This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 233: Screenwriter And Director Asif Akbar Talks About His New Sci-Fi Thriller, Astro.
Ashley: Welcome to Episode #233 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger of the www.sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing writer- director Asif Akbar. He wrote and directed and produced too a cool sci-fi thriller called Astro. We walk through his career and how he has managed to get to the point where he has written and directed this feature film, so stay tuned for that interview. If you find this episode viable please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving me 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 mention in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode incase 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 Number #233. 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 log line and query letter and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really it’s everything you need to know to sell your screenplay. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
Just a quick few words about what I’m working on. As mentioned over the last couple of weeks, The Pinch, the crime feature film that I wrote, directed and produced last year is for a limited time available for sale on the website. Just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/thepinch. The Pinch is all one word and it’s all lower case. I’m gonna keep it for sale on the website for the next couple of weeks. Also just as an extra you can bundle the film The Pinch with the three hour webinar I did on the making of the film. I go into great detail about every aspect of making the film, writing the screenplay, raising the money and then of course producing the film. So this is a great chance to see the completed film and also see the behind the scenes of how I got it made. I will of course link to it in the show notes but again that is www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/thepinch.
So in terms of what I am writing, last week I was talking about my animated superhero TV pilot. I did finish a draft of that, presented that to my writers group last week, got a bunch of good notes, so I will have to go back and then implement some of those notes over the next couple of weeks. But mainly what I’m working on now is the live action kid’s mystery TV show that I’ve been talking about over the last few months. There is a new producer involved with the project and he’s helping us polish up the script a bit. He has some real success selling write ups and scripts so I think it’s a good fit and the time I spent polishing this pile will be time well spent. So that will be my main writing work over the next couple of weeks, maybe a little bit longer.
But basically what we’re gonna do is try and really tighten up the script, polish it up and then see who we can take it to in terms of just pitching it to other people, maybe bringing on a producer or maybe going and trying to pitch it to some of these particular producers contacts. So we’ll see but the bottom line is the script has to be as good as possible, so that’s gonna be squarely on my shoulders to try and polish that up here over the next couple of weeks and then hopefully we’ll keep the project going. That’s what I’m working on, now let’s get into the main segment. Today I am interviewing writer, director Asif Akbar. Here is the interview.
Ashley: Welcome Asif to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Asif: Thank you for having me, it’s my pleasure.
Ashley: So to start out maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Akbar: Sure, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, a small town outside of Cleveland [inaudible 00:04:12] Ohio. Ever since I can remember back when I was little watching movies like Jurassic Park, Terminator, even though I was a small kid my parents gave me the freedom to explore and watch whatever I wanted. That played in my advantage because it got my creative juices flowing. I was always fascinated about how films were made or these stories were told on screen. I grew up with that way of thinking and I started understanding how it all kind of came together as I grew up and when I was in about the third or fourth grade I decided to start writing because we were at the peak of learning how to read and write at that age. I remember at school we would get tasks and home works to write little stories at home so I kind of escalated on that and started writing my own screenplays when I was in third, fourth grade.
At that time in the mid ‘90s we were fortunate to have little video cameras, VHS cameras. I would borrow my uncles, their friends and on the weekends friends would get together and instead of just playing tag and capture the flag we would make these little short movies. That kind of became a trend in the neighborhood with all my friends. When I was 11 years old we made our first full length film that was about 60 minutes long. From there on I was always into acting and plays and drama club and then advanced into…actually I started working with film and television in my teenage years. When I was in high school I was in a program at Valley Forge High School. We had three high schools that combined into our school district. We had vocational programs that offered everyone and anyone that wanted to be in any profession and I chose radio and TV.
That really created a platform for me to explore my abilities as a writer and a filmmaker. My teacher David Ross gave us access to cameras and editing labs so I was pretty much in film school in high school. I developed my skills more there and my father was also a film producer in Bangladesh. During the summers I would go and work on productions there, so it kind of became natural. Then after high school I came out to Los Angeles, pursued my dreams out there and went into film school and by then I was already working on independent productions for different production companies. So throughout school I kind of utilized my resources at the film schools. I went to Columbia College of Hollywood in Tarzana in California. The reason I chose that school is because they were very hands on.
They gave us the tools and resources and the teachers were very hands on with the students to help us make projects for the outside world professionally. Instead of just making a school project and getting a grade they encouraged us to keep creating. That’s what I loved about that school. I got my bachelors of fine arts from there in directing and I just kept writing. It was all about just building up content. I had different partners, friends that I grew up with, friends that I went to film school with or even people that I met on different sites. We started collaborating and we just created a vast library of screenplays. That came to our advantage and we understood the reality of not sticking with just one story or one script. It’s just like the way the business is today, the more content you have the more chances you have of succeeding.
It’s just that way so…writing doesn’t cost anything, writing is the cheapest way of creating because all you need is a pen and paper or a computer and you can type away, just on load with your creativity. The way I found it to be helpful and motivating is to always have a partner. We all have ideas, we’re all our own artists in our own way. Just like having a gym partner when you go and work out. You get that extra bit of motivation and the hardest thing is to start. Once you start, get through the first few pages it kind of starts flowing and if you have someone to feed off of you get a second set of eyes to validate what you’re writing and it speeds up the process. So when it came to Astro for example I worked with a gentleman named Bernard Selling. He’s a novelist and he’s a much older gentleman in his ‘70s and he’s lived through it all.
He’s been a veteran, fought in wars, been writing for 40 plus years. He’s written over twenty-something novels. I’ve known him for about 10 years, we’ve worked on some past productions together and so we gel very well when it comes to being writing partners because he comes from a whole different background and generation where he can bring all his set of knowledge from and then I come from more of the modern, this generation where I can relate to today’s audiences. And so we are able to make a great combo that’s kind of unique because most times…And I’ve heard and I still do have a lot of writing partners that are my age or a few years here and there but we have a gap between us over decades. I think that brings something special. It makes the job easier for both of us.
With Astro I actually wrote up I think the first third of it and I had the story in my head because over the years I’ve done a lot of research within all the UFO conspiracies. That’s always been one of my fascinations growing up along with film. That’s why I love sci-fi films so much is because I’m a UFO fanatic myself. I’ve always played around with the ideas of putting that on screen in a story where I don’t sound nerdy but I can put it into an entertaining story and put it out as a movie. So as I played round with it and I made more movies I just didn’t feel like I was ready to make a sci-fi film yet because it takes so much with the effects. With Astro there’s a wide range of pretty much every element you can have in a story involved with it. One day I made a few films and I was looking back and I’ve always liked to challenge myself whether it came to writing new stories or making a new movie.
I don’t like to really think about the budget. I just want to write what I can and then from there do what’s reality. I don’t like to limit myself thinking I’m only gonna have a few bucks to do this so I can’t have a cat chase in there, I can’t have police cars and this and that. I just wanna put it on paper and then let the filmmaker or producer side of me kick in and break it down and figure out what’s real and what’s not. So same thing happened with Astro. I shot for the starts, wrote my own ideas down, had a meeting with Bernard and said, “Hey look, this is the new idea I’m thinking about.” In the past him and I have actually written two other screenplays. One was a script called Stronger that we are very close to getting made back about six years ago. We were in development with that for about six months. Money was almost there, we had it cast…It was very close to getting made and then it didn’t.
That’s the Hollywood norm. We never gave up, we went back, we did multiple drafts of that and again we thought we’re getting it made and so nothing happened. Then we had another story that was floating around and all of a sudden Astro was something that I just came in with because I had finished another film and I was getting ready to do something. I said, “Look, I think this has all the elements to be able to really fast track it, getting it funded, getting the right people behind it.” So I designed the whole concept knowing what you need within this range to get a film greenlighted. We had a target when we started and so we built on that and he said, “Okay well, let me take a crack at what you have and I sent him. After that meeting right away I sent him over what I had written up and within like…you know, Bernard’s a very fast writer.
He came up with his draft his side of it within like four days and then we went back and forth, we built on it, we wrote the first draft within less than thirty days, and then it had it’s flaws. It was always a work in progress. We had that mentality that this script’s not gonna be perfect, it’s always gonna be a work in progress until the very end day of post-production. It still was up until…even after the DVD release we did some edits for the remaining Blu-Ray and other platforms. You have to accept that even as a writer I know it’s hard to let go of certain pages that you’ve fell in love with that aren’t worth that but…And same thing goes across the board for actors. We’ve had experiences with actors that had a hard time dealing with changes on set. If you change a dialogue or change a scene. They fall in love with what was previously written on paper.
But I’ve been through enough to realize and accept now that you have to be open to change. So with that in mind that you have to be open for changes, we didn’t hold ourselves back. We didn’t feel like we were under prepared because of having one draft that told the story, established the characters was enough to go out and pass it to the actors and get them involved. These actors were all…pretty much I’d say 90% of the actors that we reached out and were lucky enough to get we had in mind when we were writing the script. Some of them I’d had experience working with before, some that I had met or some that I knew that had mutual friends that I had access to. So with these actors in mind we kind of were able to visualize each of the characters and that helped a lot to think ahead of which actor can play this role.
So we just went for it with the first draft, we didn’t hold ourselves back, we reached out to the actors. Most of them read them within a day or two or even if they didn’t read the whole thing they kind of [inaudible 00:16:45] read it and they came back to us and they said, “Okay, I like it,” or “I don’t,” or “I have these notes.” We told them when we first gave them the script that, “Look, this is a work in progress but we are open to suggestions and notes that you may have that could help build this and make it better.” I’ve always been a very open director when it comes to working with actors and giving them their freedom to do what they do best because at the end of the day actors are also artists, they’re not robots. I know a lot of people will go and force them to say a line the way it’s written, the way they visualize it.
I have that ability to get that kind of work out of an actor but at the same time you have to give them the freedom to bring it out on their own first. Let them show what they can do and then you can go ahead and adjust it. You can always get a take two. They love that and they were very open and supportive in that kind of an idea of being involved and collaborating on their characters. I think that makes it more real because at the end of the day that actor is the one that’s gonna make it believable, make it sell or not on screen. If they don’t believe it then I can’t make people believe it and the audience won’t believe it. It’s always important for the actor to really believe it first so it helped us a lot with giving actors that access to be involved early on as we were writing. There were days when I was still rewriting scenes and pages and pages on set like half an hour before going on and shooting the scenes.
Then I also had great consultants, veteran screenwriters like Gregory Cosby and people that I have built relationships with over the years that were very supportive and they helped me throughout the way. It took about six months to really develop the final shooting script for Astro. It was always a work in progress. I was always changing and updating as it went and we had to re-write it for different actors, different range of actors from A-list actors. At one point we even had the script out to Alpa Chino for a role for coming on for two days. There were different phases that we had to go through in development to secure the funds. We played the whole Hollywood game where…even with Astro we came so close so many times with different parties on locking the deal, locking the finances and having shoot dates…
Ashley: Can we dig into that just one second. This is the script that you developed for six months and then it never actually got produced about six years ago?
Asif: No, I was talking about Astro…
Ashley: Okay, what was the name of that film that you developed for six months and it did not get produced?
Asif: That was a film called Stronger.
Ashley: Okay, Stronger. Let’s talk about this just for a minute. You mentioned you got it to the point where it was in development and you were close to getting it. How did you get it to that point? Maybe take us through just sort of a route that you took. Did you just cold pitch it to some producers, did you get some traction through a contest? Maybe just run through sort of the progression of getting that script to the point where it’s in development.
Asif: It was actually similar to how I put Astro into development. We wrote the script as soon as we had…it wasn’t the very first draft but I think it was like the second draft when we felt a little comfortable we didn’t hold ourselves back. We started reaching out to actors. That’s one of the key factors when it comes to getting a film greenlighted that I have learnt over the years. Especially nowadays the actors are what determines how much the budget can be. You can write a drama say for example for $100,000 but if you don’t have the minimum cast to back that up then you’re not gonna get the financing if you’re going to a production company or a distributor or even a lot of film financiers that know what they’re doing, they’re gonna look at the numbers. So we start with [inaudible 00:21:28] actors.
Ashley: So unpack that a little bit. You’ve got this script for Stronger, it’s not a first draft, maybe a second draft. Do you then hire a casting director and have the casting director take it out or it was just purely the actors that you had networked with through your own career?
Asif: Actors that I had networked with and even cold pitching to actors agents and managers because at that time we also didn’t have the funding to even hire a casting director. I know I’ve had a lot of friends and since then I’ve also done some projects where I had a relationship with the casting director that may have a relationship. They would on board with some sort of deal and they’d get involved. But with that particular project, with Stronger we just started cold pitching. It’s the same thing we did with Astro and others and we started to get actors behind it and attached and develop a path so that way we don’t just have a screenplay because everyone in this town and all over have scripts. It’s easy to have a script but you have to develop a package that you can present. We made sure that we had a few actors that has a mix of names and non-name talent.
We at least had actors attached and then we made a look book. We hired someone to actually make a look book that was very presentable, had pictures, animation, then I made a little markup trailer with some [inaudible 00:22:58] footage and animation that I could do myself so that didn’t cost us anything. So pretty much with just some time invested and people to believe in the project we were able to develop a package that then we started to go out and pitch.
Ashley: What are those conversations? When you’re just cold pitching an agent, what do those conversations look like? Maybe you can run through that. I get a lot of emails from people saying, “Hey, how can I get this actor or that actor?” In my experience and I would say sort of my circle of friends, what’s very typical when you’re cold pitching an agent, they’re not all that interested in talking to you and maybe they take [inaudible 00:23:38] but typically what comes back is sort of a pay or play deal. They’re like, “Yeah, we’ll do a letter of intent but only if you sign this pay-or-play deal.” How do you get around that? Is it just salesmanship, are there some tips?
Asif: Yeah, you have to strategize and do your homework on the actors you’re trying to go out for. A lot of times I would try to look them up of IMDb and see what they’re working on, if it’s like a big A-list actor. One of the tips I’ve been told and I’ve seen to work is if you want to go out for a big A-list actor then try to have all your ducks in a row, know your shooting dates, know as many details as you can so when you reach out to that agent you have all the information they need. You can email it to them. What I normally would do is I would email them as detailed as I can about their role, about the production, is it financed, is it not financed, is it looking for it, when do we plan on shooting, what exactly do we need from them and what do we have to offer. Write off the bet, just send it in writing in an email.
Then what I would do is follow up, call that agency. Most times their assistants would pick up, but if you tell them, “Look you know, we just sent you an email coming from so and so, we’re inquiring about your client,” they’re more likely to go and check it right there in front of them with you on the phone. That way you’re on their radar and if it catches that assistant’s interest and if they see okay, there’s some potential in this then they’ll pass it on their agent. And so if the ball gets rolling and if they’re really interested in it or they know that they have an opening with their client they’ll get back right away and give you a knock and ask you more questions or they’ll tell you right away saying, “Thank you, but we’re busy,” or, “No, thank you.”
Ashley: Yeah. Just so people understand the scope of what you’re doing, how many actors’ agents do you pitch to get those people or that whittles down to actually getting someone attached to the project? Is it like you got to make 100 pitches to get one actor attached, is it like 10 pitches? Just some idea of what sort of what the numbers are so people have some idea about what kind of a mountain they’re facing here.
Asif: The more you pitch, it’s kind of like a double edged sword because you don’t wanna flood it at the…It’s such a small town here in Hollywood where agents kind of know each other. The agencies also represent a lot of the same actors, especially the top three five agencies, they represent most of the top actors. So if you flood it with going out and submitting the same role to 10 different actors then you kind of sendoff a message that you’re just fishing and trying your luck and that you’re not really too serious on that one particular actor, and so agents and managers get turned off from that if they can sense that because they always want to feel like you’re prioritizing them or their client for them to even give you that time of day. At the same time if you have some money like you were saying pay-or-play situation you don’t have to have necessarily the hard cash as long as you have some people that have a track record behind it.
If you can get someone to come on board as a producer but with [inaudible 00:27:27] but just to even lend their name and back up the project and say, “Okay, we have so and so producer.” That carries some weight and if you have experience working with actors or other casting directors an agents with a track record then you can say this is my last film, this is what I’ve done.” It’s always helpful to have some type of [inaudible 00:27:51] like that to go in and pitch. I always try to go for people that I know are realistic for that type of project. If I can back it up then you don’t have a problem with it. You can say, “Sure, we have $50,000 [inaudible 00:28:09] for this actor and if you really do then it’s not a problem. You can go and say [inaudible 00:28:15]. Then they’ll definitely give you the time or day. They’ll call you back right away.
That’s one thing that’s kind of funny is it’s kind of not hard to get a hold of them or their attention if you have a real project. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to have money. If you have a real package, that’s why it’s good to build on that package and not just walk in there with a script or an idea. Even if you have a producer that you can attach to it just with their name. They don’t even have to do anything. They don’t even have to make a phone call. If they believe in you and your project and they give you their name to attach to it then you have something more and that gets a lot of agents’ attention. Everyone almost knows everyone so it’s really about who you know and what you know and what you have will keep you there.
Ashley: So let’s pick up the story and I apologize for interrupting there. Let’s pick up the story, so you’re working on Astro, you’re starting to get a package. Once you have your script and your actors attached, what are then your next steps? Do you just start reaching out to production companies and are those mostly like cold emails, cold phone calls and you say, “Listen, I’ve got this package, are you interested in coming on board to finance it?” Maybe talk through those steps.
Asif: Yeah, you never leave any options out because what we did with Astro is we had different packages that we made. We had a low budget package, we had a high budget package, meaning low budget was between say $300,000 to $500,000 because we were realistic. We knew that we needed a certain amount, a minimum amount to make it right. We had one that was between $300,000 to $500,000 and we had another that was between one million to three million and then we had another one that was between five to ten million. So we had three different options that we broke our package down to and then we targeted the investors, different private investors, different production companies, different studios based on which level they could realistically come on board as.
We shopped it for I’d say at least a year before I realized that the best thing to do was to just get the movie made independently with private investors. We had PPMs made- Private Placement Memorandums that offered investors a legitimate investment package. So that started going…
Ashley: Maybe you can talk about how do you get those investors on board? Is it a function of just you start with your family and friends and branch out from there? What does that look like? Who do you actually contact for private investment?
Asif: In this case it wasn’t necessarily family and friends. I’ve always treated it like a business deal and so I reached out to different hedge funds, private investors that I’ve worked with before. Also just sending it out to different agencies that could possibly come on board and take it to a big studio. I’ve even had a lot of now friends that were networking on my behalf. They came on board as sort of like agents, private agents and finders to reach out to their network of investors. It became a web of different ways. Instead of just putting it up on Indiegogo or any kind of social media fundraising site we started to reach out to all the legitimate business men and studios and producers that we knew that wanted a package like this. That’s when we built a package with some of these elements already built in to it to match what these companies were looking for.
We actually got a lot of interest from many distribution companies, production companies that saw the package and right away they were attracted to it. They saw how it made sense with the numbers and even with the cast and everyone we had attached. But the problem was I wasn’t willing to just give it up just to make a movie. We had many offers where companies wanted to come on board and have full control in every way and this wasn’t a project that I was willing to just give up. So I was in the position of rejecting some offers that we had and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of people may have said, “You should just get it made,” but at the end of the day by doing that I opened up more and more doors and just never gave up on sticking to my original vision and staying true to what I believe in.
I’ve always seen Astro’s long term type of franchise opportunity and that’s how I conceived it, that’s what I wanted. It was kind of like my baby but it was just like any other genre film or something I just wanted to get made. Sure that would have been a golden opportunity but you know at the end of the day we ended up financing it through all private equity investors and we broke it up in pieces. If it’s not possible for one investor to do it all then at least you start somewhere. You get the first seed money invested that can then secure others. So once you have one party come on board even if you can get 10% of the budget in then that entices other investors to come on board and support it because they realize okay well, they’ve already started, the train’s left the station we better get on. So that helps a lot.
Ashley: With private equity like that, how important is having name cast? I mean, when you’re going through a distributor or a production company they understand the intrinsic value of those names but with private equity they don’t really understand the value of these actors and they might over value some and under value some. So I’m curious, how important do you think it is to have those actors attached when you’re trying to reach private equity?
Asif: Again it’s like a double-edged sword. Some of these investors get more excited if you do have a named actor and then some investors they don’t care as long as it makes sense numbers wise. As long as you have a good solid package that make sense. You got to have one or the other. You have to at least have either a named actor and if you don’t have a named actor then you have to have a really good solid and organized package that will just make business sense. Other ways you can get lucky and find an investor that just loves the topic of the story and doesn’t care what it takes he wants to be a part of it. Again, you can’t close doors by just asking one person to do it all. You have to see what they’re comfortable with doing even if they come in and give you 10% of what you’re originally seeking then at least that gets you 10% closer to the finish line and once you get that in the pot most people are willing to believe in it more.
Ashley: Yeah. So how can people see Astro, do you know what the release schedule is gonna be like?
Asif: Well, the DVD released on June 5th which is last Tuesday, exactly a week ago all across the US and Canada in stores like Walmart, Best Buy, Target. You can order it on Amazon but it’s only DVD right now and the next releases will be on VOD Digital, some limited theatrical and TV and all that coming up in the next couple of months.
Ashley: Okay, perfect. I always like to just end the interviews by asking the guest how people can keep up with what you’re doing. Anything you’re comfortable sharing, a Twitter handle, Facebook page, blog, are you active on any of those that people maybe could just learn a little bit more about what you’re doing?
Asif: Absolutely, yeah. I have an Instagram account, Facebook, we have the Astro official movie Facebook page. We also have astro.movie Instagram page where we’re gonna be updating and then the YouTube page which is under Avail Films. That released the original official trailer. So we’re active social media wise. Mostly Facebook is updated the most along with Instagram.
Ashley: Okay, perfect. I’ll round all that stuff up and put it in the show notes. I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me. Great interview, lots of great information. Congratulations getting this film finished and I look forward to hearing about your next film when you’re ready.
Asif: Thank you, it’s a pleasure and I had a lot of fun.
Ashley: Perfect, thank you. Will talk to you later.
Asif: Okay, take care. Bye.
Ashley: I just wanna 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 log line, synopsis and other pertinent information like budget and genre and then producers search for and hopefully find screenplays that they wanna produce. Dozens of producers are in the system looking for screenplays right now. I launched this service at the beginning of this year and we’ve already started to see some success stories. You can check out SYS Podcast Episode #222 with Steve Deering. He was the first official success story to come out of the SYS Select database. You can learn about all of this by going to www.sellingyourscreenplayselect.com.
When you join SYS Select you get access to the screenplay database that I just mentioned along with all the other services that we’re providing to SYS Select members. Those services include the monthly newsletter that goes out to our list of 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays. Each SYS Select member can pitch one screenplay in this monthly newsletter. We also have partnered with one of the premier paid screenwriting leads sites 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 five to ten high quality paid leads per week. These leads run the game, there’s producers looking for specific types of spec script to producers looking to hire a screenwriter to write up one of their ideas or properties.
They’re are looking for shots, they’re looking for features, TVs and web series pilots, all types of different projects. If you sign up for SYS Select you’ll get these leads emailed directly to you several times per week. Also you can get access to the SYS Select forum where we will help you with your log line and query letter and answer any screen writing related questions that you might have. Also in the forum are all the recorded screenwriting classes that I’ve done over the years, so you’ll have access to all of those as well. The classes cover every part of the writing process 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 would like to learn more about please go to www.sellingyourscreenplayselect.com.
On the next episode of the podcast I’m gonna be interviewing filmmakers Jameson [Inaudible 00:40:38] and Adam [inaudible 00:40 35]. They are East Coast filmmakers who just finished a feature film called Sunset which is an ensemble drama about a bunch of people as they grapple with the possibility of an eminent nuclear strike. It’s another inspiring story about two guys who are out there making things happen for themselves. We talk about this film, we talk about their career in general, how they were able to start their own production company and they give a lot of great details. Keep an eye out for that episode next week. Anyway, that’s the show, thank you for listening.