Billions of dollars still can't get a good movie script

DIFFICULTIES OF THE SCREENWRITING PROFESSION

Many film and television directors share the same opinion that the Vietnamese film scriptwriting team is large in number but good scriptwriters are very "modest". As director Charlie Nguyen commented, Vietnamese film scriptwriters are weak in storytelling and with a bad script, the director cannot "magically" turn it into a good film.

Director Luong Dinh Dung

Behind the scenes of the movie Sleepy City

Currently, the screenwriter force is operating in many ways, from individuals "selling" scripts to working in groups of a company specializing in writing scripts. Sometimes directors and producers order screenwriters or buy adapted literary works. In television, there are production units that "raise" a very stable team of screenwriters and divide them into many film genres: crime, psychology, family love...

According to screenwriter Nguyen Dan, content director of Bluebells Studios (screenwriter of Red Flower Farm, The Last Wife, The Price of Happiness, Getting Rich with Ghosts) , the script is the source of the quality of a film project and from the beginning of finding ideas to the time of being ready for pre-production, on average a script is completed in 6-8 months, depending on production conditions. "Filmmakers should provide the most comfortable working environment and remuneration so that the screenwriter can focus and not have to worry about issues other than developing the script and creating content," said screenwriter Nguyen Dan.

In television dramas, screenwriter Pham Dinh Hai ( Black Medicine, Doc Dao ) believes that the biggest difficulty for Vietnamese screenwriters today is that the production system, both private and public, is not really favorable for screenwriters. In addition, financial pressure is also what causes many screenwriters to quit their jobs. "A famous screenwriter has a fairly stable income, but to achieve that level of "reputation", the screenwriter's work must be enough to support himself first. At present, I see many young people with a more stable income, due to the higher demand for scripts from programs on the internet. But the quality of those programs is not required to be high, young screenwriters in such an environment, although they can make a living, cannot develop," said Pham Dinh Hai.

Screenwriter Nguyen Dan

HOW MUCH DOES A SCRIPT COST?

It is known that a movie script is currently paid from 500 million to 2 billion VND depending on the quality. As director - producer Luong Dinh Dung said: "This depends on each project and the agreement. Because for small projects worth a few billion VND, spending a billion VND on the script is difficult for the producer, and of course it is impossible."

Regarding the remuneration for each film project, content director Nguyen Dan said that for each project from the idea to the start of filming, Bluebells Studios is willing to pay an average of up to 1 billion VND for a script. According to this screenwriter: "When the production budget of a quality film project is increasing, with some projects costing up to 40 - 45 billion VND, a quality script being paid 2 billion VND, equivalent to 4 - 5% of the total project budget, is also worthy."

On the television side, according to our research, the current salary of screenwriters has many levels. There are screenwriters who only receive 3 - 4 million VND for 1 episode. The common level that a screenwriter receives is usually 6 - 7 million VND for 1 episode. Some cases are higher due to their own mechanism, or specific requirements. There are even units that pay their screenwriters 30 million VND for 1 TV episode, but their requirements are very high.

Screenwriter Pham Dinh Hai

The Movie

"Actually, any amount is worth it, once you've agreed to write. But when the pay is too low, the quality of the script can hardly be high," said an anonymous screenwriter.

Screenwriter Pham Dinh Hai believes that a screenwriter’s salary can be determined by many different factors, the most important of which is the quality of the script. But what criteria that quality is based on and who decides it is a question that even those who spend money to buy the script may not be able to answer satisfactorily.

"In general, the salaries of state-owned units are highly similar, while those of private units are variable. When choosing to write for private units, your salary may be very low or very high, depending on the goals that the private unit is aiming for. There are some large private units that are willing to invest to build their brand and have a deep understanding of the industry, they will pay many times higher than state units," added screenwriter Pham Dinh Hai.

Source: https://thanhnien.vn/tien-ti-van-kho-co-kich-ban-phim-hay-185241209234709914.htm