As one might expect, becoming a script reader is a highly competitive endeavor. Many people enjoy watching movies, writing, and reading, not to mention being paid to critique other people’s creative work. You’ll need to live in Los Angeles or another major film city, such as New York City, Chicago, Illinois, or Austin, Texas, if you want to work as a script reader. You’ll almost certainly have to begin with an unpaid internship at an agency for a few days a week until you can demonstrate your abilities. However, if script reading is your true passion and you persevere, you can achieve your goal of becoming a paid professional script reader.
Some film schools may be able to arrange internships in script reading. Typically, the intern takes calls, reads slush pile submissions, and makes brief comments on them. The unsolicited, or unasked for, manuscripts that an agency receives are referred to as the slush pile. Solicited manuscripts are those sent after the agency has requested them in response to scriptwriters who had previously sent an introduction letter and a few pages of their scripts. Because internships are typically given to students, it’s a good idea to take at least a few film industry courses to become a script reader; a bachelor’s degree in a discipline such as cinema and broadcast arts would be even more impressive to agents or production company hiring managers.
A formal film education can help demonstrate a commitment to and passion for the film industry. It also provides knowledge of the elements of a successful film to those aspiring to be script readers. Script readers, also known as story analysts, are responsible for breaking down scripts into their component parts in order to assess the piece’s overall potential. Script readers assess the work in order to assign a “recommend,” “consider,” or “pass” rating based on how well the concepts and lines of dialogue will translate to the screen. The act of reviewing scripts is referred to as “coverage” of the works.
If you can convince them that you have top-notch skills in accurate and analytical script coverage after classes and an internship, you might be able to find full-time work with one of the larger studios. For their coverage notes, many film studios use a standardized sheet that asks for a description of the script’s main character, or protagonist, as well as the villain, or antagonist. On most forms, there is also space for evaluating plot development at the end of the first and second acts. If you want to work as a script reader, you must be able to provide the exact information that each film studio requires.