Here are some rules and advice on filling out your profile. Our aim is to make you shine, but we also need to make sure that all your information makes a sensible search in our database for you as a very specific writer possible. Please do give us your feedback if there is something you don’t understand, and if something doesn’t function as you think it should.

SOME GENERAL POINTS

Show yourself as who you are and what you can do!

• Stick to the facts. Producers will stop using the data base if the information they find turns out not to be reliable, and we will cross check a lot of your information.
• Which needle to be found in our haystack are you? Don’t present yourself as someone who can do everything in the world, but as someone who is particularly good at doing certain things. Choose the items on the lists carefully and make use of “special fields of knowledge” and “self portrayal”.
• Keep it short and original, and ideally, don’t use all the space provided. Put yourself in the position of the reader, who is browsing a data base. They can always contact you to get more information from you, like a full CV and filmography, or samples of your work.
• Even if your English or German is very good, if you are not a native speaker, please have someone who is, check your texts. If we find too many mistakes we will ask you to do it again.
• If your spelling is not impeccable, please make sure it is here. (In fact, if you find any mistakes on our homepage, please alert us!)

I FILLED OUT A WHOLE SECTION, AND SUDDENLY IT WAS ALL GONE

If you want to fill out a section, please hit the “Editieren” button (on the top right of each section) first. When you are finished with the section, remember to hit the “Daten Speichern” (“save”) button (on the bottom right of each section) before you head on to the next section. If you try to check out of a specific section without having written anything in its mandatory fields, a warning message will pop up. If you dismiss the warning, some of your text might get lost. Remember, you can always get back to any section in your profile, add things, correct things and make improvements.

PERSONAL INFORMATION

translations:

Vorname / FIRST NAME
Geburtsdatum / DATE OF BIRTH (day/month/year)
Nachname / LAST NAME
E-Mail /EMAIL ADDRESS
Firma /COMPANY NAME
Straße Nr. /STREET AND HOUSE NUMBER
PLZ Ort / CITY AND ZIP CODE
Bundesland / (NOT APPLICABLE FOR YOU)
Land / COUNTRY
USt-IdNr. / VAT Ident-Nr. (important if you live in an EU country outside Germany, not important if you live outside the EU)
Telefon / Phone number
Telefon (2) / second phone number
Verband / membership in a professional association, if applicable

Your personal contact information will not be shown to other users. They will be able to write you a message, which will be delivered to your email account, to which you can reply with all the personal information you want to give them.

That applies as well to the URL of your personal website. We will have a look at it, but it will not be shown to other users. We do not accept web links other than the one link to a Vimeo film at the end of your profile.
There are 2 reasons for this:

• We don’t want to get into trouble if members use weblinks to include content that we don’t know anything about and that might have legal or copyright issues connected to it.
• We want to make sure that all the information provided to the users of the database is up to a good quality standard, and the more links you include, the more complicated it gets.

This has nothing to do with us withholding vital information about you. In the end, if someone wants to find you or your projects online, and if you want to be found, any search engine will take care of that.

LEBENSLAUF – CV

You want to present yourself as a writer, so where you went to school might be less interesting than how you would describe your own life and career in an interesting paragraph or two, like a well written “blurb” as opposed to a table with dates and events.

Please don’t put your filmography or film awards here. Those belong into their respective sections.

FILMOGRAPHY

If you have loads of projects, it is better to just choose some good examples of your work (you could put in “Selection. full filmography on demand). Whoever is interested in you can always send you a message and ask for more information. Please only include works that either…

• have been completed
• or have been commissioned professionally
• or have won an award
• or have received scholarships or funding
• or have gone beyond the stage of an idea.
• other works you have written for other types of media (plays, novels, factual books, blogs…), if published.

Please do not include works and ideas that you have written on spec. Should you be a “Talent” and not have any projects that fit into those categories yet, you may mention your unfinished but written projects in the filmography (and mark them as such), and then make good use of the “loglines” section.

IMPORTANT:
Please mention the current status of the project, and also its genre and format! This is not a general standard for filmographies, so you might have to do more than just copy and paste from your usual document.

Example:

Genres, Formate, Spezialisierungen und Interessen
– GENRES, FORMATS, SPECIAL AREAS OF KNOWLEDGE AND INTERESTS

If you don’t read German, drop us an email at info@scriptmakers.de and let us take care of this section for you, except the last section, which says “außerfilmisches Spezialwissen” (“special areas of knowledge or expertise outside of media and film”), which could be regions of this world, interesting hobbies, and things you know a lot about which might be useful when someone is looking for writers who are knowledgeable about certain topics.

The purpose of this section is to define tags for our database which best represent the content of your CV and filmography.

This helps producers using our search engine to find writers who have proven their experience professionally working for certain genres, formats or target audiences. It is not about what you would like to do or what you know you could do!

That is why, in this section, you may only pick those items that have corresponding projects in your filmography or CV. Every item for which this does not apply will be taken out by us when we check your profile. That is why we need that extra information about genres and formats in your filmography.

We might accidentally scratch some items from this section which should have stayed in. If that happens, please don’t be annoyed. Clarify or add the respective project in your CV / filmography, and reactivate the corresponding item in this section. This is possible at any time. The system will notify us of the changes you make.

If you wish to find work in new genres and formats, there is a place for you to mention this a bit further down in the text field “self description”. Also, our calls for submission are designed to give you opportunities in different fields.

If you belong to the category “Talent” and have no finished works to show, you may choose genre and format items that correspond with projects described in your loglines.

LOGLINES

This is your opportunity to tell the reader about the projects which are available from you. Please do not add anything for which the rights are not cleared. Please mention the status of the project: full screenplay, treatment, exposé, idea…

If you speak German, you may find useful tips on how to write a good logline for any kind of story for any kind of purpose on the website of  Sugrsteps, by Susan Graul. If you register for her newsletter, you will get free access to a range of simple but ingenious different text templates for loglines.

Selbstdarstellung – SELF DESCRIPTION

In the first space (“kurz und bündig”) we would like to read just a few short words, not more than one or two sentences written in the third person, which summarize your professional focus in a nutshell. It is important to mention your USPs, like genres and formats you are especially good at. If you are uncertain about this one, we are happy to make a suggestion.
This will…

• be posted by us on our homepage under “our writers“
• appear next to your photo, when a producer searches the data base and is being shown a list of all the writers who fit their search.

The second space (“Selbstdarstellung”) you can use for a more personal and longer message, written in the first person.

PHOTOGRAPH

Please use this feature. There is nothing like an image to cling to someone’s memory. If you are uncomfortable with photographs, you might want to choose another image you like people to remember you by, and if you don’t have an image handy, check out the other scriptmakers avatars, not just the kangaroo.

If you encounter problems uploading you photo, it might be too big. If you can’t seem to manage, just email it to us, and we will take care of it for you.

SPECIAL FIELDS OF KNOWLEDGE

This is very much about the needle in the haystack. Imagine a producer or other writer looking for a co-writer for a project about the world being taken over by insects, or someone who knows the universe of a second rate rowing club, or everything about Dungeons and Dragons, or who can help write the concept for a documentary about Australia. So don’t forget to put down that you row, that you studied insectology, that you are a huge fan of role play games, and that you play the didgeridoo. We will use this information to create extra tags that will make it possible for our search engine to track you down.

VIDEO

This is an opportunity to give a moving example of your work.

• You should be aware that you do take legal responsibility for this material. (Also see our terms and conditions).
• We only provide the opportunity to post a Vimeo link. That is why you can only add the ID number of your video, and not the complete URL. If you want to use a password for access, you can either mention it in the field below, or ask the viewer to contact you for this information.

WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE CHECK YOUR PROFILE?

Basically, we make sure you followed our lovely advice and rules on this page:

• We cross check some of the information given in your filmography and might ask you to provide proof.
• We put you in the category “professional” or a “talent”. You will find the criteria for this decision here.
• We remind you to provide missing information.
• We might give you feedback on the content if we think there is room for improvement.
• We might ask you to have a native speaker check your German or English.
• We correct typos and formatting problems.
• We might erase items from the genres and formats section which don’t clearly correspond to any project in your CV or filmography (see above)
• We post your basic information on our homepage at http://scriptmakers.de/en/our-writers/
• We create new tags for our database about your special fields of knowledge.

Back to FAQs.

Please contact us with advice, questions, criticism!