This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 071: Jorge Gonzalez From The Tracking Board Talks About Their Pilots Contest.
Welcome to episode 71 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger, over at sellingyourscreenplay.com. In this episode’s main segment, I’m interviewing Jorge Gonzalez from the tracking board. The tracking board offers a variety of screenwriting services which we’ll talk about during the interview so stay tuned for that.
If you find this episode valuable please help me out by giving me a review on ITunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or re-tweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread the word about the podcast so they’re very much appreciated.
A couple of quick notes, any websites or links 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/podcasts and then just look for episode 71.
Also if you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks, you can pick that up by going to 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, how to write a professional log line inquiry letter, how to find agents, managers, and producers who are looking for material. It really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
Also, a quick plug for the new Sys screenwriting analysis service, it’s a really economic way to get a high-quality professional script evaluation on your script. All the readers have experience reading for studios, production companies, agencies, or contests. The readers I’ve partnered with are the gatekeepers. They’re exactly the same people who are going to be reading your scripts at the companies you submit to. The readers will evaluate your script on several key factors like concept, premise, structure, character, dialog, and marketability. Every script will get a grade of pass, consider, or recommend. I’m also offering a bonus if you get one recommend from a reader. You get a free email and fax blast to my list of industry contacts. This is the same list blast. This is the exact same blast service I use myself to promote my own scripts, and it’s the same service I sell on the website. It’s a great way to get your script into the hands of producers who are looking to make movies. Also on the website you can read a quick bio of each reader and you can pick the one who you would like to read your screenplay. People have been asking about how they can use the three-pack that we’re currently offering. The three-pack is $199 so that’s less than $67 per script read. You can use it however you like. You can use it; you can buy the three-pack and you can send one script to three different readers. You can send the same script to the same reader after getting notes or you can send it to him; you can get notes. You can send it back to him. You can send three different scripts to three different readers or three different scripts to the same reader. It’s really totally flexible; it’s however you want to do it, and again, it’s just $199.00 for three script reads and that’s just $67 per script read. So if you want a professional evaluation of your screenplay at a very reasonable price, check out sellingyourscreenplay.com/consultants.
A quick few words about what I’m working on. I finished the rewrite on my sci-fi thriller script last week, sent it off to the director. He is going to be reading it hopefully this week. He’s also putting together a table read of the script in a couple of weeks. This should be exciting. It’s always good to hear your stuff read by actors. He’s got a bunch of actor friends. Obviously I have a few actor friends; I’ll probably get them to come in as well, but this will sit around in a group and the actors will read each part. We’ll have a narrator read it, and it’s just a real good way of listening to your script read by professional actors and see if it’s actually working. You’ll get some notes after the script is done so it’s just a good way to really workshop your material, and it’s very inexpensive. Anybody can do this. Obviously if you live in LA, you’ll probably have more access to professional actors, but even if you don’t live in LA, I highly recommend this. Just get some friends together, all the major roles assigned to one specific person so they read that character, get a narrator, and then just read through your script and just hearing it and hearing how people interpret your dialog. It’s just a great learning experience. So anyway, I’m back on my limited location mob action thriller script. As I mentioned, I have a draft of that done. I need to go in and implement some of the changes. I’ve got a full reading on that scheduled early June with my writers group so that’s sort of my hard line now. I’m going to polish it up until early June; then I’m going to read it in my writers group. I’ll get some notes back from them and then I’ll do a quick polish and then start sending it out.
So now let’s get into the main segment. Today I’m interviewing Jorge Gonzalez from the tracking board. Here is the interview.
Ashley: Welcome, Jorge, to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Jorge: Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Ashley: So to start out, I wonder if you can give us a quick overview of your career in the entertainment industry, kind of how you got started and got to where you are today.
Jorge: When I actually started everything, I actually started out as a writer and I wrote for a few years. I was part of a writing trio which very little far and few between unless you’re like the broken wizard. I wrote a pilot with a couple of good buddies of mine who will read them, collaborating on things ever since back in high school. We realized quickly that everybody has a pilot script out there so we decided to take it a step further. We actually borrowed some money and took out a loan for what at the time was a pretty hefty amount and we shot the pilot. We were really fortunate enough; we put it out on the Internet as a full 30-minute pilot which, around the time we did that which was around 2007, still a bit of a fresh idea. An assistant who was working at Management 360 at the time saw it, showed it to his boss. They asked us what else we had in the pipeline. We showed it to them and we were fortunate. We found ourselves with representation at a good-sized management company and they read a future spec. We went out to all the major studios. It didn’t materialize into any sort of spec sale or anything like that, but it was great. We did the whole water bottle couch to across town with a lot of the studio-based production companies. It was a good experience early on as a writer to have. I transitioned to more of the development side of things. I worked at a production management company and worked with writers on developing both features and TV pilots and now I find myself here at Tracking Board and Launch Pad and just working on creating great competitions and utilizing the networks and the relationships that we have and that we accumulated over the years and just really trying to help writers get that exposure, get that first break. In my instance it was really helpful, and I know it could be for a lot of others.
Ashley: I want to go back and just dig into some of the things you said. You mentioned this pilot episode that you shot and I’m always curious. It sounds like that’s a best-case scenario with something like that. Correct me if I’m wrong. You get some meetings and at least it kind of gets you in the door at a few places. I always like to get a scope of sort of were there other things that you were trying that maybe didn’t work. How much writing had you done up until that point? Let’s start with that. Were there some other things that you tried that just flat out didn’t work because I always like to just get a sense of sort of the scope of what writers are doing because obviously everyone talks about the successes, but I think the failures are equally as important to understand that part of success is failing.
Jorge: Absolutely. We wrote a feature spec script that, looking back, it was our first time. It was our first time doing it. It was very green, and we were trying to–we were writing a drama at the time. It really wasn’t our forte; it wasn’t our bread and butter. We loved comedy and that’s really what we’re ultimately supposed to do so let’s go into that. It’s about finding an idea that you really like and that you really can speak to and lend something to. At the time I had read this op Ed piece in the New York Times which was called The Odyssey Years. It was just about this period in people’s lives where older generations like your parents’ generation, for example, it was a little bit more black and white. You went to school; you got a job. You got married, a good job you did it. There’s your life. However, nowadays there is a lot more of this grey area. It’s this period of self-discovery where you fall in and out of love. You go from job, to job, to job. You move from different states and things like that. So it was about finding an idea that really spoke to where I was in my early 20’s at the time, something that I felt I could help bring life to, and that’s what we did. We wrote it, and we just figured that let’s do grad school for ourselves. We took out a loan for something like twenty grand and then raised some money ourselves. That’s the way we looked at it. We were investing in ourselves, sort of a grad school that we kind of created for ourselves. I never regretted it. It was one of the best opportunities that I had early on.
Ashley: How many other pilot scripts had you written? At this point the three of you had written this one spec script. Literally this was just your first pilot script.
Jorge: Yes it was.
Ashley: So let’s go ahead and move on to the Tracking Board. Maybe you can kind of just talk about how you got involved with that. I’m actually not that clear what your involvement with it is. I mean, was it formed, who started it and just take us back to sort of the beginning of that and bring us up to speed.
Jorge: For sure. The Tracking Board is a community on line where it’s a mixture of writers, directors, filmmakers, agents, managers, assistants, executives, you name it. Not only are we a news reporting site where we break exclusive stories every day but also in addition to that, we track the spec market very aggressively. For myself back when I was a development executive, I had to know what specs were hitting the town so that we could try to get potentially to make a play for them. That’s also a great way of finding out who are the next great writers, knowing all the great material that’s out there in the marketplace. So that’s something that the tracking board is a valuable resource. There are up-to-the-minute updates on what territory a spec script went into etc. So it’s a really great resource, and then from the tracking board, there were the launch pad competitions so there is both a feature competition as well as the pilot competitions. We have been around doing the competitions for about eighteen months now and have been extremely pleased with the success that we’ve had which is really just about giving writers an opportunity to get some more exposure, get representation that we’ve signed. We’ve had 63 writers get signed in the eighteen months and it’s something that we are happy about and really pleased with.
Ashley: Again, let’s just dig into the tracking board again. What exactly—like I notice there’s a 79-dollar potential—obviously there are certain services which are free—you can pay 79 dollars. Just walk us through how you see a writer using the tracking board to help their career. Obviously the contest is maybe a separate thing, but what is the tracking board. Tracking a spec market, how can a writer use that to benefit their careers?
Jorge: Sure. In addition to tracking specs and things like that and breaking new stories, a lot of people who are also looking to get into the entertainment industry, we all the time post jobs and have exclusive job posts that we have there. There is another component of it where it’s kind of a community-based group where people can ask others for advice. Let’s say someone is trying to put together a film, let’s say that it’s a genre from one of the directors list, genres that are on the up and up or are relevant and that studios want to be in business with. It’s a place where people can do that through these email groups. It’s a great community that way so you can really interact with people. If you have questions, whether it’s about—I mean, we have people at different stages of their careers—so it’s really great because sometimes you have instances where you’re getting really great insight or really great information that’s coming from someone that is a little bit more established. It’s really helpful to a young writer. Sometimes it’s just people asking has anybody read any good scripts or a great example is does anybody have a sample of what a good show bible should be like? What should my series bible look like and being able to offer good answers in that capacity.
Ashley: And that’s in the forum like online forums that you participate in. How do these people interact?
Jorge: So what you do is once you are a member, you’re part of this group where everybody is connected via a Google group and you can email your question or your thoughts and that’s how the communities can interact with one another.
Ashley: And who started tracking board?
Jorge: Tracking board was started by a gentleman named Chris Contreras who is the editor-in-chief, also the person who started the launch pad competitions as well.
Ashley: Okay. Perfect. So let’s move on to these launch pad competitions. As I said, I know you guys are very proud of what you guys have done with them and it is pretty impressive looking at the stats. So on one of the pages, like you just mentioned, 63 writers signed, 27 projects set up, nine writers staffed three bidding wars. Just to be absolutely clear, those are all statistics. Specifically they’re not through some of the other tracking board services. Those are statistics from just the contests that you’ve run in the last eighteen months.
Jorge: Yes, that’s right.
Ashley: Okay, perfect. And maybe just walk us through sort of the process of what it would look like for a writer to get repped. They enter the contest, what percentage of the people you place in the top ten percent, just sort of walk us through the process of what happens when you’re in the contest and how it moves along and how you ultimately can find yourself with representation.
Jorge: Sure. Actually we’ve grown and we’re really happy because we’ve grown as more and more people are finding out about our competition and the great successes we’ve had. We are expanding this year for the pilots competition; we’re adding a quarter-final segment. So now the top forty writers are going to be getting those mailings out to our exclusive list of executives, agents, managers so that they can have that exposure. What’s great is we keep the door open and it’s not just about fielding incoming queries or calls about people who want to read these scripts. But we’re actively trying to pair up reps that we know are looking for this type of writer and things like that. So we are very much kind of pounding the pavement trying to make those connections because we know that once they have specific needs that they’re looking for, we try to find a good way to marry those two. It’s been really successful for us. It’s been a really good opportunity for us to help writers who, let’s say, we know that they are looking for a manager. We try to match personalities as well based on the kind of stuff that they read, stuff that the writers write. What we really want to do is just find great dynamics. We want someone to be working so that they can really see themselves having a long-standing career with, and, of course, looking at an agent or manager, they open up doors in a major way. There are many different ways to find success. For a lot of them having that person who can open up those doors because those reps have a huge list of people and relationships that they’ve cultivated for years and years, for some of them even for decades. They can help get those writers get into different production companies. Let’s say they want to ultimately be staffed on a show, they can get them in front of the write people. That’s what it really is about. It’s about really trying to find great writers and great reps and put them together so that they can have a long lasting relationship. That’s what we’re about. We’re about building careers. There are a lot of other competitions that do a good job at recognizing some people, but it should not just stop with identifying that winner and putting their name on a website where it just kind of lives. There has to be more follow-through. There has to be some sort of proactive engagement, and that’s really where we come in; that’s what we like to do, and that’s how we help generate the sort of success for these competitions that’s resulted in the last eighteen months.
Ashley: And you said from this pilot competition forty winners will move on to that next level? You mentioned the number 40?
Jorge: The top forty is going to be our quarter finalists, top 25 are semifinalists, then our top ten finalists, and then we’ll have three grand prize winners. The three winners will be in the overall category, and we’ll also have one winner for the comedy and the drama category.
Ashley: Perfect. And what specifically happens. If you are a quarter finalist, one of these forty people, it sounds like it’s more fluid. If you find a script that’s in this quarter final group and you have an agent that’s looking for that type of material, is someone in the quarter finals likely to get some exposure that way or do you limit that to the top semifinals or finals or some benchmark that you have for what gets passed on to agents?
Jorge: Truthfully we like to advocate for our top forty. We really, really do. Obviously the judges are all going to be reading the top 25 scripts so all of the industry agents and managers are going to be personally evaluating those, but if you’re in that quarter finalist range, we don’t just give up there. We want to go the extra mile and that’s when we’ll try to specifically target certain agents, managers, producers who would be a good fit for these individuals. So if you make the top forty, we’re fighting for you is the best way that I can phrase it.
Ashley: Do you have some idea roughly how many people will enter the contests? Is that 40 percent, ten percent. If you get four thousand entries, that’s one percent? I mean, do you have some rough idea what the actual total numbers will be?
Jorge: It depends. I know for feature competition we had around two thousand entries so the previous competitions were close to that, but as we continued to grow and the word gets out there, we’re expecting a really good turnout. So all I can say is if you have a great script and you really want to see if your script can make it to that level, the only way that you’re going to find out is by entering and letting your work and all of the labor that you’ve been putting into that have the opportunity to shine.
Ashley: I wonder too as someone who sees a lot of scripts come in, are there any types of scripts that you would say do better in contests vs. other types of scripts, just maybe some general tips for people who are entering contests.
Jorge: We’ve had quite a wide variety. I mean, we’ve had anything from animated pilots to genre-specific, good material in any category. I’ve noticed that there seems to be a trend if you will in some pilots that have sci-fi elements, but again, though that’s a trend that may not be the trend tomorrow. So it’s always kind of tough. You never really want to necessarily chase the trend because that could quickly find yourself chasing something that is old news. It’s pretty diverse, and I think that’s what makes it so fun. It makes it so great is there are—since there is such a wide net in terms of the type of material which comes in, there’s something there for everyone.
Ashley: I wonder too do you see any gap—you there are going to be some scripts that maybe place well in the contest but don’t do so well in the marketplace. Do you see any kind of a gap? Sometimes scripts are not able to make that transition. Maybe you could talk a little bit about why there is a gap if there is a gap.
Jorge: I think in some instances what this competition does, like you mention, there have been 27 success stories specifically in terms of projects that have been sold and set up. Those are scenarios where, for example, one of our pilots from last year’s competition, Dillon Broad wrote a great project called Paradox and that’s something that Tim Cream’s imperative Entertainment is developing, and that’s something that they loved the idea and the concept that was there. But there are other instances where it’s a great opportunity for a writer to get some exposure and it allows their reps to say I really love your work; I think this is amazing. What else do you have? That’s one of the things that we always try to tell writers as well is it’s equally just as important you also need to have another script ready that you know that you’ve been working on or at least having ideas because that’s what agents and managers and producers are going to want to hear. This is great but it may not work for whatever reason. There might be something that’s comparable out in the marketplace already. But I love this other idea that you have. You certainly have the talent. Let’s explore that; let’s work on this together.
Ashley: I’m curious. I have an email and fax blast service that I use to get queries out and one of the things that I’ve definitely noticed—and a lot of people don’t necessarily want to hear this—and I’d be curious to hear from a contest perspective, but the people who have the most success with my email and fax blast service honestly, they are people who have quite a bit of experience. It’s very rare that a complete newbie–in fact, I don’t know that it’s ever happened with my service—and I’m curious. Like you mentioned the bidding wars, 27 projects getting set up—is there some level of experience that most of these writers already have before they even enter the contest? Maybe you can talk a little bit about that.
Jorge: Sure. A great example of that is a writer whose name is Eric Koenig. He wrote Matriarch which was one of the top scripts in our feature contest last year, and he had written before nothing that had ever really been exposed at that level. As a result of the competition he found himself with reps being able to pair him up with a great team of agents at Paradigm. His scripts shortly after went into the marketplace as a feature spec. It went up on a Monday and the deal closed on a Tuesday. He works from the Air Force. He’s a reservist and he has had a number of different jobs over his career that ultimately helps inform him as the writer and make him well-rounded. He hadn’t had that sort of level of exposure before. We’re really honored that our competition was able to help him get that first spec sale. It was a really lucrative deal and now that project is set up at Paramount and be introduced with Red Wagon and [inaudible 0:26:02.3] Entertainment.
Ashley: And I’m definitely not saying it never happens, but would you say that there is some level of experience that most of the people who have success, some level of experience that you’ve seen from these writers that get into the quarter finals and semifinals stage.
Jorge: Definitely. I think people have usually been it’s not their first script that they’ve written. There are those instances, but for a lot of these individuals, who enter, they are writing for awhile and they may have entered other competitions and things like that. But what we really again pride ourselves on is being that advocate for them to help get them to that next level. If they already have the talent, they’ve been working tirelessly at their craft; let us help you using our resources and our competition to help get you to that next level. I think it definitely helps. The more that you’ve written, the better you are. I mean, I can remember the first thing I wrote, looking back, it’s laughable. You look at it and you can kind of chuckle and be happy with it because that’s sort of that rite of passage, it’s that badge of honor. Ultimately if you have the talent whether it’s your first or your tenth, you’ve got to eventually send your kids off to college. You’ve got to put them out there and let them be seen and take on a life of their own. Again, to answer your question, it’s a little bit of both, but I certainly think having some prior experience in writing is certainly helpful.
Ashley: And I wonder is there any restrictions on entering the contest like if you already have an agent or manager, if you’ve already sold scripts, you can’t enter the contest. Is there any restriction on something like that?
Jorge: No, there are really no restrictions like that.
Ashley: Some of the contests do have restrictions like they’re geared towards newer writers that haven’t had any success yet.
Jorge: One of the things, we would certainly love to continue to help give exposure to writers who otherwise wouldn’t have an opportunity. We have people who enter from all over the world, from Australia, Canada, the UK, South Africa, etc. and if there is any way that we can help bring Hollywood closer to them as a result of this competition and help get them paired up with the right reps, that’s what it’s all about. But we do have people who enter who maybe have a manager but maybe they want to use us as a platform to help them try to find an angel etc.
Ashley: Okay, so I would definitely link to launch pad in the show notes. I will link to trackingboard.com in the show notes as well so I will have all that. Maybe you could just tell us what’s the best way for people to kind of keep up with you and with the contests. You can mention your Twitter handle. I’ll get all that stuff and put that in the show notes too, but just mention your Twitter handle, your Facebook page, anything that is a good way for people to contact you and connect with you guys.
Jorge: Oh, for sure. The best way to find all the information on our contests is on our website which is Launchpad.tracking-board.com. You can find out all of the different—you can read for yourself all of the success stories that we’ve had. Some of the stats, you can find out who the judges are for this year. We have a great judging panel that we’ve put together for this year as well. You can check us out on Twitter and on Facebook. For Tracking Board, we have a great community of 46,000 Twitter followers so definitely you want to visit us there. You can always email us too. If you have questions you can email one of our info accounts there and we’ll be happy with the great customer service team as well who will get back and answer the other questions that you might have.
Ashley: Perfect. Well, that’s great. Jorge, as I said, this has been a great interview. You’ve been very generous with your time. I really appreciate you coming on. I know I learned a lot about just the tracking board, and maybe I’ll send one of my scripts in and see how it does.
Jorge: Absolutely. I actually appreciate it.
Ashley: Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
Jorge: Bye-bye.
A quick plug for my email and fax blast service, I’m running a special right now where you can purchase one-third of the blast for a little more than fifty dollars. The total list is around six thousand contacts so that first one-third is about two thousand contacts. So it’s still a very large number of producers that you’re going to get your queries sent to. I’ve done this just to lower the barrier to entry so that people can check out the blast without having to invest a whole lot of money up front. Obviously if it works you do the first third and it really works for you, you’re welcome to buy the second two -thirds of the blast as well. The one thing that hasn’t changed, I still require that you join Sys Select which at the time of this recording is just $24.99 per month. The reason I require this as part of the process is that I’m going to personally look at your log line inquiry letter and help you make them as good as possible. This is really for everyone’s benefit. I want to make sure that the query letters and log lines are well-written before I send them out to my list. The people receiving these email queries, they can unsubscribe from these blasts so sending out a bunch of half-baked query letters would just burn the list up which hurts everyone who might ever want to use this service in the future including myself. Also by getting my feedback on your log line inquiry letter, it means your response rate is going to be much higher. I’ve been doing this for awhile and have had a lot of success from cold query letters so I think getting my feedback alone is valuable and worth the price of admission. So the one-third of the blast plus one month of Sys Select is just 78 dollars and that’s a blast of more than two thousand industry producers. It’s never really going to be any cheaper than that. So if you ever want to try it out, now is the time. Anyway, to check this out just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/blast. Basically what’s going to happen is you’re going to sign up to Sys Select. As I said, that’s $24.99. Once you sign up for that, you’re going to get an automated email which tells you how to create your account. You’re going to create your account and then once you’ve created your account you are a member. And then you’re going to go to the Sys Select forum. That forum is only available to paid members. You have just signed up for Sys Select, now you have access to this forum. You’re going to see in this forum there are going to be a number of threads but two of the threads, one of them is going to be labeled query letter and one of them is going to be labeled log line. You are going to put your log line in the log line thread; you’re going to put your query letter in the query letter thread. Sometimes other members of the forum and I will go in and give you notes, but I’m going to give you very specific notes and I’m going to basically help you whip your query letter and whip your log line into shape so that you’re going to get the best response from your query letter possible. Anyway, again, to check this out just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/blast.
In the next episode of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast I’m going to be interviewing Mills Goodlow who wrote the film The Age of Adeline starring Blake Lively and Harrison Ford. It’s out in theatres right now so definitely check it out if you can. He’s had an interesting career and we talk about how he got started and how this film finally got made. He wrote the first draft over 12 years ago. It’s finally getting made. It’s finally getting released now. It was a long process, and we really dig into that process and some of the details of that. So keep an eye out for that episode next week.
To wrap things up, I just want to touch on a few things from today’s interview with Jorge. Do check out the tracking board’s Twitter feed. I’ll link to that in the show notes. It’s Twitter.com/mytrackingboard. They’re very active on Twitter so there is a lot of great information on their Twitter feed.
There are also a couple of add-on prizes that go along with this contest, management representation from the management company Heroes and Villains Entertainment. There’s a mentorship which you can add on where three past winners will mentor you, those three past winners who are actually staff writers will mentor you. So there is a ton of stuff you can possibly win with this contest so do check out the site for details. There are so many ins and outs to this and it’s just really impressive what they’ve done. As I said, they’re really delivering results, and as you can tell just from the interview with Jorge, they’re really putting an emphasis on trying to help their writers succeed, and that’s great for anybody who enters and places highly in the contests.
At this point I have had a lot of people who run these contests on the podcast, and I can honestly say they’re all very much interested in helping screenwriters. They all understand that the best way to build their contest up is to really help the winners succeed. So I definitely think that contests should be part of your marketing mix.
Recently, too, I’ve also been getting the screenwriting staffing premium newsletter. I will link to that in the show notes as well in case you’d like to check it out. Screenwriting Staffing sends out emails with paid screenwriting jobs in them. I’ve had some interesting interactions from this. I’ve actually found some other screenwriting blogs looking for content, and I pitch them on the idea of basically syndicating this podcast on their site. So I’ve actually found a couple of other screenwriting blogs willing to syndicate this podcast on to them. So that’s been great; it’s a win/win situation. They get some good [inaudible 0:35:13.5] for the site and I get more exposure for the podcast. I’ve found these through the Screenwriting Staffing Newsletter. I’ve also seen a few screenwriting professor jobs in the newsletter, and this is something I’ve never seen in any of these types of newsletters before. So if you’re thinking about becoming a screenwriting professor, you want to teach at a university, this might be a good fit for you. I’ve actually had a few producers request my scripts too, typically the newsletter when it comes to you, there are producers specifically asking I need a script like this. You send a query letter to them saying I have this script and you pitch it with your log line, and I have had a few producers get back to me saying yes, send the script. I haven’t heard back from that but it’s all been pretty recently. It seems pretty active. I haven’t sent a ton of query letters to these leads, but I’ve gotten a pretty good response from the query letters I have sent. So these leads seem pretty active. The reason I mention this, not just to pitch the screenwriting staffing service which I do think is an excellent service, but the reason I mention this is just to show you that I am also experimenting and I’m trying to add to my marketing mix as well. So if you’re out there thinking gee, should I add contests; should I enter contests, you’ve got to just get out there and experiment with stuff. As I said, hopefully from listening to this podcast, you get the sense that that is what I’m doing as well. That’s really what’s worked for me over the years. That’s ultimately what’s gotten scripts sold and optioned. It’s just getting out there and mixing things up and trying new things. You just never know what’s going to work for you until you try it.
Anyway, that’s the show. Thank you for listening.