Today we’d like to introduce you to Herschel Grangent Jr.
Hi Herschel, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My background is in broadcast news. I have a degree in broadcast journalism from the University of Georgia and served a number of years in the United States Army working in radio, television, newspapers and public relations during the mid to late 1990s. My initial aspiration was to be a radio personality or media relations professional when I left the military in 2001, but life had other plans.
Less than two weeks after I got out of the Army, September 11, 2001 shook this country to its core.
After this, I was compelled to go into law enforcement and served for five years as a police officer in metro Atlanta.
But the funny thing was that whether I wanted to or not, I could not get away from my past.
My police leadership found out I had a degree in broadcast journalism and lo and behold thrust me into the spotlight as the primary television spokesperson for my department.
Working for a larger police department put me in numerous situations where I had to speak on live television and radio. I naturally fell back on my training and realized I was very comfortable doing that sort of thing.
I also began to (in a sense) relearn some of the procedures for filming and recording video and sound as I assisted our internal audiovisual team with training videos and other projects.
Fast forward to 2015, and the movie industry in Atlanta is in full swing.
My wife Tawania had been a theater actress for years before making the decision to be a full-time wife and mother, but with our children now much older she decided to take advantage of the opportunities now at our doorstep and began her acting career in earnest and switching from theater to film.
I had also started my own career as a voice actor and audiobook narrator and had begun doing work as an extra and stand in on many of the shows and movies produced in Atlanta. I also started to take acting classes at Words in Motion Acting Studio in Villa Rica, GA.
My new goal was to start making my way not only as an actor but also to start immersing myself into the world of film and TV production.
I felt like I had the basic production background from my broadcast training. And with what I was learning from simply being on major studio sets the fire to produce and direct my own projects was starting to burn within me. You see, from the moment we started dating, my wife and I had always watched television and movies with a different eyes. We always scrutinized shows and joked about how we could do it better if we had the chance.
The maturity and knowledge we gained as the years went by, coupled with our aspiration to make names for ourselves in the new “Hollywood of the South” turned those “jokes” into “why not?”.
Q.U.E.E.N. Productions (Quietly Uniting Each and Every Nuance) was born.
She began to put pen to paper on our feature film “Composition” around this time, and I jumped in shortly thereafter helping to shore up the characters and round out the storylines. We assembled a production team and got to work. This was my first foray into writing, producing and directing, and my wife’s first lead role.
It was hard work, but we loved it.
There were quite a few bumps along the road (I mean QUITE a few) as we tried to bring this project to life, and it actually did not hit the air until this year. That is simply the way things go sometimes with independent filmmaking.
But even while it was on the back burner, we continued to make contacts, grow ideas and produce content.
My talk show “The Corner” is available on YouTube, and as of today, we have six short films streaming and one in post-production as well as another feature film that is currently being shopped around to streaming platforms.
I directed five of the aforementioned six short films and both feature films, and we have many more projects on the horizon.
Q.U.E.E.N. Productions has since been divided into my production company Sigma Square Media–which distributes short films and talk shows and handles casting for projects–and Tawania Grangent Entertainment, which is our primary production arm and distributes feature films. Both companies work jointly under the umbrella Grangent Entertainment Group (grangententgroup.com).
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Life for me “ain’t been no crystal stair”. Shout out to Langston Hughes. Seriously though, there have been quite a few challenges in trying to grow and gain support for a fledgling production company.
When you start out with independent projects, many times no one is getting paid. Most parties involved are doing things from the kindness of their hearts or for experience. Eventually though, everyone has to eat and pay bills, so you can’t blame some for falling off and migrating to paid projects as time goes by and no money is coming in. Also there is the challenge of finding locations willing to let you invade their space for hours at a time, finding equipment, feeding the cast and crew, and so on and so on…
But we have a number of people on our team who believed in what we were doing and have stayed the course with us from the very start.
It is starting to pay dividends.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I am an actor, voice actor, producer, director and casting director… or whatever is needed to make a production successful. Lately, I have focused most of my efforts on directing, and most recently I am known as the director of the feature film “Pseudo” (written by Briana Cole) which was recently premiered privately and set to be released on a soon-to-be-named streaming platform.
“Pseudo” is an amazing project, but quietly I am most proud of the short film “Patient 47” (also written by Briana Cole). I directed this project, but it was also my first time ever editing a project to include sound and laying down the music.
I feel like what sets me apart from others is the calming effect I bring to all situations while still being respected as a leader. I am very skilled at keeping a cool head while others around me are losing theirs and providing quiet yet effective leadership.
Contact Info:
- Email: herscheljrthevoice@gmail.com
- Website: grangententgroup.com
- Instagram: @herscheljrthevoice
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/HerschelG
- Twitter: @HJrTheVoice
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1sFe8PeWdKeKHE0MEwTqCg
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/user_details?userid=H4nUnhN9fq7CobhJMtAfbQ
Image Credits
Headshots: Dwayne Boyd
