There’s one especially significant subject I always stress writers should consider first before starting a screenplay. Wanna guess what it is?
That’s right—money! Or in Hollywood parlance, budget.
A budget is how much money a production company has decided it can afford to spend on a project and still have a chance of making some profit. If you ignore the budget on a project you’re writing you can have your idea shot down in a “Hollywood second” (the time it takes the word “No” to get from a studio exec’s lips to your ears).
It’s likely you’ll be pitching your screenplay to someone who is going to be thinking about how much it’s going to cost. You don’t want to be caught with a US$200 million idea when pitching to a company with US$20 million to spend. Of course, knowing what an animated feature is going to cost is like knowing how much a gray suit costs. It depends on who makes it, and whether it’s sold in Siberia or Beverly Hills.
Any scene can be animated inexpensively, but our audiences today are used to some pretty spectacular stuff. So if you call for something spectacular it’s either going to cost a lot or look pretty cheesy. I’m not suggesting you have to have your animated feature budgeted before you pitch it. But if you’re going to call for lots of amazing visual effects you must at least have an idea of what ballpark the studio is playing in because I assure you, they will ask you what you think the film will cost.
One of the things you will want to consider when choosing a story for an animated feature is the medium, as this will significantly affect the budget. There are several choices of how animated feature stories can be animated: full or limited cel animation, full or limited CG (computer generated), paper cutout (usually also CG), clay (can also be CG), or in many cases, a combination of these.
Just as studios will ask you what your budget is, they will ask you what medium you see your movie in. It is important to choose a medium for your animated that best represents the theme, tone, and world of your story.
©Jeffrey Scott, All Rights Reserved
Jeffrey Scott has written over 700 animated and live-action TV and film scripts for Sony, Warner Bros., Disney, Marvel, Universal, Paramount, Columbia, Big Animation, Hanna-Barbera and others. His writing has been honored with three Emmys and the Humanitas Prize. He is author of the acclaimed book, How to Write for Animation. To work with Jeffrey visit his website at www.JeffreyScott.tv.
Read other articles from this series:
#1 The difference between live-action and animation writing
#3 It all begins with a premise
#4 The secret to developing your story
#5 Finding the scenes that MUST be there
#7 How to easily transform your outline into script
#8 A brief introduction to script writing
#9 How long should your scenes be?
#10 How to (and NOT to) edit your writing
#13 The importance of communication
#17 Assuming the point of view of your audience
