“From Behind the Lens to Center Stage: Shari Hamrick Grewal’s Journey to Mastering the Art of Film Production”
Shari Hamrick Grewal
Well, I do read every query myself, personally, that comes into me or any of my companies, they come through my desk, and then I will either ask to read the script, or I’ll pass it on to someone else to read it if it just didn’t quite get me excited about it. But I take submissions from unknown people to me as well. And they I get a lot, I get maybe I don’t get as many because I don’t promote myself. I don’t like appear because it’s like for sort of like any promotional stuff for a long time. But I’ve been around for a long time. So, my name and addresses in a lot of those screenplay things. So, I used to get like 100 a week and now I get about 100 a month still of just unknown queries that will come to me. So, I will take unknown to me writers, I’ll take first time writers. But it doesn’t matter. What I find interesting about the communication between writers and myself when I get a query is, a lot of them are so first time that they don’t know how to do a query. And they just blow it like right in the email, right? Where it makes me just say, you know, thanks for thinking of us, but we’re not taking anything on right now. And technically, I’m really not looking for stuff, but you always keep the door open. You know, a Christmas miracle comes in. And I do read other things besides holiday fare, of course, you know, I do. I have found that I’m leaning away from I used to love to do horror with my favorite genre. And I used to a lot of horror movies. I don’t really do those anymore. I don’t do anything that’s considered torture porn or graphic, they grow sore. I’m kind of maybe because I’m getting older. This one, you know, I just want to have a nice entertainment, nice time. So, tend to I feel like crime thrillers are really good twisty crime thriller is good as long as it’s not too graphic, or I would say a hard R. I would stay away from that for me personally, I would do PG 13 ish versions of crime thrillers. And of course, my new label, which is now called Happy Chairs Incorporated, which is just all going to be rom coms, we have a specialty label for that. So, I’ll be letting you know, because I’ll be sending out a an invite for people to submit to us. I would just say that, you know, find out how to write a really good query letter. What is that, you know, we’re not going to do a class on that right now. But maybe sometimes, you know, I’ll come back and we can have a class on that. A really good query letter. You never attach the script unless it’s requested. That kind of stuff. There’s some basic rules to submissions, especially if you’re not like it’s not your manager sending it or a lawyer sending it. Most people wouldn’t even take an unrequested submission because of just the legal, the legal ramifications and then they all require a release saying hey, you know, you sent it to us, we didn’t request it, we may have similar films in the work here. So, if we pass on you, you know, you can’t come and see us if we’re just going to read it kind of thing. There’s just some rules that they need to follow I think on the query.
Post Comment