How do you get a gig as a script reader?
July 8, 2008 at 3:35 pm in Filmmaking/Filmmakers
Poor Bookhouse. Dude just moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in screenwriting. Looking for advice on how to land a job doing script coverage, he asked the readers of AskMetafilter. Their advice? In a nutshell: “don’t do it.”
“Script reading is draining work which may make you turn against writing,” writes Sharkfu, adding that if Bookhouse still wants to pursue, he suggests starting off as an unpaid intern at a production company (which, by the way, is illegal unless you’re receiving college credit). Another commenter points out that script reading is not a path to a paid writing gig.
Disregarding the negative nellies at Metafilter, however correct, there are still benefits for a budding screenwriter to work as a reader:
- You’ll make contacts in development, from executives to other readers, which will be a huge advantage if you ever have a script that you actually want read.
- You’ll learn what keeps script readers interested and gain good coverage. It’ll only take a handful of scripts to learn this, though.
- Arguably, being paid to read scripts is a much better gig than waiting tables.
But as for the original question, I turn to our readers here: How would a fresh Los Angeles resident, without any contacts, pursue a position doing script coverage?
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