By Charles Deemer |
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Every year or eighteen months, it seems, some new program comes out that completely changes the way I do business online. This time it is a powerful program in free beta called ICQ.
I own no stock in this company, but I urge you to check out ICQ. Like I said, it has changed the way I network online and also the way I teach screenwriting online.
What ICQ does is let you build "a contact list" of people you often communicate with online. When these people connect, ICQ lets you know - and you can even be paged when they come online. Once they are online, by right-clicking a name, you are presented with options that allow you to email someone in two ways (one, to their mailbox; two, by express message that pops up on the person's computer screen), send files, or request a chat.
In my classroom, this chat client is much more user-friendly than other clients I have tried, including my own Green Room. Moreover, students appreciate knowing when I am online so they can page me for a quick question.
If I am busy and don't want to be disturbed, there's a Do Not Disturb option I can activate (with a sub-option to accept "urgent" requests only).
After only a few days of using ICQ, I no longer could imagine how I got along without it. Check it out!
One is the online availability of loglines and pitches for screenplays. This service was perhaps first offered right here at the Hollywood Network, but now several sites are offering this service, some for free, some for a fee. Whether or not many producers actually make use of such a service remains to be seen, but as I've reported in earlier columns, there are producers who look for scripts online. What is needed, of course, is that first major success story, a big sale, a big successful movie, resulting from a script first discovered online. That, to my knowledge, hasn't happened yet.
A less ordinary service for screenwriters is offered by Jeff Miholer at his Screenwriters Internetwork site. Miholer tries to connect those who are looking for an online screenwriters critique group with those who have them or with others who want to start one. Recently he told me about his reasons for starting the site:
"I spend most of my on-line time at misc.writing.screenplays. People who have spent a lot of time there get to know who's interested in what. When they need something, they know who to e-mail. But new folks come in from time to time, asking about how to get feedback. They don't know where to start. So there's a need for these people to find a place where they can get feedback. At the same time, some of the "lifers" don't want to invest a lot of time in somebody they don't know. What the Screenwriters' Internetwork does is give a structured place where people can network. The new people can find out just who they need to talk to and the old timers can offer help within the framework of a semi-formal group."
So Screenwriters Internetwork serves as a resource where those looking for screenwriting critique groups can find them.
With the ease of real-time communication with such programs as ICQ, I hope it's only a matter of time before "meetings" between writers and agents or producers occur with some regularity on the web, but this may well be a direction a younger generation of movers-and-doers establishes, rather than those in the current power structure. But the ease of instant, real-time communication on the web is here. The Hollywood visionaries who make use of it are harder to find.