This is a transcript of SYS 491 – Austin Film Festival, How A Movie Gets Selected With Andy Volk .
Welcome to Episode 491 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing Andy Volk. He is the film programmer over at the Austin Film Festival, which is a very writer centric Festival. He gives us a lot of great advice on how submissions work over there, and how to get the most out of the festival experience if you are planning on attending. As mentioned, Austin has always been a very writer centric festival. So, there’s lots of panels there’s lots of talks and networking events, all geared specifically for screenwriters. So, if you can attend, definitely consider it. So, stay tuned for that interview. SYS is a six-figure screenplay contest is open for submissions, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. We’re looking for low budget shorts and features. I’m defining low budget as less than six figures. In other words, less than 1 million US dollars. We’ve got lots of industry judges reading scripts in the later rounds, we’re giving away 1000s in cash and prizes. I had the winner from 2020 Richard Pearce on the podcast and Episode 378, he won the contest and was introduced to one of our industry pros, Ted Campbell, who took the script to MarVista Entertainment and got the film produced. So, check out that episode to hear about the experience in Richards own words. Again, that’s the podcast episode number 378. So, we’ve had a good number of options and sales. And we’ve also had some writers getting paid assignments through the contest as well. And this is only our fourth year. So, feels like we’re getting some good traction with the scripts. There’s always lots of producers looking for high quality low budget films. We also do have a short film category this year, 30 pages or less. So, if you have a low budget short script, by all means, submit that as well. Again, I’ve got a good number of industry judge producers who are looking specifically for short scripts. If you’d like to submit to the contest or learn more about it, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. Also, again this year we’re running an in person Film Festival in tandem with our screenplay contest, it is for low budget films produced for less than 1 million US dollars. We have features and shorts category for that as well. The festival is going to take place here in Los Angeles, California on October 6th to October 15th. If you’ve produced a short film or know someone who has, by all means definitely consider submitting it or a feature as well. But the shorts are super easy to program. It’s easy to put them to the slate of films and screen them. But again, feature films as well, we’ll probably do maybe two or three or four feature film and then a good number of shorts. If you have a finished film or would like to submit to the festival, you can go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival and we are also listed on FilmFreeWay, where you actually make the film submissions. So, you can find us there as well. If you use FilmFreeWay, you can look us up and you can submit your screenplay or film through that. But we only take the film submissions actually through FilmFreeWay. So once again, if you’d like to learn more about the contest, go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/contest. If you’d like to learn more about the festival, go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/festival. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leave me a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. The 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 and look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode number 491. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing Andy Volk, the film programmer over at Austin Film Festival. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Andy to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Andy Volk
Hey, thanks, Ashley. Happy to be here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up, and how to get interested in the entertainment business?
Andy Volk
So, I grew up originally in Tucson, Arizona. And to escape the heat I went up north to Seattle for school where I started getting my film studies degree from Seattle University. And while I was in school, I got an internship at Seattle International Film Festival. And that kind of just introduced me to the world of film festivals and kind of what goes on behind the scenes and the whole process of it because, you know, growing up you don’t really hear a lot about film festivals you just like see maybe the laurels on a trailer or something. So, it just seemed like a whole new kind of part of the industry that I was not aware of that. I didn’t really know what goes on there. And yes, I got internship in the programming department and worked there for a couple of years, just helping out with year-round events and Washington submissions. And that was back when they were a 25-day festival. Back then they were the longest and largest festival. So, it was chaos, but it’s fun. And there’s just a great introduction to just like World Cinema and short films that just like seeing things from all over the place, and that kind of just like jumpstarted part of my passion for just like movie watching and having film be a window into worlds that I would normally wouldn’t get, especially films that aren’t blockbusters, or in theaters, or the top 10 on Netflix. And so, I go seeing films that maybe you’d never get a chance to see again. And so, I just kind of always kept that going as I left that and jumped into the indie film world, working on set. And then when I moved to Austin, I found myself that Austin Film Festival, first class shorts programmer, and now as the senior film programmer, so I mainly handle features and films from our partner studios like A24, neon and Paramount and so that’s kind of a still a long winded version of how I got here.
Ashley
Yeah, perfect. No, I think that’s great. So maybe you can just give us sort of a pitch for Austin Film Festival. Just what is the Austin Film Festival for people that maybe haven’t heard about it? People that are maybe not even in this country? Just what is Austin Film Festival all about? What’s sort of the ethos of that?
Andy Volk
Yeah, so at Austin Film Festival. We’ve been around for 30 years. And since day one, it has been a film festival focused on the screenwriter. When Barb Morgan started it back in 93. She kind of noticed that there was no festival no big kind of public celebration of the screenwriters. Oftentimes that award shows and press junkets you’re hearing from actors and you’re hearing from the director. Sometimes the director is the writer, but oftentimes, they’re still referred to as the director. And it’s kind of I think, what really shocked me was that, you know, films start with a screenplay. It’s a blueprint for a movie. And there’s a movie without a screenplay. And so, Barb started this all as a way to communally celebrate the craft of screenwriting, and really just kind of dive into what that process is from how to break a story to crafting your character arcs to writing specifically for genre. And now, it’s evolved into everything from writing for podcast and digital series. And we have the film festival portion, which connects with our screenplay competition, where we have hundreds of panelists come to town for really in depth and fun conversations at the Writers Conference. And everybody from writers and television to studio executives to people who work in distribution, and it’s all about demystifying the process, demystifying what it means to be a screenwriter, what it means to be an independent filmmaker, and also putting people in the same rooms so that they can possibly bump shoulders with a filmmaking hero of theirs. And then all of a sudden, now they’re best friends with like, Mike Sure, or Darren Aronofsky or somebody because like that’s happened. And that’s what we are all about is demystifying that process and celebrating the craft of screenwriting and independent filmmaking.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, let’s dig into some of the processes that you guys have there. Maybe you can walk us through your film festival, as the person that’s doing the programming, maybe you can talk about the selection process. And maybe you can also just tell us how the screenplay contest portion works as well. But okay, so someone goes on to FilmFreeWay, they submit their film to you guys, just take us through that whole process, who were the first people to view it? And then ultimately, how does it get selected or not selected for Austin?
Andy Volk
Yeah, great question. And I know every festival kind of has their own version of it. For us, you know, we get close to 6000 submissions a year. So, our submission process, you know, you go into FilmFreeWay, or you go on our website to submit and once we kind of import that submission into our database. Our first round of screeners are what we call our selection committee. It’s a group of volunteers who have a unique background within film industry, whether they work on film sets, their past programmers AFF, they’re previous panelists of AFF, we often invite alumni who have been at the festival you know, kind of what the festival feels like, looks like to screening films, we have film professors. So, it’s a whole great mixed bag and people from all over the world too. So, they’re bringing in all these different perspectives into screening, because I think that’s what’s really important and really reflective of a screening team like that is, it’s not just the people in the office watching the movies, it’s people from all walks of life. And so, they’re able to bring in all these different perspectives on like, you know, what film is and their education. You know, they’re not just people who went to NYU Tisch or USC or something, but they’re people who maybe grew up like myself in like Arizona, that didn’t really have like an extensive background in film education until I got to college. And so that’s really important to us. And so, the screening team, they they’re the first round of screeners alongside myself and Marissa patterns are shorts programmer, and Samuel Garcia is a film programming coordinator. So, we’re also watching these films as they come into on a daily basis. And after that, if it gets passed up essentially from like the screening team, then we’ll pass it off to either each other or we also have a few programming consultants, who we bring on board to have a more specialized hand and screening is a select amount of films. And then we every film is watched twice. And so, we’re committed to providing every film with two sets of eyes. Because you never know, I’m a big genre fan. I don’t know if you’re a new genre financially, but you know, you might respond differently to a film like than I then I will. And so, we’re always looking to make sure that we get different sets of eyes on the same film to make sure it gets a well-rounded perspective of that viewing experience. And so, we just kind of like keep going through that process over eight months of submissions. And with that, we are constantly just locating and having conversations about like, what’s the story here? And we will look at it from a writer’s perspective, it’s how well written is the story? Is it well structured? Are the characters getting Flow Arts? Does the dialogue feel like it gets coming from like a true authentic person? Or if it’s not as that maybe like a stylistic choice of the movie, and so we’re always asking these conversations to kind of dissect the film based on a screenwriter perspective. And then we’re always looking to program films that feel like it’s a fresh take on an old story. Or it’s just like something completely, wholly original. And so, we’re always looking for things that aren’t just saying, surprising to us emotionally. And so, I think that’s it, we’re always kind of coming at it from those perspectives.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. And then who ultimately makes the final decision, you’re the programming director, so you’ll decide on the features, you’ll talk to all the people that have viewed them, and then you’ll make some sort of a decision?
Andy Volk
Yeah, so Barb also helps screening films. And so, a lot of times, we’re having conversations together as well. Discussing films or watching what sells we like or thumbs up, we don’t like because, you know, sometimes it’s a matter to, you know, you may not like a film, but it’s like, there’s like, still, like a lot of promise in here. And so, we’re always looking to support independent filmmakers. And like, that’s the ultimate goal. And so, it’s hard you have to set you have to kind of put aside maybe some, like personal taste, to look at the film from outside of yourself. And so that kind of becomes a conversation down the road of like, what in this film is good that you can recognize that maybe you’re not personally responding to but you know, that other people will? Say, can you think about it from the perspective of the 20 to 50, people who might be in the audience, you know, who wants to see that film, we need to see that film. And so, as we kind of come to those decisions, all as a team, that towards the end, we’re really looking at films, and we’d have some favorites, they were kind of sharing with each other, sharing our thoughts and feelings about why we think we should play this film. We’ll also look at other films too, if we have two coming of age films, you know, that’s kind of become the conversation about which coming of age film should we be looking at because there’s so few slots. Unfortunately, we can’t play every film. And so, we often try to think about the diversity in the story as well, not just of how good the story is, but diversity of it. And so, we’re always looking at making sure that we’re not playing films that are kind of too similar sometimes, because then those audiences might get mixed up. And we want to make sure these filmmakers feel supported. And we’re also just always making sure that we’re telling the most original or most engaging version of that story.
Ashley
Yeah, I’m curious how many screens you mentioned, there are a very select number of actual screening spots. How many films do you guys screen out of the 6000 submissions? How many ultimately get a screening at Austin?
Andy Volk
Yeah, it varies ever so slightly. Last year, we screened roughly 148 films directly from the competition. And about 107 of those, I believe were short films. And so about two thirds of the program is typically short films. And that roughly equates to about the same for submissions, about two thirds of our submissions will be short films. And so, it’s always a little bit of a squeeze for the features. You know, part of that is we have eight days, but we have limited screens, and so little amount of time, you know, we can’t really play film at six in the morning. Not many people are going to get up and do that. Especially after going into panels and stuff and parties that we have every night.
Ashley
You started to mention some of this, the practical considerations things like if you get to films that are the same subject matter, you know, you don’t want to necessarily show them. You know, one of the things that I find dealing with new filmmakers, new screenwriters is there’s sort of this idea that, if my script is good, it will get produced, if my film is good, it will get seen. And there are so often so many more variables, like what you’re talking about, you could have two really good films, but they feel a little bit similar. I know I’m doing a small film festival here in Los Angeles. And one of the things that I found like short films, you know, a 40-minute short film is really tough to program no matter how good it is, it’s a weird time to the ends to just fit it into, you know, it’s not long enough for a feature not sure enough for a short, or there’s some other things that you could offer to filmmakers like that just sort of practical considerations. When you’re doing your film, you’re conceiving of your short film or your feature film, are there some sort of practical considerations, tips that you can offer to filmmakers?
Andy Volk
Yeah, you know, I don’t want to say limit yourself based on runtime, like from the from the get go, you know, I think I think you write the story and tell the story that you need to tell that you feel like you need to get out there into the world, I think that’s the most important thing. Because if you’re telling a story with a lot of conviction, and a lot of passion, and something that is true to who you are not just a maybe a stylistic replication of something that you really admire and love, that’s what people are going to respond to you and we’re going to respond to that passion, we’re going to feel you know, it’s like the same thing, when your friends telling you a story at the bar, it’s like, if they’re really passionate about it, it kind of pulls you in. It’s like, that’s kind of the same thing with like, storytelling and filmmaking is like, if you’re telling with a lot of conviction, and passion, and it will feel that and I think that’s what’s important. So, I think telling the story that you feel that you need to tell because that’s true to who you are, that’s what’s going to stand out. Lean into your individuality. Because that’s what people respond to. And when you’re watching a lot of films, you know, we think about all the greats, they all have really unique voices. You know, even Tarantino who kind of mixes and matches a bunch of different styles, it kind of makes them makes it his own. So, he’s still he ends up kind of taking some stuff and makes it his own voice. And so like, if that’s your jam, then then do that. But I would say, just celebrate, like who you are in the filmmaking process, because that’s who people want to connect with. People want to connect with who’s writing and who’s directing, and who’s behind the camera, because that is just so important these days to know, like, who’s telling these stories. So just tell us what you need to tell, you know, shorter and sweet is always, you know, helpful from a programming perspective. For consideration, too. It’s last year, we played a 24-minute film that, you know, it’s pretty long. So that takes up maybe two or three spots in a short film block. But then that film ended up winning the live action short Oscar. So, you never know sometimes, right? You never know. We did the same thing in 2016, we played a short documentary that was 37-minutes. And that film ended up winning the documentary at Oscar. So, you do never know what to tell the story you need to tell. But, you know, short and sweet is always good. And I would say to don’t make something that is responding to a current movement. And I think it’s I think sometimes, like we see that in Hollywood, where you’ll see one type of story really kind of blow up and in Hollywood will try and do that. And we’ve seen that too. And it’s a great example. It’s just COVID We’re still getting COVID movies, but nowadays, it’s like a lot of us you know, I’ve seen all these different stories emerge at COVID. And so, right now if I gave your talent make something that’s about such a big events or big moment in time. I think telling it from your own truly unique perspective and making sure it feels it’s personal. I think that’s always a good way to kind of take the universal and make it personal. And make it stand out that way.
Ashley
Yeah. Sound Advice for sure. So maybe you can just run through quickly the screenplay contest portion. Same sort of thing. Okay. I’m a screenwriter. I go on FilmFreeWay, I submit my script. How does it work through your contest?
Andy Volk
Yeah, the screenplay competition is slightly different. And unfortunately, it did close last week, but it is still open for fiction podcasts and scripted digital series. And so, the screenplay competition, you can submit it through our website. And then kind of similar process, we kind of pull it into our database, and then the screenplay directors, Alyssa, will ship it out to her reader team. Very similar case to our screening team. It’s a mixture of past alumni. It’s a mixture of film professors, filmmakers, previous AFF staff members and panelists. And so, people who have a dearth of experience across the board any industry, and then after that, if it moves up and goes through the process. There’s the general process, there’s different categories they can play. So, there’s second rounders, there’s semifinalist, there’s finalist, and then the winner. So, there’s a bit more chance to kind of place with your script, which is really great opportunity for anybody who just kind of like trying to feel out their voice as a writer, because there’s so many more categories that you can submit to the screenplay competition. And so, a lot more versatility there. And then we also want to get to the higher category, the higher levels, semifinals and finals, those are reviewed by WGA writers. So those are WGA Writers, as we all know, have written enough pieces and to qualify for a membership within the WGA. And so, they have been vetted. And we work with WGA East and WGA West to help provide writers to read those reviews. And so, like you are getting really good perspectives and opinions from people who are actively working in the industry. And so, I think that’s what’s really helpful for writers who are trying to figure out their voice to the competition is that they can they can get that type of feedback.
Ashley
Gotcha. And I don’t have nearly the same experience dealing with filmmakers as I do screenwriters, but my recollection with Austin for the screenwriters. If you get into the second round, and just correct me if I’m wrong, but if you get into the second round, do you get like a free pass or something? And if you make it to the other rounds, there’s some sort of a banquet. I think I’ve had friends that have made it past some of these rounds. And there’s actually a banquet, and sort of my question to this is, how can you optimize your experience? And I’d be curious to hear from the filmmakers, not just the screenwriters. But how can you optimize your experience if you get in the second round, or your script places highly in the contest or even if you’re just going to be a regular attendee, how can you optimize your eight days at Austin?
Andy Volk
Yeah, and that’s what’s really cool too about the screenplay competition is if you become a second round or a semi-finalists, you can you still get a badge to the festival, which gives you access to some of our conference events, some of which have the panels, and presentations, and roundtables workshops, you can also go still see some of the movies, which is really cool. And so, it’s a good chance to even if you feel like; aw man, I didn’t win, you still kind of get a bonus to go. And we always try to recommend that, that people come to the festival. Just like any other kind of live event, it happens in the room. And you don’t know who you’re going to run into, or who you’re standing next to in line at the coffee shop. And so that I think is something to always kind of keep in mind when you’re at our festival, or any festival really, too is, you may be tired, you may have seen four movies and three panels together yesterday, and you were at a party till 1:30 and now it’s 7:30 and you’re in line for a cup of coffee. But the person behind you could be your next collaborator, or they could be a veteran screenwriter. And so sometimes it just helps to just strike up conversation with the people next to you. Because you don’t know who you’re going to talk to. I’ve been to festivals, myself as a filmmaker. And now I have some really incredible friends and trusted collaborators just because I took a step away from my anxiety and just approached a couple of people. And now we’re great friends, and I speak to them all the time, even though we don’t live in the same city. And so, I think that’s the best way to kind of take advantage of some of those moments, is just to really talk people around you, you know, everybody is there to celebrate and network. And so, I don’t think there’s any shame in doing that. As long as you were just humble about it, I think it’s important to still remain humble and approachable from place of authenticity. And so that can be hard to with like impostor syndrome. But I think a lot of people feel like, impostor syndrome is a real thing. And so, you just kind of like step past that for a second. And be like, no, I’m here, I earned my spot here, I made a movie, I wrote a script. That means like, you know, I can do this. And so got here, and you’re here in the room, just take that step forward, and talk to that person. If you’re here for the conference, you know, I definitely recommend always like just doing a deep dive into the schedules to see what panelists are here, what the topics are, because that’s how you’re going to create your schedule of like, where you want to go and who you’re going to be meeting, because that is really important for you. Like, if you are somebody who wants to write TV, then you know, really take a look at all the TV panels that are going on and who those writers are. Because then you’re also going to be meeting a lot of other TV writers in the process. If you’re a big genre fan, you want to see all the genre movies, then to like, make sure you take a look at all the genre films that are playing. Because that’s how you’re going to keep running the same people and make friends and also learn from what’s being screened and learn from those filmmakers. So, I think I’m kind of doing a little bit of homework too, before you get to town can always help prepare you for when you are here, because it’s then it’s just going to go by like that, you know, and it’s fun. It’s fun. So. I always like to tell people to treat it like summer camp too.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Sound Advice. Great tips. Maybe you can just run through quickly, what are the prizes both to screenwriters, and what are the potential prizes to filmmakers?
Andy Volk
Yeah, so we have a mixture of prizes and fellowships available. Generally, it’s like filmmakers or jury awards, you get a cash prize and reimbursement package for your travel to the festival as well as a really cool bronze typewriter statue. And you also get to accept the award at the luncheon in front of all these industry insiders and the other awardees who are being presented like Lifetime Achievement type awards. We also have Fellowships are right now we have a vertigo, entertainment one. They are the company behind last year’s hit barbarian as well as the remake of The Ring and The Grudge. It’s like really cool horror films. And so, we have a metro shipping offered film through our Dark Matters category. For screenplay, it’s a similar thing, and that you get you get these cash, prizes and awards. And then we also have fellowships with like AMC, and Josephson entertainments. Barry Josephson is the really incredible producer, that’s his company. We also have an award to Enderby entertainment. And so those are always a mixture of things. But oftentimes, they’re a fellowship or mentorship devoted to helping this person craft their voice. They’re not in any way, a pipeline for selling for selling films or setting up meetings with executives. And so, it’s totally safe if you’re a screenwriter to accept that award, within the strike rules right now, but it’s really a cool way to kind of be in the room and accept an award and kind of introduce yourself to a whole room of people like that. And so, wildly great kind of opportunities there.
Ashley
Gotcha. Are there any differences in what Austin, like you mentioned that a lot of these judges and people that are reading the scripts and watching the movies are people that are familiar with Austin, and what you guys are about, as opposed to Seattle. You worked up at the Seattle festival. Are there some differences? Like maybe you can just clue us in a little bit, what is Austin looking for? Are there some specific types of scripts? And that’s a sort of a specific question, but just more generally, how do you think filmmakers and screenwriters should go about trying to find a match? How can they find the contests that are appropriate for what they have?
Andy Volk
Yeah, you know, I think if you’re making a film you write you wrote a screenplay and you want to send out places, do some research on the festival. Do research on a lot of festivals. Take a look at who the winners were in previous years, where those films have gone, if they had been distributed, have those screenwriters, you know gotten more jobs? What other festivals did those go to? You can kind of go down a little bit of a rabbit hole of kind of figuring out like, what kind of styles do the festival and voices do the festivals respond to based on like the winners? And I think that’s always really cool way to think about how your film fits in with like that type of programming. And so, for us, you know, one example is, as a screenwriter audience, we are we are really devoted to the craft and like history of screenwriting and how that has evolved. But still like the bare bones of it, you know, the three-act structure and character arcs, all that stuff. And so experimental films aren’t normally our jam, they’re not knowing what the audience responds to or the jurors. And so, you know, that’s something right there off the bat. And there’s other festivals, like Sundance that responds to experimental films more, they have a bigger audience for that. So that’s part of it too, is you want to make sure that you’re submitting your film to a place where you feel like there’s an audience for there for you to connect with. Not just LA, New York, but there’s film audiences everywhere. There’s Atlanta and Florida. You know, there’s a big film scene happening in Montana now. And so, you got to think about, I think, what audiences are there, what type of industry presidents might be there, and then looking at those award winners, because that’s really what the festivals are looking for.
Ashley
Yeah. All great advice. So, I just like to wrap up the interviews by asking my guests if there’s anything you’ve been watching lately, that you could recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Andy Volk
Yeah. I got two.
Ashley
Perfect. Lay them on.
Andy Volk
One of them is an old it’s a classic. It’s Seinfeld.
Ashley
Okay. Yeah. You know, I saw a couple episodes. Yes, somebody came up. And I actually went back and watched a couple episodes fairly recently. It’s always good to kill 30 minutes. They’re always funny.
Andy Volk
It’s brilliant. You know, I think even if the show was 20 years old, and there’s always educational moment that maybe hasn’t aged well, it still is such a perfect encapsulation of the oddity of human behavior, and the way we interact with each other. And so, I think there’s the arts and the callbacks, they build into that show, I think he’s always really perfect, character writing, but also comedy writing. And then the other show is called Arcane. It’s on Netflix, it came out and I think in 21 or 22. It’s an animated show based on the game League of Legends, which I’ve never played. And so, I didn’t know that when I started watching the show. So, I came in brand new to this whole world is like a fantasy steampunk thing going on. But it’s really incredible animation. That that really kind of combines a video game and realistic elements together. And it just like really well-done character studies of this world and how it’s like it explores classism, and like scientific progress, but at what cost and explores genetics, it exports like a lot of really intense themes, but it’s also just like very visually engaging and leaves like a very powerful effect on you.
Ashley
Arcane. Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. Yeah, I’ll have to check that one out. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? And maybe you can just mention the Austin website as well. But anything you want to mention, I’ll roundup in the show notes, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, any of those that you use, or Austin uses?
Andy Volk
Yeah, people can keep track of the festival and updates, www.Austinfilmfestival.com. We have our Instagram at Austin Film Fest, that we update on a regular basis with painless announcements, film announcements, things like that. For myself, I avoid Twitter. But I’m on Instagram as well. So, people can find me out over there. And I think that’s the only social medias Okay, no more. No more Tumblr, MySpace, either.
Ashley
Perfect. So, Andy, I really appreciate you coming on talking with me. Hopefully we can catch up again. Good luck with year’s festival.
Andy Volk
Absolutely. Thank you, Ashley. And, you know, hopefully to see you in October.
Ashley
Yep, exactly, exactly. So, take it easy. Appreciate it.
Andy Volk
Bye. Thank you.
Ashley
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 www.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 all over 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays, each as well as a 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 actor turned writer director Joe Lo Truglio. He was a regular on the comedy series Brooklyn Nine-Nine and he also starred in Reno 911. He’s done a lot of comedy work as an actor, a lot of different shows. But he comes on the podcast to talk about his latest writing and directing effort. He just did a low budget horror film called outpost. So, we talked about how he was able to transition from actor to writer director. And then we also dig into this new latest feature film and how it all came together for him. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.