Interview with ScriptHop’s Co-Founders Brian Austin and Scott Foster on Their New Coverage Service The Gauntlet

Who truly has the golden key to unlock the door to immediate access to the industry? It seems like many claim that they do. And some do talk the talk and walk the walk. But with a cascade of screenwriting competitions, consultants, and screenwriting coverage services, it’s become overwhelming, pricey, and for some, a deterrent to push forward. And when a new kid comes on the block, flashing their wares, it’s OK to be hesitant and tread lightly before jumping on board their bandwagon.

The latest “new kid” on the block is ScriptHop’s latest script coverage platform The Gauntlet. How does this one stand out from the others? Per ScriptHop’s press release, “The Gauntlet is a new tech platform that intelligently crowdsources Hollywood decision-makers to vet and promote screenplays.” While their goal is to move your script forward through their system, they’re also bringing on board some of the industry's top readers to do just that. “The Gauntlet launches with 30 freelance script analysts from well-known companies and plans to source the largest organized group of professional readers in the industry.”

Recently, ScriptHop co-founders Brian Austin and Scott Foster spoke with Script to share about The Gauntlet, why it was launched, why being transparent is integral, the expected turnaround time on receiving your feedback, and more. 

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: What was the catalyst for creating this platform?

Brian Austin: I think it was mostly the Packet because we had a lot of people reach out to us after they'd created all these materials to pitch their project. They're like, ‘OK, who do we go to?’ And we're like, ‘Well, that's not what we do.’ The more I'd go to writers groups and just talk with writers, same with Scott, you know, we just hear these stories, one after the next that people just being frustrated with only having competitions, and maybe The Black List as being an option for them. And we know people that run competitions, we know a lot what goes on behind the scenes of those things, and we just felt that a lot of that lacked transparency.

We didn't feel it was the best option and we wanted to see if we could come up with something different. And it kind of spurred off of our advisory board member Jim Herzfeld. Ever since he came on our advisory board, he's been kind of hammering at us about this idea that he'd like to have something where it's more built around consensus; you've got enough people that it's kind of hard to deny that there might be something with this script.

Scott Foster: And the people that we have, the big deal for us was they had to work at reputable entities and their reputation precedes them as professionals. Some of these readers have been reading for 20-30 years which is amazing to me. I did about 10 year, myself, and I read around 5,000 scripts. So, there are people who have read 10,000 plus screenplays.

Brian: That was all part of our design process. We knew what we kind of wanted to do. And so, we just kind of kept meeting with our advisory board kicking around ideas. And that's what ultimately led to the idea of, as Scott said, ‘Well if we're going to actually have people, who are the people we want to have as readers?’ Not interns, not low-level staff members. We wanted to have people that are actually the decision-makers out there today. If your script ends up at any of these places that would have readers, Sony, HBO, Lucasfilm, Amazon, we got a ton of them. And so, we thought that that would be something that would be of real value to people.

And then, we really kind of came up with our whole structure that came out of the whole design process…We tried to think through every little detail. How can we be so transparent and make sure that we weren't offering something that was going to be kind of taken under, like a scam or something, we want to make sure people felt this was legitimate. And that's one of the reasons people ask us, ‘Well, why don't you charge so much for people to run on the bottom part of the Gauntlet, then they have to go more up the next level, you'll charge them more? 

We ultimately started thinking, it's like, well, then as soon as we put that person up on the next one, and they bomb, they're like, ‘Oh, you just did that to get more money out of me’ kind of thing. So, we thought through every little bit of detail on this to come up with what we felt was the best mix of being just transparent to the people offering the best value. And something that people couldn't really deny for their scripts, where we have seven people on the bottom, like if seven tell you your script isn't ready for Hollywood, it's kind of hard to deny that.

Sadie: In terms of the pricing structure, is it a one-time flat fee for just one script?

Brian: We do charge a subscription for the Packet. But that's a whole different thing. That's if you're out there marketing your script. For the Gauntlet, it is a one-time fee. And that gets you all the way through the Gauntlet, where like The Black List will end up charging you to host on their sites, this covers everything, we don't come back in and charge any more for anything else. So that's the bottom-line price.

Scott: Our sort of company motto is we make scripts move - that really is our identity. We didn't want to have what we and no offense to anybody else in how they do the discovery space, but we refer to a lot of those as bulletin board sites, and where your script really goes to sit and hopefully collect some attention. We really want to find good projects and move them. And there's all these things that we built into that as a structure to incentivize the people on these tiers. And we know at the end of the day really, money talks, in terms of getting these analysts to promote, I mean, I believe they would do it if they love it.

And the real disruptor that we think further encourages that sharing is this seal of consensus document, which is a document where if it gets to that third tier and 14, 15, 17 of these analysts are all loving it, then they all endorse it and on the document, you see their names and the places they work - you're a lot more encouraged to stick your neck out at your place of business when you have 14 other pros saying that it's great. You're not going to feel like an idiot if your boss doesn't like it, the chances are your boss is the odd person out in that scenario. Those are some of the ways we believe we will move these.

Sadie: Have you seen any success come out of writers using both platforms?

Brian: We're still kind of getting our processes honed in. We launched the thing, we got all the submissions coming in, we're getting our readers really on boarded for the process, weeding out some of the bugs of the platform. Even part of the thing is when we get all these submissions that come in, somebody on ScriptHop staff goes through and looks through all the submissions, like, ‘Oh, geez, that's a five-sentence log line.’ So, we will actually send that back to the writer and with a suggestion, ‘Hey, to have the best shot, we'd like you to make some of these adjustments.’

So, we haven't had anything other than we've seen a few projects rise up. But second level is as high as anything has gotten at this point that we've allowed. We aren't even allowing anything to climb up to the third yet, just because we want to make sure our processes are good. We're just really making sure we’re dotting the I's and crossing the t's at the moment.

Sadie: You’re bringing on board all of these professional readers, I would like to assume that you’re paying them real money for their services?

Brian: We hear stories from these readers how much they hear people are just getting ripped off out there. But we want to make sure to pay all of our readers above industry standard prices, so we're very straightforward on that. And the people up at the top, we pay them a lot of money like the established writers that come in. So, if you have a comedy, you might get Jim Herzfeld or David Zucker to give notes on your script. But these guys as much as they want to promote the platform, and they're behind it and everything, they also don't really want to do that for free either. So, we make sure to cover everybody.

The only people we don't actually pay and because a lot of them don't want to be paid is like agents, managers, people like that, that want to be participating in it, they want that flexibility, they want to come in and be able to, on their schedule, look at something, give it at least a 10 page read. But they want that flexibility. And they also just don't want to make people think that they're doing this to make money, they're doing it to find clients, to find good projects, that kind of thing.

Sadie: Are you seeing a lot of TV specs coming through as well, or is it just features?

Scott: We don't take TV because, we again, just wanted to really quality control this to make sure we're doing this right, but yes, it's absolutely on our radar.

Brian: We know that when people are out pitching TV, it's not so much about the script, it's about the Bible. It's about all the other materials that go about describing the characters, what happens through the entire season and stuff. So, we're still thinking that through how to make sure we do a good job with that.

Sadie: For writers who are thinking about throwing down their hard-earned $380 to sign up and submit their feature script to your platform, what kind of advice would you just give them?

Brian: The first thing I would say is you're accessing professionals - you are coming into the industry accessing true professional readers and so we really encourage anybody that does this, make sure they're kind of at the level that they're ready to submit something as professional, and Scott you've probably got great ideas on how to go about all that.

Scott: On that first level, the real focus is on the first 20 pages. As a reader those are my favorite pages - you're setting up your world. And I think some people are like, ‘Well, my story isn't interesting there, it gets way more interesting 60 pages in.’ You have to hook them right from the get-go - you have to hook them in the first five pages. So really take pride in the setup. I love the setup of a script. So, I would you know really hone the first act, the first 20 to 30 pages.

Sadie: Is there a set turnaround time from when it’s assigned to your readers to final thoughts to the writer?

Brian: When people submit the script, they have to check a few boxes, that they understand the process that they wrote the script, they're 18 years or older, but one of them is that they understand this could take several weeks, and really depends on how many scripts are coming in, how busy our readers are, where they're at in the queue. So, right now we're looking probably at about three months is when people are going to start seeing something back. We'd like to get that down, once we get through the big rush of scripts, and things become much more of a constant thing. Maybe get it down to two weeks to go through the bottom row, another two weeks, maybe for that mid row, the top one is going to be a little bit longer, just because of the people involved.

And we want to get involved too, when we see something all the way at the top. We want to collaborate with these people and make sure we're keeping in touch with people this time to find out what their successes are. And, then also, get everybody prepared for that seal of consensus hopefully. I cannot wait to for us to start talking to those people, that's going to be a lot of fun to give them that news.

Scott: And I would just add to that, I think our goal ideally, in the future, hopefully not too far from now, that it is more instantaneous that it is a system for you, you put it in and it's a system, you're not waiting like you do with a contest. So, we already think we're going to be much quicker than any of those. But the idea would be to get it even a lot faster.

Brian: We bring technology to all this to try and optimize the whole process. I mean, you know, rather than people having to check their emails, or somebody sending them PDFs and stuff like that, it’s on the platform, it's all kept there. They don't have to have multiple apps open. It's all done right there. And then soon as they're done, boom, it just gives them the next script. So, we really optimize both for the readers and when the writers get their final report. It's kind of hard to navigate up to 17 people's opinions. So, we bring a lot of that to make it interactive, to group all the stuff that's kind of key and important and where there's overlap, we bring all that all that to the forefront of that. We try and be innovators with everything we do.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

The Gauntlet will be available starting today, Tuesday, February 27 with an introductory price of $380 (U.S.) per script entry. This is a one time fee and covers the entire process, including making the script available to search by vetted reps, execs, and producers looking to discover scripts and writers. Being in this database is optional to the writer.

ABOUT SCRIPTHOP

ScriptHop was founded in 2014 by Brian Austin and Scott Foster to boost Hollywood's creative pipeline with innovative technologies, establishing new pathways for the discovery and the success of the screenplay. The company is supported by its industry-lauded Advisory Board that routinely influence the company's direction and product design.

To learn more about The Gauntlet visit: https://www.scripthop.com/Gauntlet

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