Futurism

Script Reader

August 2019 • New York City, NY

What I liked

Reading scripts (good and bad alike) is one of the most helpful things you can do in order to better understand, identify, and articulate what good storytelling is. My internship was primarily reading scripts, so this is a great thing. I was given a high degree of flexibility and freedom, and my bosses were all interesting and good people, both to learn from and to spend time with.

What I wish was different

Sometimes the office would be empty; I wish I was notified when this would occur, since commuting is a big time sink for me and working in the empty office is effectively the same as working remotely. There was also a brief period where one of my bosses asked me to try and figure out what was wrong with his Mac computer over the course of several weeks, and I did my damnedest and ultimately discovered that he would need to pay about $100 minimum to replace a key component. We had a conversation about it and I could tell he was disappointed that I wasn't able to negotiate a refund or replacement from Apple. He was trying to teach me a larger point about assertiveness but the whole situation felt a bit tangential, i.e. unrelated to the work I was doing, so while I appreciate the mentorship, it was still a relatively frustrating hitch that took time away from my more meaningful work. This is incredibly tame considering the many random (and sometimes demeaning) things that film/tv production interns are forced to do, so I count myself very lucky, but I wanted to note it nonetheless.

Advice

Don't be discouraged by poor scripts, as they are an opportunity to understand and express what makes something boring, unsatisfying, or trite in a way that goes beyond blurting "it's just bad." Being able to defend your notes with direct references to dialogue or scenes (and citing their page numbers) is a good habit to form. Ultimately there is a lot of subjectivity involved with assessing the quality of a script, so try to check your biases against certain genres and approach your coverage like it should be received with a grain of salt, not as gospel truth. That being said, still use strong and concise language in your coverage; don't invalidate or downplay your opinions as you express them, just express them knowing that others may disagree, and that is okay.

Be the first to mark this as helpful