If you're involved in filmmaking enough to have heard about this meeting, then chances are you've already had at least a dozen people tell you that if you're serious about making movies, you have to move L. A.

CHRISANNA NORTHRUP, a La Jolla working mother of three, is living proof that networking can open doors for you, even here in America's Finest City! As our inaugural guest speaker, Chrisanna will tell us how she used her networking skills to sell her very first screenplay, Silver, for low six-figures without an agent!

Silver is a controversial screenplay, intertwining three true stories, inspired by Northrup's own grueling experience with a con artist nanny. The story focuses on several major loopholes in the US legal system, that leave a family exposed and a criminal protected. After deception, sex scandals, kidnapping and murder, the story follows a mother's fight to protect her family. The movie is now in pre-production at Vine Entertainment and is scheduled to commence principal photography in November 2005.

Chrisanna's accomplishments were profiled in the September/October 2005 issue of Creative Screenwriting and she was a guest speaker last month at the San Diego Film Festival. She is currently writing a screenplay based on Kathryn Keats true and astounding love story and shopping her second screenplay. Join us as our towns latest filmmaking success story shares her networking tips and answers your questions.

Meeting Review

CHRISANNA NORTHRUP ON NETWORKING (SDF MEETING, 10/11/05)
by Jessica Stidd

Chrisanna Northrup, a working mother of three, achieved the dream of many- selling her first screenplay and having it made into a movie.

Chrisanna was the featured speaker at the second meeting of San Diego Filmmakers, a new networking organization in San Diego for filmmakers and all aspects of filmmaking. The subject was “Networking and Breaking into Hollywood without Leaving San Diego.”

Chrisanna moved to San Diego from Virginia, with the same dreams that many creative people have when they move to sunny southern California, of entering somehow into the film industry. Her first job when she moved to San Diego, however, was selling perfume. As time went on, she was putting more money into the perfume business than getting out of it, and sought a better job. She has now been working for the same financial firm for about ten years, and is a busy mother of three. She works full time, raising her children with the help of her husband, and writing screenplays at night!

As time went on working for the financial firm, she noticed many successful clients become millionaires in their 30’s, and admired these wealthy and self made clients. She thought, “What can I do to gain more financial independence and also contribute to the world?”

Chrisanna’s first idea was to write a book for working mothers and others about ‘balancing’ all the aspects of their lives. However, her life was soon to take a bizarre and horrific turn that would inspire her first screenplay.

Like many busy mothers with full time careers, she was looking for a Nanny. She found one that was attractive, well groomed, and came with excellent credentials. Little did she know, this nanny was a con artist with fake credentials and a criminal record, and later Chrisanna would discover the nanny was linked to the worst crime of all, murder.

The nanny would dress in Chrisanna’s clothes and neglect and mistreat the children. One of her children had to be rushed to the hospital for a bad head injury sustained in the nanny’s care. This was certainly the last straw for the parents, jeopardizing the life of their child. Yet, when they told the nanny she had to “get the hell out,” the nanny refused and said the needed 30 days notice! And the worst part of it was that the law was behind her and said she would be granted her thirty days!

More of this true story will be revealed in the film, but as you can imagine the next 30 days were a kind of living hell. In investigating her later Chrisanna learned that one of the families the nanny previously worked for had been murdered in Mexico. The woman moved from state to state, committing various crimes and leaving the state before she got ‘caught’ or charges could be brought against her. Chrisanna knew that she needed to have her family’s story told, and in telling, try to change the laws that can protect a criminal like this nanny.

Chrisanna had never written a screenplay before and finished the first draft remarkably quickly. Luck seemed to be on her side, as she had a coworker and friend who was also an aspiring actress and talked about Chrisanna’s script and horrific experience at a party in LA. One of the people she talked to about the script at the party was Jim Wong, the director of X-Files, who thought the material ‘had to be made into a film’ and was very interested.

Chrisanna’s next step was to improve her script and rewrite. Many interested parties loved her story and thought it needed to be made into a film, but the script still needed work. She consulted Syd Field’s Screenplay book. She hired a script doctor. This became quite a process for her, first resisting rewriting the screenplay with the rules of structure the script doctor was insisting on, but finally realizing her script would most likely be better (and sellable) if she did so.  Finally relenting, she followed the steps and “Silver” was finally ready for Hollywood. One very important part of structure she learned was the Character arc and timeline, that the main character needs to change and this change should be shown gradually through action.

Once the screenplay was done Chrisanna got a manager and started networking. She talked to any friend or coworker she could think of who might have a connection or know someone in the film industry. Even the woman working out next to her at the gym she would ask, “do you know anyone in Hollywood?” She found the IMDB Pro website very helpful, a database of real people that are in the entertainment industry. She found producer Sam Goldwyn, who has a second home in the San Diego area, through his babysitter!

Even though she was making more and more connections she didn’t yet have a ‘deal’. Her manager was not helping her much. This is when the lightbulb went off in Chrisanna’s head and she devised her own clever idea for getting the word out about her script.

She put an ad, for one day only (though it could be accessed on websites after that one day) in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety.  The ad said simply; “She’s sweet. She’s beautiful. She’s a conniving murderer. And she’s watching your children.  Script for sale.” Followed by Chrisanna’s phone number, that even had an 858 San Diego area code.

Chrisanna’s phone started ringing off the hook!

After being offered many ‘options’ (meaning a producer pays a small amount of money for the exclusive right for a period of time, such as 6 months, to try to find financing for the film), she made up her mind that was not what she was looking for. As other parties asked her about the screenplay, the script became even more desirable by mentioning how many others were interested in it already. Finally an investor called and asked how much Chrisanna wanted for the script.

She went on to hire a great entertainment lawyer, Elsa Ramo, who she highly recommends to anyone needing great legal representation for their screenplay. Ms. Raymo made sure Chrisanna signed the right papers, and her services were affordable.

Casting for her film has already begun, with scripts going out to lead actor at the level of Courtney Cox. Others involved with Chrisanna’s film include Victoria Burrows, casting directory for “Lord of the Rings,” who has received at least 12,000 headshots of actors interested in working on the film. She also plans to take the story of her script sale, as well as her true story of her horrible experience with this nanny, to talk shows such as “Oprah.”

To what does Chrisanna attribute her first screenplay becoming such a success story? “Networking, networking, networking!” She describes this as the “power of talking” with the passion for what you believe in. Talking to many different people that may know someone, or someone who knows someone does lead to contacts in the entertainment industry. Of course, her own great idea of putting an ad in the Hollywood Reporter and Variety was how she actually sold the script. She thinks her story generated a lot of interest because it is based on a true story that is very relevant to our times, and that it has elements of successful and original films such as “Traffic,” “Single White Female,” “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” and “Pacific Heights.”

So you think you are “too busy” to write screenplays? Chrisanna laughed as she expressed that is no excuse. She works full time and when she comes home in the evening, her husband has to go back to work and she somehow makes time to take care of their three children and write late into the night. Even though presently she has kept her day job, it looks like screenwriting is taking her great places and it could soon become her new full time job.