At the heart of any good movie is a great script, and a great script has one main ingredient pulsating throughout – solid story structure. But writing scripts rich in content is not a microwave process. It takes effort and collaboration to get the script right.
To expedite the process and lessen the risk, many Hollywood Executives are avoiding the strains of movie-making by producing sequels, adaptations and reboots (requiring much less effort than creating a great movie from scratch). Judging by box office revenues [down to 1992 levels], that formula does not bode well as moviegoers are taking their coin elsewhere. According to the latest Huffington Post Blog titled: Stars Diss Hollywood: Clooney, Edgerton & More Swipe At Commercial Movie Bombs A-listers are taking a stand too, and are backing their frustrations with lower paychecks and their own production studios – in exchange for better stories.
The good news is a change may be on the horizon and like everything else, it’s fueled by technology. Here at LitCentral, we have been working on a solution for bringing Creatives and Execs together and story structure back to the script development process with our LitPro application. Our company has been awarded two patents for quantifying feedback, tracking emotions and analyzing literary documents. 
In order to move a script to the screen Creatives and Execs must come together, with the latter having the final say. Unfortunately, many Execs are not as familiar with the art of storytelling and the Creatives have difficulty in expressing and defending key components that must remain in the script. The LitPro application graphically displays the story structure of a script in the form of bar graphs, pie charts and numeric values – something everyone on the project can understand.
When we built the prototype app we wanted to make certain it expedited the process of analyzing a script as well as reveal its quality. The challenge was the platform needed to expose story structure in a way that brings both the Creatives and Execs onto the same page and I think we’ve accomplished that – and more!
But that’s not all… LitPro takes script analysis a step further by tracking the reader’s emotions. When a writer creates a script it’s all about engaging the reader emotionally. For example, if a writer creates a comedy and the reader is not laughing there’s a serious problem. Yet, there is nothing used by the industry to date that captures the extent of the reader’s emotional response.
If you know the opinions and emotional response of one person reading the script, you know a little about its quality. But when you have the ability to merge the many opinions of Creatives and Execs alike into one visual display then you can really gauge the quality of the script. This helps alleviate many of the problems associated with “development hell” and the effort it takes to quickly and efficiently move a project into production.
Technology has made some advances in the entertainment industry’s development process. Writers have boosted their productivity with laptops, software and the internet, and the industry is beginning to read scripts electronically via e-readers, iPads, etc., but none of that does anything to improve the quality of movies. LitCentral may very well be focusing its technology in the right direction. LitCentral is currently working with collaborative partners and forming relationships to bring the completed application to market.
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I agree with this article on so many levels. Thanks!
I'm intrigued. Signed up for beta.