Screenwriting : Cold emailing? by Shara Ashley Zeiger

Its better to do a phonecall first and follow up with an e-mail. Ask what they need to know, tell them what you want. If your on long distance, you can send the e-mail first - ask what you want - wait for two weeks and than follow up with phonecall and check if your e-mail has arrived in good order. If nothing comes out of it, wait for 6 months. And repeat. Good Luck (its the hardest part..!)

What's wrong with face-to-face? I know I'm old... bur am I that old?

I “cold emailed” Joel Silver Prods and the VP replied back on iphone, “send script.”

I don’t discuss selling or making movies. I just send my spec scripts as writing samples. Make yourself unavailable and people want you more :)

Dan MaxXx Do you remember what you said more or less in your email or what you subjected it? Thank you for sharing.

Dan Guardino That's awesome. Do you remember what you said more or less in your emails? Or what you said on the phone to get someone to listen to you? Thank you for sharing this. It's really helpful. Trying to figure out how to be ballsy, but how to do it well. I have a few scripts, and my work's been in a bunch of festivals, good festivals, and have a few pitch decks, and have gotten some great meetings on my own with networks and production companies, but know the next step is rep to package it all.

Shara Ashley Zeiger I’m using my iPhone so I don’t have the original email to review but it was short and to the point, Silver makes movies in my wheelhouse, I said I have writing samples similar to their brand. That was it (I think). This was a year ago. So now I have a new script (same concept as the other spec I submitted) and I get to do it all over again. Insanity! :)

Shara: Query letters work but you have send out a lot of them and they need to be well-written:

I sent out about 70 a few weeks back and received a script request from Zero Gravity and another studio that's made films with major talent.

Thank you to the people on this that answered the question I asked. Appreciate it! I've written 7 short films, 5 that have been made, a full length play that's been produced, many short plays, a feature film, and am developing 3 TV shows. 2 of my shorts are in the circuit right now and doing well, and I'm trying to capitalize on that and both have longer plans. I have plenty to say, just want to find the most effective way to say it so people will listen.

IMO the logline is the key part of any cold query. So I tend to lead with that, cut to the chase about what I'm offering.

Eric Christopherson so what if you have multiple log lines?

I assume you mean what if you have multiple scripts? Well that can work too. In fact I emailed a producer recently with three loglines and he requested one of the scripts.

Thanks Eric Christopherson ! Can I ask what you put in your subject for the email that got it opened? This is realllly helpful!

I've been cold emailing for the past few weeks and I've so far gotten two requests for my script. Brevity is key. I'm sending from my iPhone so I make sure that the body of the email is short enough so that when they open the email, they don't have to scroll down to read the entire email. Everything is there at first glance. Most reps just scroll down to read the log line first anyway, so I make sure that's it's right smack-dab in the center of the email.

Also, I make sure that the preview of the email (in their inbox before they opt to open it) is clear, concise, and leads them to wanting to actually open the email. It's a lot of playing with the first sentence and characters like crafting the perfect tweet.

For the actually text of the body of the email, I simply write an intro sentence with why I'm specifically pitching them. Then Introduce my project with one other short sentence. Then it's the genre, log line, and my contact info. If you have contest wins/top 5% placements (of major contests like the Nicholl) then you can add that in your intro paragraph. But not all reps care about contests, even the prestigious ones.

My subject line is always: "Genre (with detail). Interested?" I make sure when researching the rep that the genre is something they are familiar with/looking for/rep people who write in. For an example of the detail, I could do: "Female-led action comedy. Interested?"

Believe it or not, Shara, my subject line was simply "Loglines." IMO you can use any words except "query": let 'em hear the idea of the script first before really processing that the email is just a cold query, which can get their defenses up, prejudice their initial response.

Eric Christopherson no way! I might try your approach!

Thanks Amber Brown for your insight!