Film producers are always on the lookout for that perfect screenplay that will result in critical acclaim and big bucks at the box office. And on the other side, thousands of aspiring screenwriters are struggling to draw attention to their work.
Enter Raghunandan K., a 28-year-old computer science graduate from Melkote in Karnataka, who has set up a platform to bridge the gap between screenwriters and the film industry.
The website, www.wraters.com, which offers screenwriters a professional cloud collaboration platform, recently went live.
“Screenwriters can upload and host their screenplays on the platform with full control over privacy settings, and invite peers to submit their reviews and give feedback,” says Raghunandan, who lives in Los Angeles. U.S., and has dabbled in Hollywood, in an email interview.
Anyone can upload
The website can be made use of by screenwriters across the world to host their works (in English) and invite peer reviews, for free. However, the service of getting a review by the site’s team of experts upon paying a fee is restricted to English screenplays written for Hollywood. “The screenplays rated by our expert team are forwarded to Hollywood professionals,” he says.
He says the website seeks to not only address the needs of professionals, but also aspiring screenplay writers and film institute students.
The user can allow any industry professional to browse through his/her screenplay title page and revoke access at any time. Screenwriters can also track who has seen his/her screenplay page.
“We store all this information as record. One main goal is to protect the copyright of the screenplays by placing them on wraters.com,” he said.
Background
He said that a fascination for the entertainment industry took him to University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), in the Hollywood heartland, for a graduate program in Business and Management in Entertainment soon after he completed his BE in Computer Science from SJCE, Mysore.
It was while working on mainstream films such as Dredd and Machine Gun Preacher during an internship with 1984 Films, a major production house, that he came to understand the difficulties aspiring screenwriters faced in showcasing their work to the right audience. At the same time, busy producers had the challenge of picking compelling material from a sea of unsolicited and “unproduceable” screenplays.
Raghunandan says he leveraged his keen interest in social networking to come up with wraters.com. He is looking to add features that will help the Indian film industry in general, and the Kannada film industry in particular.
“I am planning to add features such as writing in Indian languages, which would help in collaboration and improve quality of films to a greater extent,” he says.
