Deadlines

7^th December 2016

Mr. (School Official),

If I may express myself neatly, I attended a class entitled “How to Become a Professional Film and TV Writer” and after several hours I felt no closer to that occupation than I was before the class. Further along those lines, the professor of this class was a Hollywood agent and not a writer.  It constitutes a conflict of interest for me as a writer to pay an agent for anything other than selling a script.

I’ll grant you that this was a free class, but before I got in the door I found something was not right with your program. Then I would have to point out that I checked the facts reported in the class and found that some of them were inconsistent with information on IMDB.com. If you want my money I expect the professor to do their homework just like the student. Failing to check facts is like failing to read student work. This would be the very basic requirements for a teacher and your professor came up short.

Then we have your professor telling the class about the most prominent script she had sold. She mentioned that she had been asked for a similar script by other studios and complained to them that they had not wanted that script when she offered it to them. I would expect the professional agent to sell the studios what they want. If you want a car this week and come in next week asking for an SUV the dealer is not going to get huffy and complain about what you asked for last week. They would just be happy to sell you whatever you want.

I could go on about foul language and inappropriate jokes, but let me hit it from another angle. The best advertisement your program can have is success. If I had attended that class and gone on to be a professional writer you would have a clear example of your classes paying off. Further, I would then have the money to invest in more education. In the contrary, if I knew how to look for work as a writer but failed to obtain it, my next question would be ‘why’, leaving the need for more education a possibility.

In short, I wasn’t happy with your program when it was free and now you fail to understand why I’m not paying for your services. If Hollywood were populated with your students and they spoke highly of you things would be different. However, I have no faith in your program as an investment.

I would recommend you contact me when you’ve made major changes to the quality of your education and have another free class for me to examine. In the mean time your extended deadlines only prove to me that classes are going unfilled and that other students have the same skepticism.

Kind regards,

Richard Leland Neal