The Nicholl, Treatments, and Queries
Hello, my Peeps – hope everyone had a successful week of writing.
Received my confirmation emails from the Nicholl this week. Is it just me, or are there fewer entries this year? I submitted my entries on March 28th and in my confirmation letter my submissions are numbered 1280, 1281, and 1282. On April 9th, when I received my emails, Mr. Beal stated that, to date there had been 2228 entries. Hmmmm. Now, March 28th leaves 33 days left until the deadline on May 1st. And Apri 9th leaves 21. So what, you might ask? Well, last year the Nicholl had 6380 entries and with 21 days to go the Nicholl is 4152 entries short of last year’s total. Are fewer folks trying to break into the biz? Have contests lost their appeal? Will Mr. Beal and company suffer a deluge of scripts to the tune of 4000+ in three weeks? (insert shrug) — I dunno. Just find it curious is all. Stay tuned.
On a different note, I did something this week I swore I would never, ever do. I… wrote a treatment.
I had a producer tell me he didn’t have time to read my script, Boomslang, so, “…could you please send me a treatment?”. I know, I know. This is like writing for free, but his reasoning made sense to me: producers are very busy people – at least the successful ones are – and that I would get a better response to my queries if I offered up a treatment instead of the completed screenplay. So…
I caved. And let me tell you, writing a treatment if tough, real tough. That said, I can see the wisdom in his words, so I have decided to write treatments for all of my scripts and to change my query letters to offer the reader a choice: treatment or script.
Finally, the queries are still flying out of my computer at a torrid pace. The response has been lukewarm at best, but I am a firm believer in the 3Ps: Perseverance. Perseverance. Perseverance. My philosophy is this: Query producers who produce movies in your genre, then throw’em up against the wall – the queries, not the producers – and see what sticks. Getting noticed / discovered / produced is a matter of reaching the right person at the right time with the right material. So, onward and upward and always,
Keep Writing!
Mike, I think MOST writers send in their scripts at the deadline. My guess is the Nicholls will have their numbers when all’s said and done.
I think that was a good idea on your part to write the treatment. Hopefully they’ll like it and buy your script.
- E.C. Henry from Bonney Lake, WA
@Nicholl — yup, probably right.
@Treatment — one can only hope;-)
Keep Writing!
I’d love to pry your brain about cold-calls. Apparently it’s much more personal. Personally I’ve always thought it would be slightly intrusive. It’s also best that you find out the name of the exact person your are trying to contact, however that task just sounds hard to pull off.
What do you think?
Dave,
Thanks for dropping by.
Re: Cold-calls… I try to query producers who produce movies in my genre only. I try not to query a producer specializing in ROMCOMS with a THRILLER — although it has happened once or twice
I do address my email-queries to specific people — I probably have a couple hundred names — producers, assistants, and managers — in my database that took a couple of years to create. Just a matter of time, patience, and the 3Ps.
Keep Writing!