How to Get Real Feedback, Find Your Voice, and Break In | Kinolime Podcast Ep 27

Show Notes

🎬 Episode Highlights & Community Initiatives The Power of Writing Prompts: John shares an initiative inspired by Kinolime's social media manager (and top Instagram screenwriting influencer) Cole Lee: weekly writing prompts. The goal is to help writers build discipline and muscle memory by getting their "ass in the chair" to write a single scene, page, or act.

Peer-to-Peer Feedback: Drawing inspiration from the peer-review model of CoverflyX, the hosts discuss implementing a system where writers can safely exchange notes with strangers. John shares a personal anecdote about how unbiased, outside feedback completely transformed one of his own scripts by convincing him to make a supporting character the lead.

Going Beyond the Script: Typing "Fade Out" is only half the battle. Danny suggests offering hands-on resources to help writers build professional pitch decks and navigate the daunting process of pitching, selling, or independently producing their finished stories.

Executive AMAs & Scene Voting: The guys brainstorm highly interactive forum features, including "Ask Me Anything" sessions with Kinolime executives for direct industry guidance, as well as community polls to help writers decide which specific scene from a feature script would make the best proof-of-concept short film.

Key Takeaways:

Call to Creators: Emphasizing that this community fundamentally belongs to the writers, John and Danny invite listeners to reach out with their own ideas and suggestions. True to their tagline—"Let's make a movie together"—they want to build the ultimate collaborative space for film lovers from the ground up.

Full Transcript

[00:00]

I want writing prompts. I want to get people writing even if it's a scene, if it's a page, first act,

[00:05]

exciting incident, whatever you want to do, I would love to see people writing. We'll read some stuff,

[00:10]

we have our readers reading stuff, everyone can read each other stuff. I would love just to get

[00:14]

seeing people write every week or every other week, just submitting pages. I think that's a good

[00:19]

muscle memory to learn of putting your ass in the chair and writing and pumping out pages.

[00:34]

So one of the questions I get asked a lot is from people who want to get into the business,

[00:38]

is like, where do I start? Right, and there's the obvious ways to go make a movie or a screenplay,

[00:43]

but sometimes people just want a sense of community. They want to dip their tongue and they want to

[00:48]

go into the party, but maybe just hanging out on the outside of the wall, before they start

[00:54]

to go in, center and mingle. So what we're doing at Keenalime is we're building a community. We have

[01:00]

a forum that we already have in our website, and our platforms where people who love what we're doing

[01:07]

or want to come and go in and talk. It's been great. But I would love to talk about, I really want to

[01:12]

make that big, bad, amazing, the place to go for aspiring, not just filmmakers, but really

[01:20]

more writer-centric. And I would love to just pick your brain, Danny. What do you think we could do

[01:27]

for the screenwriter out there that wants to get involved, purratively of the film business,

[01:34]

screenwriting, etc? What can we do here at Keenalime? We want to help you all out. We want to get

[01:38]

you guys off into the stratosphere of filmmaking. We want to read your amazing screenplay. We

[01:44]

truly do want to help. And we want this forum that we have that we're building out to really be

[01:48]

reflective of that. So what's something for you is like, a young writer, a filmmaker? What would

[01:54]

you like to see us do better here at Keenalime? Yeah, I think in general, when you want to break

[02:01]

into the business as a writer, it's probably, it's not a question of the most isolating

[02:07]

way to do so. For most writers, you write a script, you don't know what to do with it,

[02:13]

you send it to the blacklist or something, you get a review, you have it back. And unless you have

[02:20]

some sort of writers group, which I think our forum is trying to do, you don't really have a

[02:27]

world to understand how you should really perceive what you wrote, like the quality of it.

[02:34]

I think what's really helpful that I would love to see more of is significantly more ways to

[02:41]

kind of like trade notes, you know, potential like specifically, maybe not the entirety of your

[02:48]

script, send scenes. I would reply X did something like that. You could read some, you read

[02:56]

here, I read some piece, read someone's screenplay, you had to give them notes, and then they,

[03:00]

you put it out in like a marketplace with fake coins, and then someone would read your screenplay,

[03:05]

and give you notes, and you go back and forth, I tried it out, you know, when I discovered

[03:09]

many years ago, and it's really cool, you're just getting like feedback from strangers.

[03:13]

I would love for us to do that, because I want people to get notes. I think that's the best

[03:16]

thing you could have is people perspective, reading your stuff, telling you where to go, what not to do.

[03:22]

I mean, you could throw it all out, but it's nice that people are putting the time in and like

[03:26]

reading something and giving you some feedback. Because it all takes, is that one note to change

[03:30]

everything, you know? 100%. It's that, and it's also just trying to find ways to be like an

[03:37]

incubator for just getting better, and I know that sounds kind of cliche, but it's a lot

[03:46]

easier to be excited to read screenplays when you know other people are and like, you know,

[03:53]

commentating on like this or commenting on the same stuff you're reading. You get a

[03:58]

tiny sliver of that on like our backslash screenwriting or like one of the, you know, a few sites,

[04:04]

but there isn't really the same kind of like focused objectives of like what we're trying to do.

[04:09]

And there is something helpful, and I'll just personal experience, you know, I wrote a screenplay

[04:14]

that, you know, I would have my industry friends read, and they would all give amazing professional

[04:19]

notes. But when I put it on cover fly acts, I had like four or five reads, and the majority,

[04:26]

they loved my supporting character more than the main character. They were like, oh my, like this guy,

[04:32]

like Gavin, I really want to know more about him. Like, oh, he was great. I actually rewrote the screenplay

[04:38]

with Gavin as a lead, and it changed it entirely for the better. And I wouldn't have gotten that note

[04:42]

if it wasn't in the industry mindset, right? It was, it was outside of that. It was just people who

[04:47]

like love movies and just were like, yeah, you just off the cuff, like giving me a knee-jerk response,

[04:52]

because I think your industry friends want to preserve what you have, not hurt your feelings,

[04:55]

whatever, or maybe they're trying to fix what you have. But they just like, these readers,

[04:59]

they're like, well, from all over, gave me like a great, they wouldn't even give me a note. They

[05:03]

were just saying, I like this person. It wasn't even a note. Yeah. So more of a like, you know,

[05:07]

like a congratulations on writing something like that, you know, like a, like a, this is good,

[05:11]

but I changed my own entire mindset. So I'd love for us to start doing that on the forum.

[05:16]

100% because there is something you're right. When you're getting notes from someone that isn't

[05:21]

akin to giving you a lot of notes. Yeah. You don't have to deal with that, you know,

[05:25]

the first like five lines of like, here is what I really like. You know, the kind of fluffing you

[05:30]

before they kind of actually give you their, their criticism. Yeah. I'll tell you something that I'd

[05:36]

like to see on. So our social media manager, Cole Lee, who's amazing, go find him on Instagram. He

[05:42]

was just ranked top 10, I think. No, he was number one. No, he's number one. Yeah. He's

[05:48]

screenwriting in L.A. is his hand on Instagram. He's amazing. He's been, I've been watching for years.

[05:53]

I was able to entice him to come on and help us out here. Keenaline. He in his old forum that we're

[05:59]

going to implement here. Like I want writing prompts. I want to like get people writing, even if it's

[06:03]

a scene, you know, if it's a page first act, inciting and saying whatever you want to do, like I would

[06:08]

love to see people writing, you know, we'll read some stuff. We have our readers reading stuff.

[06:12]

Like, oh, everyone can read each other. So I would love just to get seeing people write every week

[06:16]

or every other week, just submitting pages. I think that's like a good,

[06:19]

muscle memory to learn, like putting your ass in the chair and writing and pumping out pages.

[06:25]

Like James Cameron would write five pages a day. Then matter if they were shit or not,

[06:29]

five pages a day. It's like that discipline that I struggle with. We all struggle with. I'd love

[06:33]

for us to start doing that. Yeah. I mean, somebody I always thought about is like it would be super

[06:38]

fun if we had some sort of prompt like, you know, each you just have it having two pages to say.

[06:44]

Yeah. And you just do like, you know, genre, setting, so much fun. And like the kind of, you know,

[06:51]

want of your character in the scene or something. And you know, you have two pages to kind of

[06:56]

accomplish it. And then I'm not sure what the kind of reward we could give people a free month of

[07:01]

like criterion, something fun. Hey, stop spending the company's money. Yeah. That will do something fun.

[07:06]

But no, I agree or if you if more consistency, if you do 10 weeks in a row of the prompt,

[07:12]

then you get something it's less about winning or whatever. It's more about like, do you show up

[07:16]

and put the time in like I would like to reward that. I'm not supposed to like the other way.

[07:20]

What else do you want to see? Let's do. Yeah. I mean, I think engaging with, you know, notes,

[07:26]

I think having people write prompts, I think something else that could be fun is like, you know,

[07:32]

potentially just for people either that participate in the competition.

[07:36]

One way or another, I would love to see like, like outside of just the screenplay, like helping

[07:45]

writers actually build once they feel like they have a story they're really proud of, helping

[07:51]

writers build out pitch decks, helping writers kind of understand like once they feel confident in

[07:59]

the story that they've actually built. Like, what can I do now to actually position myself to try

[08:05]

to sell this or make this thing? Maybe we can do something where it's kind of like an AMA, right?

[08:09]

Where people can go on the forum. So there are some questions directed towards us like on the,

[08:15]

you know, executive side of keynote, I'm like, maybe I'd be happy to read tons of emails or questions

[08:20]

about like guidance and whatever and provide whatever I can do. But that could be cool too. Like

[08:24]

direct outreach to like whatever advice we have if you're interested. Yeah. Or even like people,

[08:29]

not just us, like other people who want who have an opinion of that of whatever you're looking for

[08:35]

an answer for. That could be super cool too. I guess the theme here is community, right? We're trying

[08:39]

to say is like, yeah, we want people interacting with each other, talking about, you know, film,

[08:45]

life, screenwriting, whatever it is. You know what else can be fun is like if people have like a finished

[08:51]

feature script is like we could have on the forum like like votes of like which scene

[08:59]

showed you know, should I make into a short like a proof of concept? What's kind of like the most

[09:03]

gripping scene, you know, we just did that a couple weeks ago. You know, we just did that. Yeah,

[09:14]

I think that could be really fun. So I think what we're trying to say is like reach out to us. Tell us

[09:19]

how you want to make this form. It's not our form. You know, I'm it's your form. It's like this is

[09:24]

made for y'all and we want the best, you know, avenue outlet for everyone's creative interest to like

[09:33]

just band together and like work and help each other out like honestly, it's for you. And we just

[09:39]

get to be we're honored to be a part of that. So hit us up, reach out to us, let us know what we can do.

[09:44]

We've listened to all suggestions. Honestly, we can we talk about it. So if there's anything that

[09:48]

you would want to see the form, the community, you shape it, let us know and like we'll do it,

[09:53]

you know, like I think that's what I would love to see is like such engagement from everybody like

[09:57]

just getting together and helping each other out. That's the only way to make good movies is like

[10:02]

it's on the it's with your friends. It's with your community. You all got to bleed together. You

[10:06]

got to like go to war together. It's and then also just to I know it's a separate video, but we just

[10:11]

shot it like it kind of goes back to what we're just talking about and like kind of like making

[10:17]

shorts into features and like the kind of through line between what kind of gives every, you know,

[10:23]

idea, the spark like to turn it into a dynamic feature film is like either a like scrapping together

[10:31]

a short with your friends, taking it to a lab where you know people give you loads of notes and

[10:38]

support and kind of like rounding this into a feature or see just kind of going out there and

[10:44]

making it and seeing what comes of it. So let us know we want to build it with you.

[10:50]

Hit us up a keen align everywhere. You know where to find us. We're not going anywhere and

[10:54]

would love to see what we could build together just like we are tagline is let's make a movie together.

[10:58]

Let's build a forum community together. Look at that. Yeah, let's build a great forum where

[11:02]

let's comment together. Let's comment together. Alright, see you.

How to Get Real Feedback, Find Your Voice, and Break In | Kinolime Podcast Ep 27

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