Think you’ve got a daunting task ahead?

A great script – the most genius one you or anybody else has ever written – is in your tiny little hands and the only thing that remains is… (insert ominous pause here)… selling it to the client.

But you’re up to it!

You’ll sell it through. You’ll sell it to the client you work with every day, right? And her boss, too, right?

Why, you’ll even sell it through to their pretzel-headed president who came up through sales and makes every key decision based on what his wife says.

Damned straight!

And then you are home-freaking-free, right?

Wrong.

For your genius script to become genius film, you’ll need to sell it to a director.

Now the dime-a-dozen directors will shoot anything, but you want a good director.

And the good directors get to pick and choose what they shoot.

So apart from a whole lotta prayer, what can you do?

Here’s what I do: I write two scripts.

Not two wholly different scripts; just two different versions expressing the same idea.

Specifically, one for the client and one for the director.

Now I’m not being sneaky here; it’s still the same advertising idea, it’s just that I realize that the clients and the director are primarily interested in different aspects of the script.

Consider the movie Titanic.

Let’s say the client represents the girls in the audience and the director represents the guys.

In the scripts I show them, the scenes, the story, the casting specs – everything – is the same.

But the girls are probably more interested in the whole Jack ‘n Rose love story moosh and the guys just want to see the damned boat sink.

So in the script the girls see, I’ve been more descriptive of the love scenes and more or less glossed-over the sinking. For the guys, it’s the opposite.

Still the exact same story in both scripts, though!

And so it is with client and director.

The client is probably more interested in the product, so, for instance, I’ll describe the pack shot in great detail. For the director Cut to beauty shot will suffice as a description; he knows it needs to look gorgeous.

For the director, he’s more interested in the filmic aspect and the storytelling, so his version of the script will emphasize that instead.

Again, it’s not about being sneaky; it’s just about doing what you need to do to sell the same product to two distinctly different audiences.

And if that genius script in your tiny little hands truly is a piece of advertising genius, then I suspect you already understand exactly what I’m talking about.

- Craig Cooper