“Unlocking the Secrets of Cinematic Storytelling: Shari Hamrick Grewal’s Journey from Crew Member to Visionary Director”
Ashley
So, just tell me about this idea of doing a film with veterans and your 501c. How does that play into it? Do you get some, like it allows you to keep the budget lower, you get some tax incentives. Maybe you can talk to that. It was just giving back. You just have a passion for veterans and so you want to give something back to them. But maybe you can speak to that a little bit.
Shari Hamrick Grewal
Well, you know, when you’re in the independent lane, I found that when you’re doing movies for like, under a million dollars, you never really make your money back anyway. So, you’re already working as a nonprofit, because there isn’t any profit. You’re just trying to pay yourself back for the expenses. So that, that was one reason we looked at that. We’re like, we’re not, what do we get? How are we going to get this out? This was another film, not necessarily Winter’s Garden, so we just went out for sales this month. And it’s been pretty good conversations, the movies being really well received. So that’s a blessing. But for the nonprofit side, we coordinate with a company called Vet Pick, which is another partner 501c3. And their job is to get live events, whether it be a concert or movie, F1 race car, whatever, and they like to get discounted or free tickets, and they give them to the veterans and their families to go and attend. So, we kind of went through it in that way to see if we told a story that was strong enough, would they come? Like, could we invite the veterans to come? The reason this is blown up now, since I’ve been doing this full time since 2014, as far as the 501c3 is concerned, is that there were a lot of veterans coming out that wanted to learn how to be in the business, they were transitioning out of a traditional, whatever they were doing in the military, and now that they’ve retired, and they’re trying to get a different skill, and they’re trying to learn something else, or they have a story that they’ve written, or something to say, either based on their experience or not. And we just started putting them into places or onto other films, or we would be hired to promote films like Hacksaw Ridge, or things like that, to that audience. I never did any of that trying to make any money, I don’t take any salary. When I’m working with the 501c3 or anything with veterans, I don’t take a salary at all. All of that, anything we raise or any support we get goes 100% to the veterans and what they’re doing.
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