Meet Scott Foster

Hi Scott, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by telling us a little bit about yourself – how you happened to get involved in the film industry, and how you wound up in tech.
After getting an MFA in screenwriting from Columbia University, I moved to Los Angeles, holding various industry jobs before working at United Talent Agency (UTA) – first as a reader, then as the Director of the Story Department. I’ve also produced a few feature films.

While at UTA, I was introduced to the CEO of ScriptHop, Brian Austin, by a mutual friend. Brian was looking for someone who had experience in the most central part of the film business, the agency world – someone who knew about the script ecosystem, how scripts traveled through Hollywood. As we started to talk, I got interested in Brian’s vision about how the digital space could help writers with their development, sales, and marketing process – the process of getting scripts to screen. The conversations became increasingly inspiring and before I knew it, I joined Brian in his mission, becoming co-founder of ScriptHop.

As co-founder, I first helped assemble our incredible advisory board, which includes A-list writers like Shane Black, David Hayter, Ed Solomon, Akela Cooper, Jim Herzfeld, Dana Stevens, and others. Brian and I feel a responsibility to these creative luminaries. We consult with them and make sure that anything we create is something that they feel serves a real need in the writing community.

I’ve begun to wear a lot of hats at ScriptHop, but the main one is Creative Director, helping to make sure our software aligns with the needs of the industry. It’s been a fascinating collaboration for me, working with Brian, who brings not just his background in coding and business acumen but an impressive amount of creativity – some truly brilliant ideas. Brian’s initial distance from Hollywood (he’s from Portland) brought with it the right amount of outsider-interrupter energy to challenge the industry (and me).

We all face challenges.  How would you describe the challenges you’ve faced at ScriptHop?
We film folk tend to be set in our ways. Hollywood has tended to lag in terms of software for the content development space. It would shock a lot of people who see our industry as being futuristic (at least regarding production and post-production technology) to know that the way it manages the development process is pretty prehistoric. Agencies and production execs jury-rig their lives with inefficient ways of doing things – I’ve seen them use Microsoft Word as a database! – so introducing them to new ways of doing things isn’t easy, even if your solution can make their life a lot more productive.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
My contributions to ScriptHop have revolved around a combination of my understanding of the writing process and the agency world. Aside from film school and my own writing, my former life as a reader/script analyst has informed a lot of that insight – I’ve literally read thousands of scripts. As a producer, the thing I’m proudest about is helping other writers see their script’s forest for the trees – helping to amplify what’s most salient about their writing and, when necessary, helping to refine it so it resonates even more. At ScriptHop, I’ve brought this mindset to a more macro view, helping create tools that will help writers bring their vision into focus so that others can see it.

I’ve also developed new skills while working with Brian to build a business. Having been a creative the bulk of my life, helping figure out the products we’re building, how to make them work better has challenged me in new ways. Marketing has also become a part of my life; I’ve found it’s a lot like screenwriting in the sense that being concise is crucial.

What does success mean to you?
When creating software for the film industry, there’s obvious success in terms of the number of satisfied customers. We pride ourselves on the overwhelmingly positive feedback we get from our users. Just as “the Hook” is an existential statement about why a screenplay’s story should be produced (and the unique narrative hole it’s filling)…the hook for a software product is the unique solution it offers to a problem that hasn’t been addressed. We believe ScriptHop is succeeding in both capacities: We created a solution for the industry’s demand for pitch decks and series bibles. I look at my own writing and producing this way – striving to write and/or find projects to produce that make a reasonably strong existential statement – which is to say that they justify their existence by adding something of value that hasn’t existed before.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.scripthop.com
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v

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