If you wish to be a growth exec in Hollywood, there are plenty of phrases you must know. You need to have the ability to talk your imaginative and prescient, have the suitable instruments for the job, and be capable to perceive the concepts and questions folks ask you.
That is why I put collectively this glossary of phrases ot show you how to alongside in your journey to being a studio head.
Let’s dive in.
Improvement Government Glossary
‘Barton Fink’CREDIT: twentieth Century Fox
I. Key Roles & Gamers
- Above-the-Line (ATL): The important thing artistic and monetary stakeholders in a mission, whose salaries are negotiated earlier than manufacturing begins. This contains the author, director, producer(s), and principal solid. Their prices are listed “above the road” in a funds. (See additionally: Under-the-Line).
- Under-the-Line (BTL): The crew and manufacturing workers whose jobs start nearer to and through principal images. This contains the cinematographer, editor, manufacturing designer, and the remainder of the crew. Their prices are fastened union scale charges and are listed “under the road” within the funds.
- Creator: The person credited with creating the foundational components of a tv collection—the world, the characters, and the core idea. They typically function the pinnacle author or showrunner.
- Improvement Government (D-Exec): A studio or manufacturing firm govt who finds and develops tasks. They learn scripts, hearken to pitches, give artistic notes, and handle a slate of tasks.
- Government Producer (EP): A high-level producer. In movie, an EP typically helps with financing or attaches key expertise. In tv, the EP title is held by the Showrunner and different senior writer-producers who’ve important artistic and logistical authority.
- Line Producer: The producer answerable for the day-to-day logistics and funds of a manufacturing. They translate the artistic imaginative and prescient right into a sensible, on-budget plan.
- Reader: A junior worker or freelancer who reads submitted scripts and supplies Protection.
- Showrunner: The lead govt producer and artistic authority for a tv collection. They’re sometimes the pinnacle author and are answerable for the day-to-day operations, from the writers’ room to post-production, managing the funds, and delivering the ultimate episodes.
II. Core Improvement Paperwork
- Bible (TV): A complete doc for a TV collection that particulars the present’s world, tone, characters (together with backstories and future arcs), and potential storylines for future seasons. It is used to promote the present and as a information for the writers’ room.
- Protection: A report written by a reader that summarizes and analyzes a script. It sometimes features a logline, a synopsis, and commentary on the idea, characters, plot, and dialogue, concluding with a suggestion (e.g., Go, Take into account, Advocate).
- Logline: A one-to-two sentence abstract of a mission’s core idea, battle, and protagonist. It should be compelling and talk the story’s hook.
- Lookbook: A visible doc used to convey the meant aesthetic, tone, and magnificence of a movie or TV present. It contains pictures, shade palettes, and references for cinematography, manufacturing design, and costumes.
- Pitch Deck: A visible presentation (typically a PDF or slideshow) that expands on a pitch. It contains the logline, synopsis, character breakdowns, thematic statements, and sometimes a lookbook or sizzle reel.
- Script / Screenplay: The written work containing dialogue, scene descriptions, and character actions. The muse of the complete mission.
- Sizzle Reel: A brief, stylized video (2-5 minutes) that demonstrates the tone, type, and idea of a proposed mission. It is a proof-of-concept used to get executives and expertise excited.
- Supply Materials: The underlying work {that a} movie or TV present relies on, reminiscent of a e book, article, comedian, podcast, or play. Securing the rights to supply materials is a vital first step.
- Remedy: A prose doc that summarizes a narrative, scene by scene. It is extra detailed than a synopsis however not but a full script. It is typically a deliverable in a author’s contract.
III. The Improvement Lifecycle
- Task: A writing job the place a studio or manufacturing firm hires a author to create a script based mostly on a pre-existing thought, supply materials, or pitch.
- Improvement: The whole technique of taking a mission from an thought to a greenlight. This contains writing, rewriting, attaching expertise, and securing financing.
- Improvement Hell: A state the place a mission stays in growth for years, typically passing via a number of writers and executives, with out ever getting made.
- Greenlight: The official approval and funding dedication from a studio or financier to maneuver a mission from growth into pre-production and manufacturing.
- Notes: Inventive suggestions given by executives, producers, or administrators to a author on a script or story define. The method entails a number of rounds of notes and subsequent drafts.
- Package deal: A mission that has key components connected, making it extra engaging to patrons. A powerful package deal may embody a script, a director, and a number of A-list actors.
- Pitch: A verbal presentation of a mission thought to a studio or manufacturing firm, delivered by a author or producer.
- Polish: A minor rewrite of a script that focuses on enhancing dialogue and pacing, reasonably than main structural modifications.
- Rewrite: A major redrafting of a script to deal with notes on story construction, character arcs, and main plot factors.
- Spec Script (Speculative Script): A screenplay written by a screenwriter on their very own initiative, and not using a prior deal or cost. They hope to promote it to a manufacturing firm or studio.
- Turnaround: A contractual association the place a studio that has developed a mission decides to not produce it, however permits the producer a restricted time to set it up at one other studio, which should then reimburse the primary studio’s growth prices.
IV. Contracts, Offers & Rights
- First-Look Deal: A contractual settlement that requires a author or producer to submit all of their tasks to a selected studio first. The studio will get the primary proper of refusal earlier than the mission may be shopped elsewhere.
- Holding Deal: A deal a TV community or studio makes with an actor to safe their companies for the upcoming pilot season. The actor is paid to be solely accessible to that studio.
- Mental Property (IP): Pre-existing, branded content material with a built-in viewers, reminiscent of a best-selling novel, comedian e book collection, or online game. Studios are closely targeted on buying and growing IP.
- Life Rights: An settlement to buy the unique proper to inform a selected particular person’s life story. Important for biopics.
- Possibility Settlement: A contract that offers a producer or studio the unique proper to buy a script or different supply materials for a restricted time period for a small payment (the “choice payment”). In the event that they determine to make the film, they “train the choice” and pay the complete “buy worth.”
- General Deal: A profitable, multi-year deal a studio makes with a creator, author, or producer to develop and produce tasks solely for that studio. In return for this exclusivity, the creator receives important compensation and overhead help.
- Pay-or-Play: A contractual clause for main expertise (administrators, actors) that ensures their full wage even when the mission doesn’t go into manufacturing, so long as the expertise fulfilled their contractual obligations.
- Factors: A proportion of a movie’s earnings. Gross Factors are a proportion of the gross income, which may be very uncommon and precious. Internet Factors are a proportion of the income in spite of everything bills have been deducted, which regularly leads to no payout.
- WGA (Writers Guild of America): The labor union representing movie, tv, and new media writers. The WGA units minimal wage requirements (“scale”), determines writing credit, and supplies different protections for its members.
V. Tv-Particular Phrases
- Bake-off: A aggressive growth course of the place a community commissions scripts for 2 or extra comparable tasks, in the end selecting just one to maneuver ahead.
- Episodic vs. Serialized: Episodic exhibits function self-contained tales in every episode (e.g., a traditional procedural like Legislation & Order). Serialized exhibits function ongoing storylines that cross a number of episodes or a complete season (e.g., Breaking Unhealthy).
- Restricted Collection / Miniseries: A present with a self-contained story that’s resolved inside a single season of a predetermined, finite variety of episodes.
- Pilot: The primary episode of a proposed tv collection. It serves as a proof-of-concept to find out if a community will order a full season.
- Pilot Season: The normal interval (roughly January to April) when broadcast networks solid, shoot, and display screen pilots to determine which exhibits to select up for his or her fall schedule. This mannequin is changing into much less dominant with the rise of streaming and year-round growth.
- Collection Order: The official dedication from a community or streaming service to provide a full season of a present (sometimes 6-22 episodes).
- Straight-to-Collection: A mission that receives a collection order with out first producing a pilot episode. This can be a signal of excessive confidence within the package deal (script, creator, expertise).
- Writers’ Room: The collaborative surroundings the place a crew of writers, led by the showrunner, works collectively to interrupt tales and write scripts for a tv collection.
VI. Inventive & Enterprise Ideas
- 4-Quadrant (4-Quad): A time period for a movie that appeals to all 4 main demographic “quadrants”: 1) Male underneath 25, 2) Male over 25, 3) Feminine underneath 25, and 4) Feminine over 25. These are sometimes big-budget tentpole movies.
- Franchise: A media property that may be expanded throughout a number of movies or exhibits, creating sequels, prequels, and spinoffs (e.g., Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Wars).
- Excessive-Idea: A narrative thought that’s simply and compellingly summarized in a single sentence and is definitely marketable. Suppose Jurassic Park: “Scientists convey dinosaurs again to life with disastrous outcomes.”
- Pre-Gross sales: The follow of promoting the distribution rights for a movie in numerous worldwide territories earlier than it’s produced. This can be a frequent approach to finance impartial movies.
- Tentpole: A big-budget, high-profile movie that’s anticipated to be a significant business success, able to propping up a studio’s monetary outcomes for the 12 months.
Let me know what I ought to add within the feedback.
