THE COMMISSIONING

PROCESS

By Jamie, Elliott & Paige

Job Roles Within the Commissioning Process

Commissioning Editor – has the final say in whether the idea will go forward with production or not.

Executive Producer – The role of the Executive Producer is to oversee the work of the producer on behalf of the studio, the financiers or the distributors. They will ensure the film is completed on time, within budget, and to agreed artistic and technical standards. They make sure the commissioner’s conditions are met.

Producer - a person responsible for the financial and managerial aspects of the making of a film or broadcast or for staging a play, opera, etc.

Director – One that supervises, controls, or manages a media text and puts the script into visuals

Editorial Assistant – Editorial assistants provide support in all stages of the publication of books, journals, magazines, online material and publicity materials.

Researcher – Researchers originate or develop programme ideas, drawing on their knowledge and understanding of industry requirements, and present their findings to decision makers. They are also fact checkers and brief writers who write scripts for on-screen presenters.

Script Editor – The script editor has many responsibilities including finding new script writers, developing storyline and series ideas with writers, ensuring that scripts are suitable for production

Literary Agent – a professional agent who acts on behalf of an author in dealing with publishers and others involved in promoting the author's work

Writer – Responsible for the initial story and the script

Commissioning Bodies

A commissioning body is any production company that accepts stories and scripts from writers outside of their company. Examples of commissioning bodies are the BBC, Channel 4 and ITV.

The companies set up writing competitions for writers to send in their scripts and stories for a chance for their work to go through commission and be published or made into a film or TV programme.

The Role of Writer

The first thing a writer covers is the pre-production planning about what needs to be accomplished, before the production of the media text begins. They also carry out research for the media text during the pre-production period.

The writer then has to take into consideration the target audience – will it be suitable for them?

The Director and Producer of the media text get involved with the writer in order to create visuals of the script and for the writer to gain their advice and opinions in order to improve their work.

The writer will go through many stages of having to create drafts of their scripts and stories before it is seen by producers and directors, and then re-written until the editor is completely satisfied with the outcome. This is to ensure there are no legal or ethical issues within the work and fits to what they are trying to market to their target audience.

When the writer has made all the changes they think is necessary to their script and story, it goes into page lock -down. This is the final plan about what will and will not be produced, and no further changes can be made to the script or story.

Becoming a Writer

When someone wants to become a writer, they will need to have an agent. So why might you need an agent and what do they do?

Definition of a Literary Agent: “A literary agent is an agent who represents writers and their written works to publishers, theatrical producers, film producers, and film studios, and assists in the sale and deal negotiation of the same.”

A Literary Agent can be involved in every stage of the book development, publication, and publicity process. Their main job is to effectively and quickly find a sale for written books and to ensure the best contract. Literary agents are also expected to be up to date with editors interests, making sure they have their contact details at hand.

Literary agents also have other jobs that they can do but are not expected to do them, for example, they can offer guidance and suggestions for help with writing a book, secure an advance or sell a book in an auction.

Literary Agents can play a key role in a writer’s process of creating and publishing a book. When writing a book a literary agent can work on the side lines to help get your idea or book noticed, this is to help sale of the book once completed. An Agent would also be needed to help sort out financial problems with sale or production. Literary agents would mostly be used by independent or unrecognized writers.

‘Royalty payments’ is a name given to the process of external sale of a product (e.g. Book, Music) This is so other people can sell your book with permission and keep the money from it as long as they share a percent of the earnings with the writer.

Royalty Payments

Professional Scripts

Presenting scripts correctly is a very tedious and specific task to do. Using standard word processing programs to present a script is extremely difficult. To make it easier for screenwriters, special word processors such as Celtx have been made. Celtx is free software which has been made specifically for scripts, this means special script requirements such as scene headings and dialogue become very easy to write.

All scripts should be written in Courier font in 12 point size. Margins should also be a 1” indent and written all in black. All descriptions should be kept to a minimum, if a script reader sees an elaborate paragraph for the opening setting, it is instantly disregarded. Descriptions should be 2 sentences at most for characters, and 3 at most for setting. Scripts are shouldn’t exceed 120 pages and should be above 90. Scripts should also have no instructions unrelated to scripts such as camera angles. Following all of these guidelines gives you a much higher chance at having your script accepted, not following these guidelines can lead to instant disposal, even if it’s one of the best stories written.

(Source 4)

Importance of Time Management

Time management is one of the most key skills to master as a writer. Being a writer means you have to become dependent on others to help you become successful, this includes producers and editors. When writing a book deadlines will be set to have bits of the book or draft completed by a certain time. If these deadlines are not met, likelihood of success is very low. Writers must be able to manage their day to day life correctly to get their own personal balance of producing work and free time to relax or create ideas.

Legal and Ethical Considerations

When writing a script to be commissioned, there are a few legal and ethical issues to be taken into consideration to ensure there will not be any legal problems if the script is accepted.

Copyright

You own the copyright to anything that is written by you. Copyright has a whole glossary of rights of which include;

All rights - The right to own your work.

Electronic Rights - The right to publish or allow others to publish electronic versions of your work

Exclusive Rights - The right to publish your work without the work appearing elsewhere at the same time.

“To be protected by copyright, the work must be 'original', in the sense that the author can prove that they used their skill, judgement and creativity to produce it.In addition, the work must have a physical presence. Only the expression of an idea - on paper, for example - is protected by copyright, not the idea itself.”

(Source 5)

If copyright is breached, whoever is responsible can be given civil sentences, such as paying the author back the profit they made when selling the text, or a court order to hand over all copies of the text to prevent it being sold at all.

Censorship

Censorship is where a text that has been written is considered to offensive, and the part of the script that is offensive can be suppressed from the media. In worst case scenarios, the entire script is terminated. Censorship is considered to be negative for writers because all their work and efforts can be taken away from them.

Watershed

“The watershed begins at 9pm and material unsuitable for children should not, in general, be shown before 9pm or after 5.30am.” (Source 6)

What is considered to be unsuitable material?

Plagiarism

“The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own” (Source 7)

If you are a student and commit plagiarism, you can be expelled or suspended from your school or college and will not be allowed in any other educational place.

If you are in the working environment, you will either be fired or demoted.

Legally, the person responsible can be sued by whose ever the work is and even given a prison sentence.

Sourceshttp://www.slideshare.net/treshammedia/the-commissioning-process-9507567

http://literary-agents.com/guide-to-literary-agents/what-does-a-literary-agent-do/

http://christianscriptwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/professional-presentation.html

http://www.writersstore.com/how-to-write-a-screenplay-a-guide-to-scriptwriting/

http://www.findlaw.co.uk/law/small_business/intellectual_property/copyrights/500585.html

http://ask.ofcom.org.uk/help/television/watershed

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/plagiarism

http://www.ithenticate.com/resources/6-consequences-of-plagiarism