Becoming a script reader is competitive, but possible with a film education and unpaid internships. Script readers analyze scripts and provide coverage for jobs, and can find full-time work with larger studios if they have top-notch skills.
Not surprisingly, becoming a script reader is an extremely competitive aspiration. Lots of people love movies, writing, and reading, not to mention getting paid to critique other people’s creative work. If you want to become a script reader, you’ll have to live in Los Angeles or another major film center like New York, Chicago, Illinois or Austin, Texas. You are also likely to start with an unpaid internship at an agency for a few days a week until you prove your skills. However, it is possible to achieve your goal of becoming a professional paid script reader as long as it is your true passion and you stick with it.
Script reading internships can be arranged at some film schools. Typically, the intern answers the phone in addition to reading and writing brief comments on junk pile submissions. Mud pile is the agency term for unsolicited or unsolicited manuscripts. Requested manuscripts are those submitted after the agency requests them, after responding to the writers who first submitted a cover letter, along with a few pages or so of their scripts. To become a script reader, it’s a good idea to take at least a few film industry courses, as internships are often for students; a bachelor’s degree in a discipline like film and broadcast arts would be even more impressive for agents or production company hiring managers.
A formal film education helps show a commitment and passion for the film industry. It also provides those hoping to become a script reader with knowledge of the elements of a successful film. Script readers are also called story analysts, because their job is to break scripts into chunks to examine the overall potential of the play. To grade scripts with a “recommendation”, “consider” or “approval”, script readers rate work on how well concepts and lines of dialogue will translate to screen. Reviewing scripts is known as providing “coverage” for jobs.
After classes and an internship, you could find full-time work with one of the larger studios, if you can convince them that you have first-rate skills in accurate and analytical coverage of scripts. Many film companies use a standardized sheet for their cover notes that requests a description of the main character or protagonist of the script, as well as its villain or antagonist. Space to evaluate plot development at the end of the first and second acts is also often included in the forms. If you want to become a script reader, it’s crucial to be able to provide the exact information that every movie company expects.
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