Writing | Sheldon Charron

Writing

Thought leadership

Brand, story and strategy

Behind the scenes: leading production of a branded film to showcase client innovation.

October 2, 2025 Why Serious Companies Are Building Hollywood-Level Studios In-House Read the article

October 13, 2025 The Long Game: Oil and Diamonds - How Belief Becomes Brand (Part 1) In marketing there are two games being played. The short game sells attention. The long game sells belief. Read the article

November 14, 2025 Oil & Diamonds (Part 2): Controlling the Narrative in an Age of AI Read the article

Creative writing

Film and television

CORNERED

Feature screenplay

A feature screenplay, a contained supernatural thriller set in an asylum. I wrote it, built the budgets, pitch deck and investor materials, and it was optioned and came close to production twice. corneredmovie.net

The pitch package was part of the pitch. I had a Georgia company that makes real straitjackets build miniature ones that hold the script, and I hand-painted every sleeve myself. One studio producer framed his and hung it on his wall. He called it the coolest pitch package he had ever seen.

CORNERED key art: a ruined asylum under a storm sky with a demon's glowing eyes in the clouds, and the line Hell hath no fury like a demon scorned — The CORNERED key art I designed, and the pitch package: the script, buckled into its own straitjacket.

A miniature canvas straitjacket with buckled straps and CORNERED hand-painted on the sleeve, the bound script tucked inside — The CORNERED key art I designed, and the pitch package: the script, buckled into its own straitjacket.

Undo Influence

TV comedy series

A comedy series based on advertising: a copywriter who hates advertising takes the agency's money, builds great campaigns, then undoes his own work. The title plays on undue influence, the legal term for manipulating someone’s judgment, which is how Jerry sees advertising. Pitched as The Office meets Mad Men meets Mr. Bean.

I wrote the pilot and story bible for the series, and packaged it. It was runner-up at the Hollywood Pitch Fest, and I pitched it to CBS three times. It became the inspiration for The Crazy Ones with Robin Williams and Sarah Michelle Gellar.

The bound Undo Influence pilot script, revision 11, beside a fan of storyboard pages for the opening scene — The Undo Influence pilot and storyboards ready to pitch at AFM in LA.

RED SEA

Feature thriller

Unable to kill himself, John buys a boat to sail across the Pacific and get lost at sea, but while preparing to leave meets Kerrie, and after a wild fling, she joins him on the trip. In the middle of the ocean, John finds his will to live again, but soon learns that he's trapped on the boat with a psychopath.

RED SEA key art: a blood-streaked knife over a woman in a red bikini, a sailboat on a red sea behind her, and the line Falling in love is a killer — The RED SEA key art I designed, from a 2010 shoot I photographed and my own boat.

The Process For Cornered

Circa 2012 Sherman Oaks, California. Every scene on a card, reorganizing until the structure holds. This is how it was done in Hollywood for years. On a cork board or a huge table, sometimes old-school is the best school and visually seeing the scenes and moving them around like chess pieces is how a story comes together.

A corkboard above a laptop covered in rows of index cards, one scene per card, laid out to structure a screenplay — The board for CORNERED, one scene per card.