For years, even the most serious business publications neglected showbiz, probably because showbiz has always promulgated the “we’re an art, not a business” thing so insistently. But them days are over, gang. Showbiz is Very Big Business indeed and Everyone Knows It. Especially when we’re talking about the dreaded ratings and all that affects them.
Take this latest example (please):
Screenwriting 101 classes all across the country stipulate, “For the suits to buy your script (the product), it must be brilliantly crafted. They (not just you) must perceive it to be a highly marketable concept entailing a great story with astonishing characters.”
In order to receive such high praise from these folk, who are renowned to have a serious, ‘hard core’ exterior, we need to emotionally ‘move’ them. As in blubbing like babies. After all, we may be highly sensitive and committed artists, but this is a business – for us and the suits. Everyone’s ass is on the line. But if every aspiring writer delivers what we know the suits want, all that does is keep us in the pack, not ahead of it.
So let’s explore possible ways to get ahead with the objective being to generate deep, almost imperceptible emotional responses to our masterpiece. A knowledge and understanding of how to generate nostalgia in subtle and profound ways may be a useful skill component in one’s kit-bag.