It’s getting harder and harder for screenwriters.
In 2020, an Epidemic dealt a fatal blow to the Film and Television industry, which has not yet recovered. According to SkyEye, more than 10,000 film and television enterprises were cancelled or revoked.
A large number of film and TV projects have ended without success, and writers at the lowest end of the industry are struggling to get by, defending their rights to get the meager script fees.
This issue’s microscopic story tells the story of a group of screenwriters in the midst of the film and television winter, among whom.
Some of them have been in the industry for nearly two years but no work has been broadcast.
Some are storytelling geniuses who won awards on their debut, but are now struggling to make ends meet.
Some of them are mature screenwriters who have written small pop-ups, but now they only want to find a job to meet their Food.
They have Dreams in mind, but they have been hit by reality and fallen into a vortex of self-doubt, they have worked hard, but the fruits of their labor have been taken by trickery.
The following are their true stories.
The script was stolen at will, and the new scriptwriter did not even have the right to breathe
Lin Qi, male, ’85
I was so confident in my writing that I once felt I was the “Chosen One” for screenwriting.
I had won national awards and had two fictional novels published during my college years.
At that Time, I was very happy and dreamed of becoming the most popular novelist like Han Han and Guo Jingming.
With such an ideal in mind, I did not hesitate to go to Beijing as soon as I graduated, dreaming of joining the film and television industry, and so I became a Northern drifter.
During that period, I met an old screenwriter who was famous in the industry at that time, and studied under him as a teacher, and worked under him as an assistant screenwriter for two years.
This meant not only that you might get byline rights, but also that most projects were actually paid.
I’m really much luckier than most screenwriters who have spent their lives in obscurity, writing countless works without being able to byline any of them.
In 2017, I even won a screenwriting award from a platform for my script and got a prize of $110,000. I felt that this was my Destiny, that I was supposed to eat this bowl of rice. But I didn’t realize that that award had been the pinnacle moment of my screenwriting career.
Since then it’s been a constant process of exploring the lows.
The year 2018 was known as the film and television winter, with many hot money retreating, which also led to the closure of a large number of film and television companies.
At that time, even if I wrote a good book, no one asked for it, and even the platform that gave me the award was not going to pay to continue filming my award-winning work.
In the screenwriting industry, if no one is willing to invest in your script, your status is no different from that of a newcomer.
However, except for my writing skills, I had no contacts, no resources, and no experience in the industry, so I just kept writing and writing and writing.
In order to save money, I spent 1,100 yuan to rent a single room of 30 square feet in Shunyi, Beijing, and began to work day and night to create and shoot people, metaphysical, action, suspense, love, youth, as long as the money, I never refused.
In 2019, I could not easily meet a producer who was interested in my idea and planned to invest in my script.
I spent 7 months refining the script, polishing it repeatedly, and the overall outline and sub-scene outline were all completed, and I just needed to improve the lines to come out with a complete script.
At this time, the other party suddenly informed me that the project would not be done. After all, it’s not uncommon for projects to fall through.
I just took it as another failure and didn’t ask any further questions.
A month later, I saw the project’s filing announcement on the website of the broadcaster.
I went to the company to discuss, but the other party said that the project had already cooperated with others to continue to do, and had nothing to do with me.
What a joke!
In the public notice, the original idea, the outline of the project, and the subplot were all copied from my version, and they actually kicked me out at the last minute and stole my story.
I got a friend who is a lawyer to send them a lawyer’s letter, but they didn’t give a damn.
I posted articles on Douban and Weibo, got some friends to help me forward them, and made some noise before the other side reluctantly gave me 7,000 yuan as compensation.
By now I was already discouraged. If it is said that creative industries such as advertising and media are not valued in China and their income is very low, then the screenwriting industry must be at the bottom of the contempt chain for content creators.
Because, we do not even have the right and channel to raise our voice against being plagiarized.
As a “newcomer” who is no longer young, I have no say at all.
But I was still not willing to do it, and I had no other ability to make money besides creating. I can only give myself an ultimatum, if no one invests in a year, I will go back Home and continue to do business.
Monthly income of no more than 3,000 yuan, there is no “teacher” in this business, eating people without spitting bones
Ye Xin, female, 86 years
In June 2018, I quit my job as a copywriter with a monthly salary of more than 10,000 yuan and entered the dream screenwriting industry with great expectations, not expecting it to be the beginning of a nightmare.
I had no experience in screenwriting, but my experience as a published author helped me to get a screenwriting studio.
After a long talk with the studio’s owner, Mr. Wang, I signed the contract with great joy and became a contracted screenwriter under Mr. Wang.
There were four other writers in the studio like me. Most of the work assigned to us by Mr. Wang is IP adaptation projects that some film companies or platforms are interested in.
We had to adapt the proposal from the original, test draft: give 5 episodes of script, complete outline, character biographies.
The first thing that disillusioned me was that most of the projects sank in stone.
The screenwriter had no say in the entire film production process – the director, the producer, the planner, the platform editor-in-charge, any one of them could come up with a whole bunch of opinions.
As a screenwriter, I was just a typewriter to organize all the opinions.
As our team was late in getting the project passed, Mr. Wang started to become extremely irritable.
He would yell at us if the script didn’t meet the requirements, but wouldn’t tell us which direction we should go.
Even if Mr. Wang finally passed the script, I still wouldn’t get any money if I didn’t finally get the platform contract.
I felt depressed during that time, self-doubting every day and always relying on melatonin and alcohol to get to sleep.
In December 2018, I had a sudden panic attack while staying up late writing a script. By last will, I called the emergency number myself in the early hours of the morning and was taken to the hospital by ambulance.
The hospital diagnosis was: moderate depression and mild anxiety.
I felt I was still young and it wasn’t worth putting my health on the line just because I was working. After I was discharged from the hospital, I decisively left Mr. Wang and tried to take on jobs on my own.
Before the Spring Festival in 2020, I held the concept of “taking on projects when there is work,” and in the 18 months of my career, I had handled a total of no less than 20 projects of various sizes In the past 18 months, I have handled more than 20 projects.
Among them, there are movies and web series, and I have met countless directors and producers, but only one urban fantasy web series I had the opportunity to follow from the beginning to the end.
What’s worse, most of the scripts that I scoffed at didn’t get paid a penny.
In those 18 months, my total income related to scriptwriting was only $50,200.
In the Spring of 2020, my anxiety got worse and I was so afraid to even have contact with people that I relied on medication to make it through a script meeting.
Then came the epidemic, which hit the pause button on my screenwriting career.
I don’t plan to continue to be a screenwriter, and I won’t go back to the north again.
I was kicked out after signing with the platform and wrote a hit play, but still couldn’t protect myself
Li Dabai, male, 90 years old
I always thought I was half a famous screenwriter, but in the end, I’m still a vulnerable person.
Unlike those who started out as screenwriters, I graduated from the literature department of the Beijing Film Academy – a serious academic background.
When I was in college, I wrote many screenplay projects with my teacher, but I didn’t sign my name – this is also an unspoken thing, the pay will not be less.
The tradition of the screenwriting community is the mentor-apprentice system. We have teachers to lead us in school, and after we come out, we also have teachers to give resources, plus the brothers introduce each other, so it is still relatively easy to receive work.
More than two years ago, I received a good project through a senior brother, a comic book IP adaptation project, the original is a popular comic book.
After writing, the drama was broadcast on a giant video platform as scheduled, and also made several young actors popular.
After having a hit project, you have the capital to negotiate terms with people, so you can get better projects and higher script fees.
However, even for a famous screenwriter like me, there are times when I fall flat on my face.
In 2019, it took me 3 months to hone the outline, write the character biographies, and 5 episode scripts for the producer to take to the platform for a meeting.
The platform end passed with flying colors, signed a contract with the producer, and I waited to see how the project would move forward next.
During the waiting process, the producer said that the platform had other ideas about the production of the show, so he was out, and as the Writer he was working with, I was also out.
This is how the industry works: the platform is the largest, the production company is the second largest, and the scriptwriter is always at the bottom.
Later, I went to settle with the company for the 5 episodes I had written. The initial agreement was 20,000 per episode, so the total should be 100,000.
As a result, the company refused to pay the fee on the grounds that they had not completed the entire script.
I think I was too blindly confident at that time, thinking that I was a producer I had worked with a few times, but I didn’t expect to encounter such a thing.
In the end, after I went to the other party several times, I got 30,000 RMB and the matter was settled.
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