concepts for some of you, and that’s what makes this article so necessary.  I’m also aware that there are a lot of nay-sayers and “screenwriting experts” out there who argue for pure attention to honing your craft as the key to success—and on the rare occasion, they may beat the odds—but this is one thing I can guarantee you 100%: following the advice and using the tools in this and the past five articles can, and will, only help your career.

Take your career serious, and create the results you’re seeking.  Like I said, you do have the power and the ability to absolutely control your screenwriting career; it might just take some new tools and thought processes you weren’t aware of to navigate your way to success.

"Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out" – John Wooden

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About the Author:
Gato Scatena is a producer with Scatena & Rosner Films, and vice president at InkTip.  His most recent productions include the upcoming theatrical film, "Filth," starring James McAvoy, upcoming comedy, "Mantevention," starring Mario Van Peebles, and Lifetime's "Imaginary Friend," starring Paul Sorvino.
Questions for Gato can be tweeted to @GatoScatena on Twitter.