Hello all...I'm still learning the ins and outs of screenwriting and I have a couple of newb questions for anyone willing to answer... If you have a screenplay sent off to the library of congress is it only copyrighted in the US or is copyrighted outside the US as well? If you want to send a screenplay to a UK or elsewhere do you have to have it copyrighted through their government? Also about query letters...I have a few books and read as much as I could find so far on the net about query letters but I still feel like I am missing something. When writing a query letter to a production company and you dont know a name who do you address it to? If you are sending it to an actor's production company do you address it to the actor? If you are sending it to an actor's agent do you address it to the actor or the agent? Also the length of the letter I have read it varies from one paragraph to 3 but it all seems to depending on listing past experience and work history. For someone like me who has none should I keep it direct and to the point and only write the logline and a brief synopsis? I know these may seem like stupid questions but I would really appreciate the help. Thank you!
Screenwriting : Copyrights and query letters by Rachel Meyers
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Why go to library of congress. Writer's Guildeast or west $20. Worldwide
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hey rachel - nice to meet you here. you've asked some good questions. as for protecting your work via copyright a simple way to do this is to mail yourself a copy of the script. Don't open it just file it away. If there's ever an issue you have proof of what you wrote and when you wrote it. as for query letters... most production companies and actor's companies don't take unsolicited material (this means material they haven't previously requested). If you don't have a connection to someone at the the company it can be very difficult to get your material read let alone interest someone with a query letter - no matter how well written. In addition as noted above actors won't read your script unless it comes from an agent with some kind of deal/money in place. if you are just starting out i would consider a different route. first you need to build up your contacts via networking so that you aren't just sending blind submissions. you can do this through stage32 (of course!), entering contests, attending pitchfests, blogging, using twitter, and taking on-line courses. The Writer's Store here in LA and on-line is an excellent resource for this (in fact they had a webinar today on query letters!!). This will help you to build up a network of people you can send your material to which will increase your chances of them reading it. you can certainly still send out query letters but until you know specific people to send your work to it can be near impossible to get your material read. and i concur with Dan you definitely want to continue to write so that you have more than one script to pitch. hope that helps! Ruth