Dear Film Maker

 25th October 2023

Dear Film Maker,

From your ad I can see that you’re looking two make a horror movie and you’ve named two found footage supernatural films and the experimental film Skinamarink as your inspiration. I guess the link between them is that the audience and the people in the film don’t know what’s going on.

I have a few ideas in that area, nothing I’ve scripted, but the point of films like that are to use the space you have. The important thing would be to express what is it about these films that you want to have in your work.

Skinamarink is basically an acid trip that involves events rather than plot points. Strange things happen and those things need to hold the audience so that they keep watching. The film didn’t get a good deal of love from audiences so it kind of failed at that, but I guess it stood out which was enough.

Anyway, I have a degree in Psychology and some film training. I also work with a Canon 90D and 60D for which I have a number of lenses. I have a few things we can film this on. I even think I have some old trick filters I could dig out, but I don’t know if they would be of any help.

I’ve written a few things. What’s been produced is mostly shorts on YouTube. You can look me up on IMDB for that under Richard Leland Neal.

Best,



Richard

High Concept

                                               8th November 2021

Dear Producer,

Alright, what you’re looking for is a low budget, costing little to produce, high concept, will make a lot of money, film script. Just as a note, the term ‘high concept’ gets tossed around a good deal, and I have never really encountered a writer who doesn’t want to make money. It does, however, imply that this film will not be hitting the conventions and will be produced to play in theaters.

In that vein, I have a few scripts that I can pitch. ‘Walker in the Trees’ where a man needs to save his friends from serial killers. It’s your good old cabin in the woods type horror movie, PG-13, with a few supernatural elements to make it stand out.

I have ‘Never Will’ a romantic comedy about a woman who needs to build the confidence to go after the man she wants. It has few characters and locations but is mostly an illustration of toxic relationships.

Then there is ‘House Broken’ about a man trying to escape a toxic family. It’s ‘The Glass Menagerie’ on steroids and updated for a modern audience. I wrote it to be performed live so it all takes place in one location.

I would think the first one is the most promising, but then finding a script tailor made to your needs can only be accomplished by tailor making one to your needs. You mentioned having a few concepts you’d like to discuss with the right author. Well, I would point out that if you like my work but it fails to suit you by the time you’re looking for another script I can have finished one of your ideas and have it ready for you.

I currently work as the one staff writer for Absurd TV, a small YouTube channel, and we have five or six scripts ready to shoot, maybe twelve scripts on the back burner waiting for funding, and I’ll write another short or two tonight.

When you’re looking for a job you don’t stop sending out applications because you have an interview. The same thing should really apply to finding the script you want to produce. The economy rises and crashes and the faster you get projects going the less likely you are to be impacted by that problem.

If your first project is doing very well, then the best time to pitch the new one will be as people congratulate you on the old one.

Just a thought,

 

Richard Leland Neal

Supernatural - Dr. Vitus Verdegast