How Does A Movie Producer Read A Screenplay? by Mark Heidelberger
Film Courage: How does a movie producer view a screenplay versus how an actor, filmmaker or writer views a screenplay?
Mark Heidelberger, Producer: Well since I’m not an actor or some of these other people, I can’t necessarily speak to their process. But I think a producer is probably a lot more comprehensive in terms of when I look at a script I’m thinking about a lot of different…I’m thinking about all of those things. Specifically how they relate budget wise and also how the creative and the fiscal work together so when I read the script I’m thinking about story, I’m thinking about the arc of the characters, I’m thinking about the conflict, I’m thinking about why are we telling this story? But also who would I get to play these roles on this budget level? What are some decent names, who am I picturing in this?
I’m presuming in this situation that the movie is real, that it’s not just a script, I’m not just reading it for fun but it’s like okay we’re making this picture. Like this picture is funded Mark, read the script.
So I’m reading it and I’m like okay how are we going to pull off that? We need this kind of grandiose house or a good example would be there’s a project I’m working on now called LI2 and we’re very hopeful that we’ll shoot this summer. The financing is getting locked down as we speak and it’s a very cool thriller about these two helicopter parents, these sort of like wealthy parents. They’ve got these two ten-year-old twins and the twins are kind of like…the parents are finding them hard to tutor. The boy’s got a learning disability and the girl is kind of too smart for her own good, too rebellious. And they’re having trouble tutoring these kids and the kids have their own language that they speak in when they don’t want the parents to know what they’re saying.
The parents buy this advice call the LI2, it’s kind of like an Alexa or a Google Home (these smart devices), it connects to the house, it can lock the door, it can open windows, it can do all of these kind of things, turn the light down, answer questions, whatever…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
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