Film Courage: What’s the difference between a script analyst, a script consultant and a script doctor?
Cody Smart, Writer/Script Doctor/Teacher: I love that question because it always comes up and people tend to get confused with the three. I always say it goes in stages, script analyst you graduate to script consultant and then you graduate to script doctor. The script analyst will be the way you would start in the business if this is what you want to do (you want to work in development or something like that). Maybe even before that you would be an intern or just reading scripts, providing coverage (a lot of times unpaid) for different agencies. That’s when you start polishing and honing your skills reading.
After that you would start maybe hopefully getting paid to read those scripts and that’s what would make you a script analyst. That’s the way I got started in the business. I started interning and then I got promoted to script analysts. I would just read hundreds of scripts a year and provide simple coverage to producers or agents (whoever you’re working for) because obviously they can’t read all of the scripts that come to their desk. You would read their scripts then give overall notes, whether this is working or not, what could be improved, if there’s the seed of an idea there because…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
Film Courage - Empowering Creatives 