In terms of script sales, it’s no secret that the film industry is based in Los Angeles, and if you read a lot of books on the script, one of the things will tell you that it is absolutely necessary to move there if you want to search for a career in the script and understand sales better the script. I am not going to sit here and lie to you and say that this will not help your career, because it certainly will - you will significantly increase your chances of meeting industry people, people you simply cannot meet if you live in such places as Nome, Alaska. Although I did meet the writer from there when I was in Denali National Park.
You may not be able to live in Los Angeles right now (it took me a few years before I made a move), but that certainly does not mean that you cannot learn about the land. Try and fix the memory where the studios are located - try to know that Universal is in North Hollywood, not far from Studio City, or that Disney and Warner Brothers are in the east, and that a lot of television production is going on there. Know that there are a lot of business lunches at Ivy - these are the small details that, unfortunately, industry people will judge you, and even if you don’t live there, if you are familiar with you there will be much more chances to make a positive impression. on some senior executives and sell the script.
As most of us know, living in California is considered more expensive than living in most of the rest of the country, which means that for the vast majority of us, moving there is simply not on the cards right now. The good news is that if you are smart about it, you don’t really need to move there - at least not at the beginning. Your main problem should be that you live there, which will help you sell the script, and thanks to the wonderful invention that is the Internet, there are several ways to do this, some of which I share with you now:
Enter your California phone number
Industry people love working with other industry people, so I see that you are more connected than you really are (remember that this is only for the moment) is crucial for the sale of the script. After that, you can live where you want, and literally nobody cares - you are a writer, you get the luxury of working from home.
The easiest thing you can do to help sell a script, and I swear that as difficult as it might seem, this little detail that goes a long way is getting a phone number in California. And right now, you can say to yourself: “But I don’t live in California - how should I get a phone number in California if I’m not already there?” And to you, my friend, I would say: “You’ve heard of Google Voice? "
For those of you who do not yet know what it is, Google Voice is the service that Google has set up, which allows you to have a personalized phone number from anywhere in the world, with any city code you choose on it. In addition to this, he will transfer your phone calls to you, and you can call by calling directly to your main telephone number, and you want to know the best information about all this - it's free! As if this could not be better, Google Voice also works as a convenient dictation tool. You can leave a message to yourself, and it will decrypt what you just said. This is what I did at the beginning of my career in the script before I could finish it in Hollywood. You know what they say: fake it until you do it!
