This is a transcript of SYS 497 – War Veteran Turned Faith Based Filmmaker With David Helling .
Welcome to Episode 497 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing David Helling. And it’s a really great success story he wrote and directed a low budget faith-based feature called His Only Son. Today, he comes on the show to talk us through this project, how he wrote it, how he raised the money for it, and ultimately how he got it produced. I’ve talked about the faith-based niche before on the podcast. It’s not a niche that I follow or know much about, but I do know that it’s very underserved. So as a writer, if it’s something that interests you, it’s definitely worth understanding how this niche works because there are definitely some opportunities. So, stay tuned for that interview.
If you find this vat episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode 497. If you want my free guide How to Sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I am interviewing writer-director David Helling. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome, David to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
David Helling
Yeah, I appreciate you having me. Mr. Ashley. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Ashley
No problem. So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up, and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
David Helling
Yeah. Well, I mean, well, I was born and raised in Southern Louisiana and Cajun country down there. And I moved to Texas when I was a teenager, joined the Marine Corps when I was 18. I was in there for five years that took to Iraq. And it was actually while I was in Iraq, that I actually brought my Bible out there with me and the Lord drew me into the word into the Bible, and the words of scripture came alive to me over there, it was no longer letters on a page. It was real people in real history, and I wanted to live my life it was that was sort of a crux of my life where my life turned. And I wanted to spend the rest of my life illustrating these accounts that we see in scripture on the screen so that people could see this history and be drawn to the word for themselves for the sake of the gospel. And so, I mean, although I was always interested in movies, I mean, I grew up watching you Back to The Future and particularly Back To The Future Part Two on repeat when I was a little kid, because I couldn’t wait to have a flying DeLorean and none of that ever happened. We’ll see. Yeah, we’re still waiting at the verdicts still out. But 2015 has come and gone and that we did not get that. But I’d settle for just a regular land base DeLorean myself. But anyway, so I grew up loving films. But my desire to do to get into the filmmaking world to leave the Marine Corps and get into filmmaking came out of my time there and my desire to do biblical film. So, I got into film, I like to say, I got into films to do biblical films, if the biblical part fell off, I’d want to leave films and go and do something else to help people learn the Bible.
Ashley
And so, what do you think it is? Was it just the moment in being in this kind of harsh reality of Iraq? What sort of drew you? What do you think was that pivotal moment in life? Why were you open to this at that moment?
David Helling
I grew up in a Christian home, and I would have said that I was a Christian, but I wasn’t really doing anything. I didn’t go to church for years from the moment that I entered into the Marine Corps. I didn’t never read the Bible consistently. But then I started to get really convicted about that, that I call myself a Christian, but I didn’t do anything to honor Christ. And so, I dove into the Bible there and over there, I mean, I was in while I started off my deployment in Ramadi, and then we moved east a little bit right next to this little town of Habania, which is there’s this airbase there called Altia Qaidam. And we were run right there on the edge of that me and my team were hunkered down and when a Saddam Hussein’s missile bunkers there, and I worked a lot of nights so there was a lot of, kind of by yourself lonely times to be with your thoughts. And really if you know anything about biblical history, that is Al Anbar province is right on the edge of ancient Babylon. And where I was at in particular, and that is where the Jews when they were taken from the kingdom of Judah, by Neville kanessa, and the Babylonian Empire and 586 BCE, they were brought into captivity for 70 years in Babylon. And it was right there. And so, I was thinking like, Man, this is where Daniel was, this is where Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were like this is literally where the people of Israel were in captivity. And here I am in a captivity of sorts myself. And so there was just a lot to ponder there. And by God’s grace, it brought me into the Word and as I began to read, I got to see the you know, the depths of my own sin and the heights of God’s grace and how he forgive me, how he forgives sin by placing the punishment of that sin on Christ, who is God incarnate and His death, burial and resurrection by putting your faith in that you now have life in Christ and all that, those things that you hear if you’re familiar with the church, or if you grew up in in Christianity, those things you hear your whole life that oh, Jesus died for your sins, and it becomes almost a colloquialism. But the realness of it and the impact of it and what that really meant, came alive in my heart, and it changed the trajectory of the desire of my heart of what I want to do with my life.
Ashley
Gotcha. So, prior this stint in the military had you done any film work at all, just even on student films that you picked up a film and shot anything? Did you have any background in filmmaking it all up to this point?
David Helling
Well, in high school, you know, they had video tech class, and we got to goof off. I mean, that was like, you know, VHS, and then I think we dabbled a little bit in DB tape of primarily was still VHS. And so there was a little bit of that and getting to work with an editing bay system, you know, the big editing base that they used to have. And so that was fun. But I actually whenever I was in high school and middle school, I liked theater arts, I like doing acting and stuff like that. And that is actually my dream of like, oh, well, one day, I’d love to be an actor, but I didn’t ever really put any thought into what I wanted to do beyond the Marine Corps. I mean, obviously desire to be an actor would have been great as the Lord was working on my heart. And as I was having this desire to do these biblical films, the desire to be an actor sort of fell away, because I started to realize that my whole, the reason why I wanted to be an actor was because I really was rooted in my own pride of wanting people to think I was cool and wanting to be accepted. And wanting to be the guy on screen that you know, and so the Lord had to pare that away, because my motivation for that wasn’t from the right place. And so I kind of put that aside, and even though I do love the craft of acting, still, I don’t really do it. I mean, you have to put yourself into the actor’s shoes when you’re writing, right? Because in even when you’re directing, because you because I have a background in acting, I know how to speak about the motivations of a character and how to build the internal life of the character within the actor and how I would bring it across as an actor. So, I’m able to then feed that into an actor from a director and a writer perspective now.
Ashley
So, what were the first steps then once you got done with the military, what were some of these practical first steps, you’re done with the military to actually turn this into a career? Did you just go home, you start doing some shorts, and I noticed on IMDb, you have a bunch of short credits, so we can kind of maybe start to get into that. And we’re really we’re just working our way up to His Only Son, you know, how did you go from doing, you know, a stint in Iraq doing these shorts and then ultimately get to a feature film, so maybe just take us through this period of time before his only son, where you’re out of the military and trying to kind of get a grapple into the industry?
David Helling
Okay, yeah, so that’s about a decade’s worth of time. Let’s squeeze that in to two minutes. Yeah. So, whenever I got back from Iraq, I told my wife would have been going on in my heart that desire my heart now and we then began to pray about that. And the Lord opened up every door made it pretty clear to them that he was leading us to San Francisco to the Academy of Art University. That’s where so I went to film school there at the Academy of Art University right there in the heart of downtown San Francisco. And I had the GI Bill and I knew that I was going to have the GI bill that would pay for it. And I mean, I was done. And once I was done with high school, I was like, I never want to go to any school ever again. I don’t want to read another thing. So, like, I was always I was very opposed to anything to do with school type system. But I was like, well film school. That sounds cool. And it’ll be covered by the GI Bill. So anyway, through a lot of prayer, we were led to go to the Academy of Art University there. And from the get go, I knew I got into it to do biblical films. And so, I didn’t want to do this stint of years where I was doing all these short films and maybe one day, do a biblical film and doing after doing all these modern stuff, or filming something just on the street or whatever. I knew that if I want to do biblical films, I need to start right then. And so, I had to teach myself to do a lot of things that Film School doesn’t teach you. I taught myself how to sew costumes. So, I even I mean, I bought a sewing machine for $30 off Craigslist. And I looked up how to thread the needle. And I mean, and all that and began to make costumes cut and dye the fabric myself, I learned how to do visual effects and green screen work and miniature work in order to create a biblical world on a very low budget or no budget. And so that led me to do these short films where I was writing, directing, editing, doing the visual effects, sewing the costumes, producing, and in some cases, running the camera, running the lights, whatever I needed to do to get these biblical shorts. I did that for about a decade that eventually led to where I had friends who had interest in investing in me doing my first biblical feature film, which is His Only Son. And I’ve been working on His Only Son now for the last five and a half years. And yeah, it just came out two months ago, it was number three in the box office behind Dungeons and Dragons and John Wick and ahead of creed three and Shazam. And it really was, I mean, to have that be your first feature to go out domestically in 2000 screens. 1930 screens actually be exact across the country wide release. And this little film that was done on the hard cost of less than a quarter of a million dollars. So, it’s like $225,000. Hard cost of a film. Now granted, I’ve worked on that for years for free and doing a lot of the work myself. So, that’s what kept the costs low. But I mean, I’m just kind of still sitting in this like, wait a minute, is that real life? Did that really happen? And so yeah, so that’s where we’re at now.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Perfect. Perfect. So, let’s talk a little bit about just your writing process and how you wrote this script. And maybe to start out, you can just give us a quick pitch or logline. What is sort of the logline for His Only Son?
David Helling
Oh, yeah. Hey, how about we do that? Huh? Oh, what is this movie about? So yeah, so it follows Abraham. And for those familiar with the biblical account, when the Lord tests Abraham and asked him to sacrifice Isaac, asked him to sacrifice his son. It follows him and Isaac, Abraham and Isaac and the two servants on the three-day journey from the moment that he’s told to sacrifice his son to the place of the offering. And while we make that journey with those four men, we relive through flashback, the decades that Abraham and his wife had to wait for the Promised Son, for Isaac, to be born, because Sarah, his wife was barren for decades. And there was a lot of struggle that they had to go through. So, you’re reliving two parts of Abraham’s life and two struggles, testing his faith in that, so.
Ashley
And we’ll dig into the process. I’m curious, one of the first things that occurred to me as this came across my desk was, you know, there’s sort of the conventional screenwriting wisdom that you don’t want to be a slave to the source material, you don’t necessarily have to be to true to the source material, you want to make it visual and turn it into a good movie, as opposed to being faithful to the source material. Obviously, with a biblical adaptation. That’s probably not the case. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit. How do you, you know, do an adaptation, while still remaining true to the original source material, but also, I’m sure there are always some things that are not necessarily easily to visual individually translate into a screenplay. So maybe you talk about that a little bit, just sort of that process of adapting something that you do have to be faithful to?
David Helling
Yeah, well, I mean, I actually never really heard that before. I mean, as far as not being too locked to the source material. I mean, and that’s because my heart has always been, I mean, even going back into film, school, when all my screenwriting classes and everything then all the training that I’ve had, it’s always had the focus of adapting scripture from the page to the screen. And so the way that I approach my method is, is very similar to the way that I would that anyone would do a Bible study or if a pastor’s preparing a sermon, you always enter into the text with prayer first, knowing that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom of understanding of knowledge. So, in order to know anything about scripture, you need to be in a right mind and view of the Lord. And so, you seek Him in prayer, and then you dive into the text and you get into. So, in Bible study, there is a term that’s used kind of a big word called hermeneutics. And it is basically the methodology of how you study scripture. And really, you can apply that to any type of source material, historical accounts or whatever. And you look at, okay, who wrote the text first? Who was the audience that this person was writing to? The author that wrote it? What was his world and motivation for writing? And what was he wanting the person or the audience that was written to get across? And what world were they living in? Okay, so already, you’re starting with not only the words, but you’re starting with the world in which it took place. And you see what the intended meaning was to those people, you don’t want to just jump for… Oh, this is what the words are and this is what it means to me, because that could go anywhere, that could go anywhere, depending upon who the modern here is, it is, what was the message they wanted to come across? And what is the message that audience will was hearing in their context. And so, what you’re doing is you’re not drawing that out, you’re drawing the audience in to that world. And that’s what you want to do as a filmmaker mean, regardless. I mean, if you’re writing, directing, editing the production, design to costume, you’re drawing the audience and putting them in that world and asking them to live in that world for two hours. And to get a sense of empathy for those people and see those people that are in Scripture, in that historical account as real people. And so, the proper hermeneutical process, the lens, it’s primarily used when you’re doing Bible study, or when you’re doing a sermon. And it’s to draw the people that are hearing the sermon into the Word. And so, in the screenwriting process, it works, that same method works the same way. And so, I will first enter it through prayer, I will look at what it’s saying. And then what you have in Scripture is you have a skeleton. And as far as the events that happened, and you can lay that out. And I like to say, you know, Scripture is the bones of the skeleton, and you can’t put those bones out of joint, you don’t want to rearrange the time, you don’t want to because there’s an intended, there is an intended purpose that the Lord orchestrated in laying all of that out. Because obviously, I’m always viewing it from the top down, okay, this is the Lord’s narrative that he put out, first and foremost. So, you don’t want to put those out of joint, but you can put flesh on the bones. And the way that you put flesh on the bones is one looking at the culture. And you can analyze, you can look into the to the historical record, both the archaeological record and you see what kind of what the cities, what the area look like, what kind of engravings do we have? Or you know, or paintings or etchings that we have that depict life, then what’s the anthropological record? Like what are other writings that we’re having contemporaneous with the period of time that we’re dealing with in scripture that talks about the lives the cultures, the people groups that were actually there? What were they like? What were the other political alliances or political conflicts that were going on at that time? And you can see that in Scripture, because if you take what’s in Scripture, you can look, it’ll reference other parts, and you can see; okay, well, this people group we see in scripture here, we also see here two centuries later, what was going on then. And you can cross reference back and forth in Scripture, what talks about the past that you’re dealing with? And what is this passage that you’re dealing with, point to. And so, as you’re going through that process, you’re adding more and more flesh onto the bones. And then once you have that built, you can then begin to polish with the normal screenwriting tactics as far as like, okay, every scene, let’s pare this down, let’s get the dialogue succinct, and getting the motivations of each of the characters in place and you’re not having all this extra stuff that’s just taking your time, how do I inject conflict into every single scene to keep the viewer interested, and you can do that without adding too much creative license, I mean, you could just have it you know, be in the blocking or just a simple, you know, object that one person wants and the other one has or whatever it is, without actually betraying the texts are entering in this whole other big plot point that might distract from the overall narrative. So those are just some of the processes that you know that you work through in building screens.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s right break down religious or not religious. I think there’s a lot of great advice in that. So, let’s talk about your specific writing process. Where do you typically write, when do you typically write, do you need to go to Starbucks to get the ambient noise you will take you have a very cozy home office, do you write in the morning or you first thing in the morning, you knock it out? Do you write late at night, just talk about your sort of writing process specifically to His Only Son.
David Helling
Yeah, it’s kind of all over the place. And because writer’s block will come and get you wherever you’re trying to hide, okay, and so that’s, you sometimes, you know, it’s okay, I’m more effective in going to Starbucks, and I might knock out a couple pages in an evening, or sometimes it’s better off in a home office, or even just taking a laptop is sitting on the couch. Oftentimes, the way that it springs up is one it comes because of what I’m writing. Yeah, it starts from the source material from scripture, you’re injecting is much of that information and as much of that world into my mind, and then I like to a lot of inspiration has actually come from my time in the in the gym. And so when I’m in the gym, I’ll either listen to sermons, or I’ll listen to a lot of lyric-less , music, you know, like other film soundtracks that that are scores that I enjoy that that are in the world of what I’m wanting to paint, and then just through, you know, exercising, and then you kind of letting your imagination run, they’ll, you can start to visualize the scenes, and you can visualize the edits. Because even as I’m writing, I’m like editing the film, as I’m writing, I can see like, oh, this is going to be in a close up. And it’s going to cut to this at this point. And so that sort of will marinate while I’m in the gym. And then going back to writing, you know, it’s odd. Well, I guess it’s not odd for a screenwriter, but you kind of start hitting a groove, I like to say like, the gas really kicks into the tank, you know, around like 10:30 – 11:00 o’clock at night, and then going off until like 3:30 – 4:00 in the morning. Like, it’s where you really hit that groove. And it’s, you know, once you’re in it, I just want to go and go and go and go. So, my process is really all over the place. I’ve never really done a writer retreat, actually, I’m gearing up to do the next film. We’re developing it right now. And I need to be done with the script, by the end of the summer. And I’m actually in the process of planning a writer’s retreat, as we speak, I’m looking at potentially going to Israel and visiting a number of the locations where, because the next film is going to be over the life of Jacob, the full life of Jacob, who is Abraham’s grandson. And so, to be able to go to the locations where he’s actually buried now in Hebron, and where he lived up in the Samaria area in Shechem, and in Bethel, and which is the towns of Nablus and Batin now over there, and so I want to be able to go over there and see these locations, and then, you know, be out there away from the emails, away from the phone calls, away from the normal day to day and just be able to dedicate time around the clock to right, that’s what I’m hoping to do.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. How much time do you spend outlining it sounds like as you said, you’re in the gym, you’re percolating on these ideas. You’re just mulling them over. And then how much time do you spend actually, in Final Draft cranking out script pages, just roughly, I’m always curious to hear what writers do.
David Helling
Well, so for instance, I mean, typically, my whole process of writing a screenplay in the past has been now that has always been done outside of work. So outside of either contract work, or even whenever I had a normal five day a week job, it was always the nights and weekends, always typically took me about four months from beginning to end. And from beginning to you know, having the full draft finished, and then do some Polish afterwards. It always took me about four months. With this next film in particular, I’ve been noting it for two years. And so I will just build a whole note draft sheet like with dates whenever I’m writing it, and I just sell like different plot points that I’ll think or different instances that I want to think out and then typically, whenever I… Yeah, so it just kind of, I mean, my process is really just sort of a mess. You just begin in there and you start to lay out the scene headings and then just lay it all out and not even the full, it’s not like I go through okay, this is like a methodical. Okay, now I’ve got it all outlined. And now I’m going to go in and get this. So mostly you kind of start like, okay, there’s some of the main beats this I wanted to go. And then as I go, I plug into a scene. I’m like, oh, you know, this would be great as a scene here. Let me go and add this over there and so it’s just kind of fluid. But I do spend a lot of time researching and doing just notes documents, where I put links of websites that I’m looking at for research or whatever else. That’s a very fluid and long process.
Ashley
Gotcha. I’m curious if you can give our audience any tips. I mean, these are their low budget movies, but they’re also period pieces. You mentioned, you learned how to sew costumes, dye costumes. But just from a writing perspective, are there some things that maybe are not so intuitive? Again, conventional wisdom, you don’t want to have big crowd scenes with low budget films, you don’t want to do you know, big explosions and that sort of stuff. But are there some other things that you’ve learned now, as a writer, producer, director, where you’ve written these things in you get a lot of bang for your buck? It looks great production value wise, but it doesn’t actually cost that much. You know, just some tips for writers on how to write low budget period pieces.
David Helling
Well, I mean, so yeah, so me coming at it being a writer, director, editor, visual effects artist producer. When I’m writing, I’m typically looking at as I’m writing the scene, I go through the funnel of if I had to, could I do this myself? Could I pull this shot off with just resources that I know how to do. And then that usually keeps it in budget, obviously, you know, crowds, but even with cramming, you could, how can I cheat this to make this look like the crowd is bigger, I think whereas you want to focus on the internal conflict, and the conflict between one or two people, and you keep that what is small, making it feel very big. When you’re getting to the heart of somebody, then you can dwell, when it’s in the final film, you can dwell on a close up, whenever the plot in that motivation of that character is written very well. And the actor is then able to take that world that the screenwriter has built and just live in it, and sit in it, and the audience is comfortable enough to sit in with them. And you could just land on a close up, you know, that’s world building, doing your background on these characters to where you’re able to have this wealth of knowledge about the character, and you’re able to give every single line of dialogue, or every single line in an action line is rich, because you’ve done your research. And you’re not just trying to break out to get to the 120-page mark, or whatever.
Ashley
Yeah, so that’s a great tip. That’s actually a great tip, and not one that I’ve heard, but that is very, very excellent. So, I just like to end the interviews, by asking the guests if there’s anything they seen recently that they thought was really great. And especially since you’re in the faith-based niche, I wonder if there are any faith-based movies out there recently that you could recommend to our audience. It’s not, you know, a genre that I know a lot about. So, if you give me a great tip, I’d love to check out some of these films and just learn more about the genre.
David Helling
That’s tough, because there’s a lot out there, but there’s a lot out there that I wouldn’t recommend.
Ashley
What are some of the films that have inspired you? There must be some that…
David Helling
Well, I mean, obviously, Mel Gibson’s passion. I mean, that’s kind of like the benchmark as far as when it comes to biblical films or Christian films. But even then, I mean, there’s some stuff I disagree with doctrinally, but as far as what he was able to do, is just making something visually poetic is just, I mean, it’s masterful. And I’m trying to think there’s… you know, I watch a lot of documentaries, it just as far as building the research and then I’m more inspired with the world building of Ridley Scott or you know, or the visual style of how Zack Snyder is able to take an image and make it into a moving image, you know, like how he’s able to adapt a comic book image into a visual image but like some of my vino favorite films are, I love to spend time in the period piece genre. You just with, obviously, with gladiator Kingdom of Heaven Director’s Cut. You know, I, but as far as that’s just the overall that’s the overall just the world that’s built there that I can go dwell in, and then be inspired, and then go and write my own thing and build my own world over here.
Ashley
Yeah. Those are great recommendations. So, how can people see His Only Son what is the release schedule? Where is it going to be available?
David Helling
Yeah, so His Only Son, it had its domestic theatrical run. I don’t know where everyone’s listening to this, but we’re actually branching out, it’s going a lot of places internationally. It already came out in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Puerto Rico. It was like I said was number three in the United States box office, it was number one in the Lebanese box office, when it came out, there’s still this next month, in the end of June, should I say it will be coming out, I believe why in South Korea, Latin America is going to get its it’s a big run later, closer to the fall. And so, will Brazil. So, if anybody’s listening in those regions, then they can look forward to seeing it in theaters. For us here domestically in the United States. The film is you can actually rent it or buy it on Apple, and prime and Vudu and all that kind of stuff. But it’ll eventually be on the angel app, Angel Studios is a distributor of the film, and they have their own app where it will be available for free coming for guild members, which is the thing that angel Studios has guild members, I believe June 1 will be available. And then a month following, it’ll be available for everybody else. But if people want to see it, now, they can actually rent it or buy it on many of the streaming platforms. And just keep in mind, this is a slow burn of a film, when people go into it. It is a meditative piece. And my aim was to, like I said, with the advices of you know, of what to do, or the screenwriter, keeping things on budget. This is a film that I aim to get inside of Abraham’s mind, what have you been going in, going on in the mind is man who taught was told by the Lord, to sacrifice his son and he had to walk with that revelation for three days with his son next to him. And so, what am I going through his mind and really, I like to I mean, I was even telling from the moment that I had the script written in I began working with the composer, I said; look, even building the score. Picture, the whole film is played in this 1000 Yard Stare mood, and in you’re really inside of you know, what does it feel like, when you’re going through a really deep despair, you know, it’s almost like everything in life is going slow motion, even your food loses its taste, and you’re just kind of chewing, you know, at a slower pace and so the whole film is built with that mood of getting to where we really can sit with Abraham and dwell with the weight of what he had to be going through. So, when people enter into watching it, that’s how it was written from concept to screen.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, a blog, anything you’re comfortable sharing? I will round up for the show notes.
David Helling
Yeah, I think I mean, you know, people just follow me on Instagram, I’ve neglected to post as much as I need to. There’s a lot that I need to still post. But just Google my name at David Helling. You know, you’ll find me and you can follow me there on Instagram.
Ashley
Perfect. Perfect. David, I really appreciate you coming on the show and talking with me today. Good luck with this film and good luck with all your future films as well.
David Helling
All right, thank you, man. I appreciate you having me on and hopefully it’s a blessing to you and to your audience.
Ashley
Absolutely. Thank you. Good luck to you. Bye.
I just want to talk quickly about SYS Select. It’s a service for screenwriters to help them sell their screenplays and get writing assignments. The first part of the service is the SYS select screenplay database. Screenwriters upload their screenplays, along with a logline, synopsis and other pertinent information like budget and genre, and then producers search for and hopefully find screenplays they want to produce. Dozens of producers are in the system looking for screenplays right now. There have been a number of success stories come out of the service. You can find out about all the SYS select successes by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/success. Also, on SYS podcast episode 222, I talked with Steve Dearing, who was the first official success story to come out of the SYS select database. When you join SYS select, you get access to the screenplay database along with all the other services that we’re providing to SYS select members. These services include the newsletter, this monthly newsletter goes out to a list of over 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays. Each SYS select member can pitch one screenplay in this monthly newsletter. We also provide screenwriting leads, we have partnered with one of the premier paid screenwriting leads services so I can syndicate their leads to SYS select members, there are lots of great paid leads coming in each week from our partner. Recently, we’ve been getting 5 to 10 high quality paid leads per week. These leads run the gamut. There are producers looking for a specific type of spec script to producers looking to hire a screenwriter to write up one of their ideas or properties. They’re looking for shorts, features, TV and web series pilots all types of projects. If you sign up for SYS select, you’ll get these leads emailed directly to you several times per week. Also, you get access to the SYS select forum, where we will help you with your logline and query letter and answer any screenwriting related questions that you might have. We also have a number of screenwriting classes that are recorded and available in the SYS select forum. These are all the classes that I’ve done over the years, so you’ll have access to those whenever you want once you join. The classes cover every part of writing your screenplay, from concept to outlining to the first act, second act, third act, as well as other topics like writing short films, and pitching your projects in person. Once again, if this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, please go to www.sellingyourscreenplayselect.com. Again, that is sellingyourscreenplayselect.com.
On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing writer director Jordan Gertner, who just did a film called Sheroes, which is a female driven action film. He’s worked as a producer for many years and was actually one of the producers on some big indie films like Spring Breakers and the Virgin Suicides. We talked about his career, how he got into the business, how he was able to put this latest project together as a writer, director, so keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.