Kindle is Changing the Film Industry
As a former studio script reader, I can attest to the fact that lugging tons and tons of hard copy scripts from studio pick-up, to home, and then back to the studio, was not my favorite practice.
As a current script reader and judge of international screenwriting competitions, where I receive over 200 scripts in PDF/Final Draft/Movie Magic format with a month to read them, I can also say that sitting in front of my home computer for hours on end staring at my computer screen isn’t my idea of a wonderful evening.
If you ever venture through a studio lot and visit the various production and development offices, seeing stacks upon stacks of screenplays along the walls is a common and expected sight. There are warehouses full of hard copy screenplays. Tens of thousands of screenplays move through the film industry in just one year. A small percentage of them are optioned or purchased. An even smaller percentage are made into films, both good and bad. Regardless of whether the scripts make it to production or not, there they sit… for years… sometimes for decades.
Well, the film industry is changing. In just the last couple of years, script readers now tote something new in their arsenal. Something lighter. Its name is… Kindle. Yes, the wireless reading device that purists rally against. Initially, the Kindle was sold to the public as an alternative and eventual replacement of books, both hard copy and paperback, allowing readers the ability to carry hundreds of books on one device. However, Kindle has found a new purpose, and the lowly script readers’ back muscles are embracing it.
Kindle has gone the way of Hollywood. A growing majority of studios, production companies, and agencies are no longer forcing their assistants to make copies of the many script submissions they receive each week. Instead, with a couple clicks, PDF versions of the scripts are downloaded to the script reader’s Kindle. If a reader likes a script, they email it to their boss and they read it on their own Kindle. No more copies. No more annoying paper jams. Just a lightweight device that you can take anywhere. A few setbacks have occurred as far as the formatting of a screenplay being affected by the display of the Kindle, but from what I’ve heard, that problem has been taken care of for the most part.
As a screenwriter, you’ll no longer have to make multiple copies of your scripts to submit to studios, production companies, and agencies. It’s already a common practice that if you do break through that first door, that industry contact will merely ask you to sign a release and email them the PDF.
Even a large majority of international screenwriting competitions have made the jump to paperless business, now accepting mostly PDF format for submissions.
The sales of three hole punch paper will plummet, as well as the 2 inch brass fasteners we love to hate. However, screenwriters will save a fortune on postage. And just think of all the happy trees that will prosper because of this thin device called… Kindle. Not to mention the upcoming iPad as well. The industry is changing indeed and while I actually prefer reading screenplays on a screen (just not sitting in front of my home PC), I will miss going into a development office feeling like I’m actually in a building made entirely of screenplays.
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