Be The Signal

Signal is the only path forward.

Most producers believe they have a network problem, a quality problem, or a gatekeeper problem. But that's not it at all.

They have a packaging problem.

The market doesn't care how good your script is or how talented you are. It is drowning in quality—50,000 new screenplays registered every year, 200,000 if you count the Copyright Office.

The bottleneck isn't talent. It's signal.

Noise pounds on doors. Signal gets escorted through the VIP entrance.

The Mechanism

Every chokepoint in the industry—financiers, distributors, theaters, audiences—is desperate for signal and overwhelmed by noise.

Every year there are 200,000 screenplays written, 3,000 produced, 500 theatrically released, and 50 commercially successful.

One in 4,000 screenplays results in a commercially viable theatrical release.

At every point, someone is filtering. They're not being snobs; they have no choice. The funnel keeps narrowing while the supply keeps pouring in. Signal is how they endure the flood.

The difference between signal and noise isn't subtle. Noise is pushy: "Please pay attention to me! Please give me a chance!" There's a neediness, a begging quality. It's about you, not about them.

Signal pulls. It enrolls. It creates tension that can only be relieved with movement.

When people encounter signal, they're moved to act. Not because you convinced them, but because the package itself generates its own gravity. Noise piles up at doors, pounding away, exhausting itself. Signal is invited through a private entrance reserved for VIPs.

The question isn't whether you have a good project. The question is whether you understand how to become the signal in the noise.

Picture the investor. This month, they've taken fifty pitch meetings. Every producer walks in with passion, with "the next big thing," with a budget and a prayer. The scripts blur together. The enthusiasm becomes exhausting.

Then one producer walks in different. The package speaks before they do. A-list talent attached. Distribution interest confirmed. Pre-sales in place. The investor leans forward before the pitch even starts.

That's signal.

The distributor faces 200 submissions for three acquisition slots. They can't watch every film. They filter by package first—cast, festival pedigree, genre market fit. Quality doesn't matter until you pass the signal test. Most films never get watched. Not because they're bad. Because they didn't signal value before the screener loaded.

The gatekeeper isn't your enemy. They're drowning. Signal is the life raft they are searching for in the flood.

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AI will multiply the noise at every stage. More scripts. More content. More everything.

The signal problem isn't staying the same, it's getting exponentially worse.

The gatekeepers will get pickier. The bottlenecks will narrow further. They don't want to make your life harder, but they have no choice. The flood is already at the door and it's about to become a tsunami.

A kid in a bedroom will generate films faster, cheaper, and better than you can. The race to the bottom has already been won.

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You can spend an entire career making worthy work that nobody sees, not because it wasn't good enough, but because it was never packaged to cut through.

A-list directors say it's hard for them. That means it's nearly impossible for you.

Obscurity doesn't care how talented you are. Passion doesn't break through. Hard work doesn't break through. Signal breaks through.

The most haunting part is that you can do everything right—write a great script, assemble a great cast, deliver a great film—and still disappear. And no one will ever tell you. They can't. They're underwater themselves. All because you never learned to be the signal.

The Cost

It’s 2015. Santa Monica. American Film Market.

I walked in with a script my business partner and I wrote. We had "packaging"... me as producer, him as director, Edi Gathegi (Laurent from Twilight) attached as the lead. We shot a $15k teaser. We were seeking $2M to make the movie.

"James Bond meets Harry Potter...with swords." We had something. We had a package.

Yet every meeting ended with some version of, "The package isn't right."

Edi wasn't the right lead for a global marketplace. The director and producer were unproven. The package didn't equal signal.

I was there pushing. Adding to the noise. Pounding on doors.

I went home empty-handed and the project never got made.

Not because the script was bad. Not because we lacked talent. Because we lacked signal. Because I didn't understand the difference between a package and packaging that pulls.

The ache of that failure stayed with me for years. I kept writing. Kept trying. Kept wondering why I couldn't break through when I was doing everything "right."

I had the same work ethic, the same drive, and the same belief in the work. I was standing in the general admission line with thousands of other producers, all pushing their passion projects, all contributing to the problem we're all complaining about.

The answer was straightforward and brutal: I was still noise.

Fast forward to 2025. I'm sitting in a black box theater on a Friday night watching Ross Booth perform the script for Brotherhood—15 original songs woven through the screenplay. I turn to my right, then my left. Tears stream down every face in the room.

That's a signal.

By Monday, Ross and I are partners. By Friday, we're meeting with a financier who was also at that read-through. They commit the equity. Two months later: Playbill and Broadway World covering the casting announcement. CAA reaching out. Unsolicited coverage finds us.

Same person. Same work ethic. Same drive. But this time, the package created its own gravity. We weren't pushing, the signal was pulling. Things came to us because the packaging generated tension that demanded resolution.

That's what signal does. It creates inevitability.

VIP doesn't mean A-List celebrities or studio backing. It means Very Impressive Packaging. At every bottleneck—investors, distributors, theaters, audiences—there's a VIP line. Each one has their own definition of what signal looks like.

You can reverse-engineer signals. You can understand what each gatekeeper filters for and build your package accordingly. 

Most producers will remain noise. They'll keep pushing. Keep hoping. Keep wondering why the doors won't open. The market will pass them by—not because they lacked talent, but because they never learned the difference between their project and a signal.

Become the signal.