to all,
I recently checked HCD producers,
there were only four film production companies that were open to unsolicited submission/query letter submission.
I'll soon post about number of agents/managers interested in unsolicited letters listed at HCD.
regards,
Aceinc1
I've tried to explain this before. There's a reason why producers and development companies say this.
It's because they have to have this stuff covered as a rule and it uses up limited resources to do it -- whether they have paid readers on staff or freelance readers or unpaid interns -- they don't have limitless resources available to read and cover scripts. And they know up front that the overwhelming majority of stuff that they get in, under the best of circumstances, is going to be bad.
So why open the flood-gates to unsolicited submissions from non-professionals, with an iron-clad guarantee that 99.99% is going to be utter tripe -- when they already have to work their way through the 99% tripe that's written by professionals and submitted through agents?
They way they look at it, if you're got an agent, they at least you've stepped up to that next rung -- into that one chance in a hundred of being good, as opposed to one chance in ten thousand.
So, yeah, maybe there's the occasional speck of gold in all of that unsolicited sand -- but from the perspective of a development company, they'd much rather have to shake through a hundred pans of sand to find a single speck of gold -- rather than ten thousand. They'd much prefer to let the agents do that initial panning up stream.
There are ways around that, other than having an agent and other than writing letters.
I've actually gone into this in some detail in a part of an FAQ that I've posted a link for a few times before. Here it is again:
http://www.panix.com/~mwsm/nms_faq.html
The basic premise is that, one -- you have to call these places personally and talk to whoever is appropriate to talk to and pitch your idea and that, two -- you have to have a lawyer to submit your material.
Now, just to be clear, for the purposes of *submitting your material only* -- you don't need an entertainment attorney -- because all he's going to do is attach a nice official cover letter on his letter head from his office and send your script to wherever it has to go. That's it.
For that, any lawyer with an office and some stationery will do. But in the event that you get an offer on a script, any lawyer will *not* do to negotiate the deal. For that you will never an entertainment attorney.
At any rate, I go into all of that in more detail above.
NMS
