Best 5 Minutes

If you're not Canadian, so can't take advantage of Bravo!FACT, you might check out CircaLit's latest competition. Best script gets shot by a director. So far as I can tell, entries are free.

Brevity is the Soul of Wit

If you're a student in the UK, the National Student Film Association, would like you to submit your short film script (up to 5 pages) to the National Student Screenwriting Competition. The competition is free. Deadline is the 7th November 2010.

I've juried short films, and the one thing they had in common is they were all too long. Five pages is just about perfect. Who doesn't have five minutes to watch a short?

A Real Screenwriting Competition Believer

One Friend of the Blog is a strong believer in screenplay competitions, has participated in many and won / placed / shown repeatedly. As you know, I don't believe in screenplay competitions, except for the network fellowships and the Nicholls. So I asked him what he gets out of them.

Screenplay competitions help me in four ways.

1) They impose a motivational deadline on my writing. And if I miss a deadline, no producer's gonna fire me and/or come after me because I've been found in breach of contract.

2) If I place or win, they provide validation. Some argue it's validation of a lesser kind than finding a producer willing to purchase your work or hire you on assignment. I'm not entirely convinced that's true. I think we can all agree that any low-level producer/creative exec with a modicum of business sense and a strong desire to climb up the Hollywood ladder will shy away from material that isn't likely to be easily marketable or won't get teenagers to giddily hand out their parents hard-earned money over two or three weekends. If you've been to the movies lately, you'll know that financial success and quality don't correlate. So, kudos to the screenplay contests that purposely reward financially doomed projects.

3) I can get notes on my work at a discounted rate. Granted, since you do not control who reads or judges your work, sometimes you receive inane notes from readers who are clearly less experienced than you are. Oftentimes though, well-respected screenplay contests do provide useful feedback notes. I would even argue that there's still more value in receiving notes from newbie readers than the classic "not for us at this time" (a.k.a. the title of my newborn blog) you get from producers who say they read your work. At least ridiculous notes you can laugh at and choose to ignore. A generic PASS letter from an established producer will only leave you confused and wondering.

4) If, like me, you're still at a stage of your career where your best marketing tool remains the (infamous?) query letter, a long list of placement and wins provides for a dense, awe-inspiring paragraph in the middle of your one-pager.

I'm curious to hear why you're down on contests in general EXCEPT the Nicholls. If you've read the winners of the Nicholl Fellowships, you know that they're often heavy dramas, war movies, period pieces, westerns - in other words - material that is highly unlikely to be produced. I got more requests for my work by making the quarter-finals of the Nicholl Fellowships than all my other win and placements COMBINED, but the vast majority of those requests came from managers and agents who aren't established yet. My impression is that most of them haven't understood yet that the reason why you did well in the competition is NOT because you've written the most marketable script ever. So why aren't you also down on the Nicholls, the Holy Grail of screenwriting competitions we all aspire to win, but a contest that does not even provide feedback? And yes, I know of a few notable exceptions (Allison Anders, Ehren Kruger...) who managed a post-Nicholl Fellowships career.

As you say, making the quarter-finals of the Nicholls got you real attention. Imagine what winning it gets you?

There are a slew of screenplay competitions out there. I can't help thinking that most of them are money farms for their owners. Say it costs fifty bucks to enter. I can probably get a recent college student to give notes for thirty bucks. Or free, if I can find one to intern. Hey, I just made twenty bucks? Now all I have to do is get a couple thousand people to submit, and I've got $40,000. Pay out $7500 in prizes, and I've made my nut for the next six months, with almost no effort except putting up a website and sending out some publicity.

That's why there are so many screenplay competitions, I feel. And if there are 2000 entrants, how many quarter-finalists are there? How many finalists?

Ooh, what if I can get 10,000 entrants? I've made over $350,000! Can anyone out there tell me how many entrants these screenwriting competitions get, or what percentage of their fees go to awards?

(Why do I keep running down competitions! I should open one! Ah, well, too late now.)

How does an agent know that a screenplay that gets into the finals is a truly commercial script with a great hook? As opposed to a "good" script, whatever that means?

The problem with screenplay competitions is that the economics means that the people evaluating your scripts are probably kids right out of Harvard or USC, who think they know everything, and don't. Industry veterans don't read scripts for Scriptapalooza, so far as I know; unless, like this notorious competition reader, they don't have to do notes, and they can knock off 75 scripts in 3 hours.

In the real world, pros read scripts because they are looking to make money from selling them (agents) or producing them (producers). And if they like something, they option it. That's the real prize. Sending a query email to an agent or producer is free, and if they like your hook, they will read your script for free too.

I take your point about cheap critiques. The problem is, you get what you pay for. You're getting a critique from someone who just started reading scripts and has no idea what gets a movie made except what she sees in the theaters. They'll tell you something they read in Syd Field, or possibly even Alex Epstein. But do they know what they're talking about?

You'll get far, far better feedback by telling your story out loud to someone, anyone, off the top of your head. If they stick with you to the end, you've made the quarter finals. If they say they would totally pay money to see that on a screen, you're in the finals.

The Nicholls is different because it's run by the Academy and people take it seriously. I bet the readers are professionals. The network fellowships, Sundance, etc., are different because you don't get a prize, you get a job, and the people reading you are professionals.

UPDATE: As Tommy points out in the comments, there are various goodies that Telefilm Canada hands out that are based on your screenwriting, and obviously those are worth competing for -- e.g. the currently defunct Writers First and Feature It! programs, the CFC, Screenwriter's Bootcamp, NSI and so forth. There's a world of difference between culture grants -- where a taxpayer-funded cultural agency already has a big basket of goodies and they hire professionals to decide whom to hand them to, and there is no fee to enter -- versus screenwriting competitions, where all the money is coming from the fees, and the ultimate objective for the competition is either profit or brand publicity.

London Screenwriting Competition

The London Screenwriters’ Festival have teamed up with Circalit to offer screenwriters a chance to get representation. Screenwriters are encouraged to enter the free competition at www.circalit.com. The winning writer will meet with a top London agent, get £100 and free tickets to the London Screenwriters’ Festival! The competition will be judged by the executive team at the London Screenwriters’ Festival and is free to enter. The deadline for submissions is October 15th.

Normally I don't promote screenwriting competitions, because they're expensive lotteries. But at least this one is a free lottery.

Does anyone know anything about Circalit?

Three Pages

There's a bit of whinging at The Single Screenwriter and Done Deal about a contest reader's admission that she "read" 75 scripts in 3 hours for a contest:

Last night I managed to get through 75 scripts in about 3 hours. How are you so speedy and brilliant, you might ask? Easy, the 10 page rule. It’s true. All those stories about “make sure you grab ‘em in the first 10 pages” are absolutely true.

Honestly, I can tell in 2-3 pages if you are a writer. Then I give you 10 pages to show if you are a GOOD writer. If you’ve kept me going that far, then I’ll read further to see how you develop your plot. If you understand how to construct a midpoint, battle scene, and satisfying ending. And if your voice continues throughout, or if it tuckered out when the heavy lifting came into play.

Various commenters think that's just terrible. Readers should read every last word of the script they slaved over! How dare she!

I disagree. I have read literally thousands of scripts. Most are horrible crap. If the first three pages are horrible crap, I have found, the rest of the script never gets good. Sometimes it finds its way up to mediocre, but it never gets good; and usually it just goes downhill from there. I have rarely read a script that was better than its first ten pages. Or first three pages.

If I am reading a script in order to give notes, I will read every last word, of course. And think about it. And try to find the vision that inspired the writer to write it.

But if I am reading a stack of scripts to separate the wheat from the chaff, then the writer has got two or three pages to convince me to read the rest of the script. I don't need a teaser, I don't need a whammy. I don't even need an inciting incident. I need a gripping three pages, whatever that is. They can be subtly gripping. It can be a guy getting out of bed, if, somehow, the way the guy gets out of bed is truly revelatory. If the writer can't grab me in three pages, I'd be wasting my time to read the rest of it, because I guarantee you the writer won't rock my world in the next ten, or twenty, or fifty, or one hundred pages.

Apparently everyone jumped on this poor reader for being honest. Grow up, guys. This is how it is. If you were in the position of reading 75 scripts for a contest, this is what you'd do, too.

Ditto query letters, by the way. When I read query letters as part of my development job, I gave the average letter about 5 seconds. Literally. 5 seconds. I gave the good letters much, much longer than that. But the bad ones? Round file.

I do think that most online screenplay contests are very poor value for your money. But not because the readers don't read the whole script. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

In general, if you find you are moaning a lot about how people in the industry are not being very nurturing -- how they will not, for example, read your effing script -- you may need to re-examine your attitude. Showbiz does things the showbiz way for good reasons. And if you can't stand the heat, maybe a career in cooking is not for you?

UPDATE: I've been trying to come up with the perfect analogy. Here's the best one I've got. You know the first episode of a season of AMERICAN IDOL? The one where they have all the people who are horrible, horrible singers? How long does it take you to decide someone can't sing worth a damn? Does it even take ten seconds? Okay, now that you've heard the first ten seconds, would you willingly listen to the rest of the recording, just to respect all the effort they've put in?

Well, there you go.

Odd Little Free Film Festival

I rarely promote script competitions because I think most of them are scams -- they're making money off the submission fees. This one doesn't have submission fees and it's a good cause.

The Donate Life Film Festival has prizes for best 2-20 short film (scripted or doc) and for best feature screenplay "on saving lives through organ and tissue donation."

You can email your screenplay to Chris Sariego; feel free to call him at (213) 356 5242. The deadline is June 12. For more info, check out their site.

Quarter Finals?

I was brained to death on Absolute Write Water Cooler (community of writers) that it was stupid to include in my query that my script made Quarter Finals in a screenwriting competition, that the soft sell makes me look desperate.. I was told by one of your recommended colleague who does evaluations that it's a good idea to include QF in my query.

Personally, I wouldn't be much impressed by a script making it to the Quarter Finals of a competition. There are a lot of Quarter Finalists.

In general, I'm highly suspicious of most screenwriting competitions. I suspect they exist largely as a source of revenue to whoever's running them. I think most of them are essentially scams, whether they're intended so or not.

I also don't believe that screenwriting competitions select the scripts most likely to result in a movie, or even a good movie. I think a producer judges a script differently from a competition judge.

I know that some agents claim they're more likely to look at a query if someone's won a competition. And if you're at an agency, or a production company, please chip in: would some kind of credential from a competition help get you to read a script?

Or is it all about the hook?

Sprint for your Short

[QUEBEC] SODEC is doing their COURS ECRIRE TON COURT program again, soliciting the best short film scripts in both English and French from emerging but professional screenwriters between 18 and 35. There are two prizes for best script, and there's even a $1000 CBC prize for best English script. Check it out.

Applicants must:

- be between the ages of 18 and 35 (i.e., younger than 36 as of the submission deadline on August 17, 2009)
- be pursuing a professional writing career (i.e., high school, college and university undergraduate students are not eligible)
- be a resident of Quebec for at least two years
- be available between September 7 and October 19, 2009
- submit all the required entry material to SODEC
- never have been selected as a finalist in a previous edition of the contest.

Note also that the next deadline for the Young Creators program is in November. (PDF.)

My Notes from the Ron Moore Master Class at Banff

While I was at the Banff Worldwide Television Festival, I got to attend a "Master Class" given by Ronald D. Moore, developer and showrunner of BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. I'll be running my interview with him on Wednesday, but you also might like my notes from the master class. Sean Davidson, editor of PLAYBACK magazine, asked a whole lot of clever and fascinating questions, and then he turned it over to the audience for more questions.

SEAN DAVIDSON: You announced around Season Three that you were going to wrap up BATTLESTAR at the end of Season Four. And you were at the height of your popularity. What was the thinking?

RON MOORE: Simply, the story was coming to an end. The series had a built in premise. Eventually they would find home or not. Right from the outset there would come a point where the audience would stop believing in the idea that they were going to find a planet to live on, whether it was Earth or not, and they would stop believing that the cylons might kill them every week. After a point it becomes, yeah well they’re never gonna get there. It's GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. I didn't want to get to that point.

In the third season already I started feeling that we’re approaching the third act. By the end of the third season we'd identified four of the five secret Cylons. We're in the third act, time to wrap it up, but do it on our own terms.

And it was nice to go out on our own terms, at the height of our poplarit. To walk away and feel we did a really good show.

SD: The Sci Fi Channel must have wondered if you couldn't do more seasons.

RM: They were hesitant. They wanted to be sure it was those reasons and not other reasons that we were ending the show. They hemmed and hawed. But they had become fans of the show too. They wanted to see what the end was going to be too.

SD: Would this show have worked differently if you had taken it through the syndication market as was done with the Star Trek franchise? Could this have worked in syndication or on a conventional network?

RM: Well, syndicators hate serialization. That would have been a major bugaboo. Networks don’t much like it either. And on a cable channel, we could go much further in content, in terms of how graphic, how dark, how challenging in terms of character and story and ambiguities. Sci Fi was creatively the best place for it. We would have had more money on a network, but we were happy to trade money for the freedom we had.

SD: It seems SF sometimes seems to be a harder sell, or is treated more roughly on a conventional network. E.g. DOLLHOUSE -- everybody's wondering, why would Joss even go back to Fox.

RM: They don’t like it. Networks and studios don't like SF. It's odd, they're all familiar with it. The top films of all times have been SF films. Few were the meetings where you didn’t have the common language, the touchstones to references. But they’re afraid the core demographic is too small, that the show doesn’t break out. There hasn’t been a sf show that’s been a hit, unless you define LOST as SF. And that’s a debate. It’s a mystery, a thriller. But there hasn't been a prime time space opera like BATTLESTAR. Even the original STAR TREK was a ratings failure in its day. So they do have a reason to argue the way they argue. But it also becomes groupthink where they don’t want to try it. They develop it, "Oh, let's commission a pilot," all the way up to the point where they have to greenlight it, and then they don't.

SD: So you had a freer reign at Sci Fi?
RM: I didn’t have the alternative experience to compare with, and it depends who your network executives are. If your show is a success, you can do what you want.

The crucial fights with BATTLESTAR happened before we were on the air. It was all thrashed out in year one. Then the show was lauded and praised, and we didn’t have the same knock-down drag-out fights.

SD: What were some of those--

RM: How graphic the show was, how dark, how depressing the show was going to be.

Oddly I didn’t have any fights about politics or religion in the show. There were no arguments about suicide bombers, or the abortion show. There were no creative arguments about thematic or substantive themes. It was all, this show is so dark and depressing no one is ever going to watch it. This character is so evil we won't watch him. Those were the fights we had. And with those fights, you can whittle and compromise. What if I cut two frames,
what if I add a subplot to appease you and then cut it in the editing room? Whereas we couldn’t cut the politics and religion without being in a completely different arena... but we never had those arguments.

SD: Did you pretty much keep to the direction you originally planned?

RM. We played it pretty loose. I always knew where I wanted to end or w what the midpoint clifffhanger was. I could think ten episodes ahead. For instance I knew and I set up in the show bible that at the end of Season One, I wanted Adama to put Laura Roslin in jail, and we did. But the path I had mapped out wasn't the one we took. We realized, oh, this is a better way to get there, but we’re going to the same place.

As far as the day to day with the actors, I told them, I want to make this work with you. I want you to improvise lines, do what comes to you,
but we have to have one take as scripted. I gotta have the protection. Bbut that said I encouraged them and the directors to play with the material. Because there’s a difference between writing a line and saying a line. There are certain things that are more organic and real and you can’t script that, but there are also certain lines that have to be said a certain way, and it’s my job as showrunner to know the difference.

Very often the characters went through changes. We were sitting in the room and saying, how many times can Baltar talk to Head Six. You continually find ways to subvert the audience’s expectations. The audience is very familiar with TV, they know the conventions, the styles of story. You can tune into the first ten minutes of a show and know what the last ten minutes are going to be. I try to destroy that. You've seen this story, and you know our character is going to turn right, but no, he turns left. Any time you can pull that off you've surprised the audience. And storytelling is about finding surprises.

SD: In the podcasts you really pulled back the curtain, but on "Scar," you actually let us listen to an entire story breaking session. Was it anything particular about that episode?

RM: It could have been any episode. I like behind the scenes kind a stuff. I was a big fan of the original STAR TREK series. I was always fascinated by that. How do they do that, what changed in the story. I wanted to give that back to the audience.

On of the best parts of the job is sitting in the room with writers, arguing and laughing. The writer's room is the lifeblood of the series, where the fundamental work of creating the story is done.

SD: "And they have a plan..." Did you feel you painted yourself into a corner with that line in the precap?

RM; David Eick painted me into a corner. When we were coming up with the precap to define the large mythos of the show, we were coming up with succinct pieces of information the audience needed to know, and David said, "and it ends with, 'and they have a plan.'" "What does that mean?" "I don't know, but it's great!" And so I got talked into leaving it in. And it became one of the hallmarks of the show, the Cylons have a plan. And I kept getting pestered with it for the rest of the show. "What's the plan?"

It will all be revealed in the DVD movie. And if you don’t like it it’s cause you’re not paying enough attention. (Laughter.)

SD: Your fan outreach has always been a big part of your work. Why is that important to you?

RM: I just like doing it. I was a fan so I can identify with what it was wanting to get information, to pick their brains.

There’s times I don’t want to do the podcast that week. I'm wondering, why did I agree to do this. But the podcasts were always the best and last piece of the production process for me. They'd be the last time I'd watch the episode. I never go back and rewatch a whole episode after that. So they're my final thoughts, and become part of my process.

SD: Could you tell us a little about CAPRICA, the prequel to BATTLESTAR?

RM: We're working on the scripts right now. And we're already wildly over budget. We're not even shooting and we’re over pattern. We start shooting in mid July.

David and I had talked a couple of times in very casual conversations, that if we did a spinoff, we didn’t want to do another war piece. We didn’t want to do the first Cylon war. So let's do it as a period piece. Let's do the creation of the Cylons. It's in the past, they’re not doomed for quite a while, but it's a society that is flying apart of the seams. They've got this breakthrough in AI ... how did that lead to the events we saw in Galactica?

The endpoint doesn’t bother me. Just because you know the Nazis lost World War II doesn't mean you can't watch a movie about it. You have to become invested in the stories of the characters.

SD: When the show was set on New Caprica, you seemed to be able to draw material from Iraq, which clearly wasn't envisioned at the beginning of the show.

RM. The intention from the get-go was to make the series about us, what we’re going through as a culture. Science fiction at its best is a prism through which to view society. And we kept finding that their situation had interesting paralles into our situation. We weren’t going to rip from the headlines, but the situation came up -- here's a military-civilian disconnect, a society at war, where democratic principles are tested and broken in that crucible.

But it wasn't about making a point about how society. It was undamentally about finding out how our chars would react in that situation. We weren't trying to give an answer about what we as a society should or sholdn't do. We were asking, what would Starbuck do? What would Baltar do?

Sci Fi was remarkable. They didn’t give us any heartache. When I wrote the suicide bombers, the writing staff said, "You're going to have quite an argument," and I was girding myself for one, but they didn’t even question it. We had endless conversations about Tigh's eye. Can he have his eye back eventually? Do we really want to see him with an eyepatch for the rest of the show? How long are they going to be on their new caprica thing, can they get back to space. We never even discussed the suicide bombers.

Social commentary is something that has got lost along the way. A lot of filmed sci fi has been escapist for tits own sake. And I love the original STAR WARS, but it can't all be that. We have to connect with these people.

SD: What were some of your other sci fi touchstones?

RM: I grew up in the late seventies, so BLADE RUNNER. Also older sci fi, FORBIDDEN PLANET. I was a STAR TREK fan. I lived and breathed it as a child.

The new movie is a great ride. And the franchise needed a reboot. I've been saying that for years. It has had so many series. The continuity has become this vast complicated dense web that's an impediment to new viewers. You’d sit in the rooms on STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE, and you'd pitch a story, and then you'd have to stop and wonder, “does this fit in with the continuty, or does it conflict with something about the Romulans? It was sucking all the freshness out of, whether this fits in this complicated structure. I was saying for a long time, we need to call in an air strike.

SD: How were the webisodes brought into the story. Were the stories organically broken or broken separately?

RM: The idea to do them came from the network and the studio. No one had really been doing webisodes. THE OFFICE was starting to do little pieces of characters talking to camera, and the network and studio came to us with the idea to do webisodes. And we said, uh, okay. Nobody knew how to do this stuff. There were complicated technical questions. How do you budget it? How do you fit it into the shooting schedule. How do you coordinate it with the main unit? Which cast will participate. And this was before the WGA strike, so how much do you pay the writers.

We did the actual breaking of the story before third season premiere. Let’s just do a story between the two seasons -- backstories of some of these characters we're going to see, the suicide bomber, etc. We did the second group of webisodes a couple of years later. Let’s set up Gaeta for the mutiny arc.

It’s a strange format. I don’t like the runtime on it. I don't think it's a format that’s going to last. People are doing short webisodes right now because of technical limitations. I could be wrong. I just don't think ten years from now people will still be doing short webisodes.

(Somewhere around here, Sean Davidson opened the conversation up to questions from the floor.)

Q. How much did the original series inform the story? What was the value of taking a pre-existing series in your creative process?

RM: They came to me and said, we have this show in our library, we're looking for a new take. And Istarted thinking what I could do with it. I hadn’t seen it in 20 years. I found the premise very interesting and dark and challenging. An apocalyptic attack. Survivors who escape and are pursued --that’s a dark and intriguing concept.

But they were doing that on ABC in 1978. So the first thing they do
is they go to the casino planet. So they were trying to square a certain circle. They wanted to be escapist and fun and wacky and dark. I had the luxury to dispense with the wacky. I could discard everything I didn’t think work and make it more real, more truthful.

Q. How heavily are you involved in the merchandising?

RM: Not at all. I see the comic books and novels ahead of time, and I have people read them. But usually the time I find out about merchandise is when someone asks me to sign something.

Q. How did you decide who the four Cylons would be?

RM: We were breaking the Season Three finale, and the trial of Baltar didn't seem to be enough for a finale. I said I wish we had something, I don't know, like four characters start heading off and they all end up in a room and they go oh my god we’re Cylons. And we talked about that for a bit, and then we went through the list. It got winnowed down pretty fast. I didn't want it to be Adam and Laura because it was important they were human. Tigh worked because he was the most virulent Cylon-hater -- that's kind of delicious. Tyrol because he's the everyman, he's blue collar. Anders we didn't know much about, but he'd been in two resistance movements, and he's linked with Kara who has a destiny. And we came to Tory because she was a blank slate, and that would give us more freedom later.

And then I'd always wanted to do an episode of something with "All Along the Watchtower." And while we were talking about this episode someone said, maybe they hear music, and I said, "yes, and it's All Along the Watchtower, let's get the rights to that," and everyone laughed, and I said, "No really, let's get the rights to that." "But that's so random!” they said, and I said, yes, the lyrics are so cryptic we can read whatever we want into it.

Q. When you're putting together a writing room, what are you looking for. Is it a range of background? Do you want a wild card, or like minded people?

RM: The only thing I've been successful doing is having a mix of experienced hands and new hands. Everything else is theoretical. Ideally you'd have the character person, the dialogue person. But in reality it's a scramble for talent. You've been talking with someone about working together, and then you call, and they just signed to do a pilot. It’s really a crap shoot. There's no ideal balance. There's just who's terrible, and who's good.

[Note: if you listen to the podcasts, you'll be surprised how many of the BATTLESTAR writing room has served in the military, particularly the Navy and Air Force.]


Hope you enjoyed this transcription of the Master Class. My own interview with Ron Moore is coming up in this blog soon.

Nicholls

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is now accepting entries for the 2009 Don and Gee Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. As many as five $30,000 fellowships will be awarded through the program later this year.

Application forms may be downloaded from the Academy’s Web site and mailed with the other required materials, or they may be completed and submitted online. Rules and details are available at http://www.oscars.org/nicholl.

The Nicholl Fellowships competition is open to any individual who has not earned more than $5,000 from the sale or option of a screenplay or teleplay, or received a fellowship or prize of more than $5,000 that includes a “first look” clause, an option, or any other quid pro quo involving the writer’s work. To enter, writers must submit a completed application form, one copy of their original screenplay in English, and an entry fee of US$30. Entries must be postmarked or submitted online no later than May 1, 2009.

Fellowships are awarded with the understanding that the recipients will each complete a feature-length screenplay during the fellowship year. The Academy acquires no rights to the works of Nicholl fellows and does not involve itself commercially in any way with their completed scripts.

Last year’s competition drew more than 5,000 entries. Since the program’s inception in 1985, 108 fellowships have been awarded.

Unlike online competitions like Scriptapalooza (which I suspect are for-profit), the Nicholls is a venerable competition run by the Academy. Winning the Nicholls really means something. Note the 1000-1 odds.

Note however, that I still don't take screenwriting competitions seriously, because they're irrelevant. If you have a great hook and a decent screenplay, and you make a reasonable effort to get it out there, you'll get an agent and your agent will sell your script for more money than you will ever get from a competition. And competitions don't necessarily pick the script most likely to get made into a movie. They pick the "best script," whatever the hell that means.

Another Doubtful Contest

Q. This contest makes some enticing promises, but I'm not sure it's worth a $40 ENTRY FEE ...

There are very few contests I'd consider legit. The Nicholls, the ABC Fellowship ... competitions sponsored by major showbiz organizations (AMPTP, DGA, WGA), or networks, or studios. Agents take the winners seriously. The fellowships practically set you up with a career.

The rest are, I feel, junk. The economics of script competitions are just too good for the people organizing them. With a $40 entry fees and awards in the low thousands, how many entries do you need to break even? How much does it cost to get someone to skim a script and decide it's not going on the short list? I think a lot of people are organizing script competitions to make money.

I also find script competitions suspicious in general because what's the point? There already is a script competition. It's called "getting your movie made." There are no entry fees to this competition, and the prize is, you get your movie made. (That should mean at least $100,000 in cash and offers to write other stuff, not to mention you get your movie made.) Producers deciding whether to invest two years in getting your movie made are making a hard, honest judgment. Juries are deciding, in the abstract, which are the "best" or "best-written" scripts. That's not an honest judgment.

Competitions have all these "quarterfinals" and "semi-finals" so the max number of competitors have something to put on their resumes. It's like getting three out of four strawberries on a one-armed bandit. It gets your hopes up, but it doesn't get you where you want to be.

I suppose getting an award at a competition gives your script a bit of an advantage if it's something that's hard to describe in a few words. An agent might be more willing to read your script if it's a finalist somewhere. But how many winning scripts would have got picked up anyway, without winning a contest?

But I'd rather you focus your energies on coming up with great hooks. Any agent, and any good producer, will read a script with a great hook, for free.

Why I Don't Like Screenwriting Competitions

I recently got an email from someone wanting me to interview the founder of a screenwriting competition.

I don't like screenwriting competitions. The economics are akin to that of a lottery: many entries pay for a few prizes.

Moreover, I'm not at all clear that they select the most viable screenplays. The screenplays are being judged on some abstract "goodness" criterion. The winning script is probably well written, but that's not what gets a movie made. What gets a movie made is a producer's "Do I love this so much I'm willing to spend a couple years of my life trying to get this sucker made?" (Or a director, or a star.)

I feel there's only one real kind of screenplay competition, and that's the one every agent and producer runs. The prize is a produced picture. The application fee is nothing. Why pay $45 to submit to a competition when you can email a query letter for free?

There is a distinction between independent screenplay competitions and fellowship programs run by the studios. The fellowship programs, if you can get into them, are a real way into the movie biz. But then you're not winning a cash prize. You're winning a job, a mentor, and a raft of valuable connections. The goal is different, too. Screenplay competitions, I believe, are in business to make a profit for their owners. Fellowships are created by studios and networks in order to bring in fresh viewpoints -- usually minority ones. They're a way of giving back to the community.

There are also one or two screenpay contests that might be worthwhile if you have a slightly arcane script that's hard to pitch but brilliantly written. The Nicholl, for example. The Sundance Screenwriters Lab. But they're funded and run by major legit institutions. The Nicholl, for example, is run by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Not by, say, Joey Nicholl.

I know real writers who've broken in via fellowships, and the winner of the Nicholl tends to get a great agent and a lot of buzz. But I've never met any who made it because of an independent screenplay competition. (I'm not saying that no one who's won a competition has ever made it. The pool of successful writers must overlap at least a little with the pool of successful competition winners, if only because of the sheer numbers involved.)

Save your money. Send query letters to agents. Get a movie made.

Eyes on the prize, baby.

CONTESTS 'N' FELLOWSHIPS

My helpful assistant Caroline has dug up the following contests and fellowships associated with legit organizations. There is also a helpful list at Screenwriter Magazine.

American Zoetrope (Francis Coppola)

Warner Bros. Drama Writers Workshop
Warner Bros. Comedy Writers Workshop
4000 Warner Boulevard
Bldg. 136, Suite 236
Burbank CA 91522
(818) 954-7906

Project Greenlight. And your script gets produced on TV, too.

Slamdance, the "anti-Sundance" festival.

Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences: The Nicholl Fellowships
Academy Foundation
Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting
1313 N. Vine Street
Hollywood, CA 90028-8107

The Chesterfield Film Company
Writer's Film Project
1158 26th Street, PMB 544
Santa Monica, CA 90403
(213) 683-3977

Sundance Institute
225 Santa Monica Blvd., 8th Floor
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 394-4662

Fox Searchlight
Fox Searchlab Submissions
Attn: Susan O' Leary
10201 W. Pico Blvd.
Building 667, Ste. #5
Los Angeles, CA 90035
310-369-5423

Sundance Institute
Feature Film Program/Sloan Fellowship
8857 W. Olympic Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211

IFP/LA Writing Fellowships

ABC / Disney New Talent Writing Fellowship. On the lookout for minorities and women. Likewise, NBC's Diversity Initiative for Writers. And the WGA Writer's Training Program. You have to be a minority, gay, or over 40 to qualify. Some may question just how oppressed gay writers are in Hollywood, but your mileage may vary.

UPDATE: Here's another:

Nickelodeon Fellowship Program (212) 258-7532.

I'm less sure about these:

The Hollywood Film Festival Awards
Not a big film festival, really, but at least it's in town.

Scr(i)pt Magazine’s open door contest, sponsored by Miramax
5638 Sweet Air Road
Baldwin, MD 21013
410-592-3466

Final Draft's Big Break
FINAL DRAFT, INC.
16000 Venture Blvd., Suite 800
Encino, CA 91436
818-995-8995

If anyone's had good experiences with any of these or other ones, please let me know.

THE REAL DEAL, FOR EXAMPLE

Here, for example, is a writing contest worth submitting for, the ABC/Disney Writing Fellowship. This sort of thing will get you a small amount of money, but much more importantly, get you in the door.

Courtesy of author and screenwriter Lawrence Ross, the inglewood rude boy.

I'M STILL NOT CONVINCED IT'S NOT A SCAM

I just got my latest spam from Scriptapalooza. I'm suspicious of all writing competitions. It's just too easy to charge $50 a screenplay, get 1000 entries, give a $10,000 award, and walk away with $40,000.

Here's their latest spam, and what I think of it:

===============================
7th Annual Scriptapalooza Screenplay Competition
===============================
http://www.scriptapalooza.com

The Writers Guild of America, west
supports Scriptapalooza.

No mention of Scriptapalooza anywhere on the WGA website. If this were an official position -- rather than a nice blurb from an official -- it should be on the site.

With the WGAwest, Write Brothers and Robert McKee all strongly supporting Scriptapalooza, this is the competition to enter.

The Write Brothers are the guys who make Movie Magic Screenwriter, i.e. they are in the business of selling screenwriting software. Anything that encourages people to write screenplays is a Good Thing, as far as they're concerned. I've got nothing against them, mind, they're doing their job. But their endorsement is not disinterested.

[snip]
First place prize is $10,000

See math above.

All thirteen winners will be considered by Scriptapalooza's outstanding participants.

Considered? Considered??? Hahahahahahahahah. What the hell does "considered" mean?

2004 Entrant 3rd Place Winner SOLD, "Redumption (AKA How to Win Back Your High
School Sweetheart)" was discovered during the judging process by Colin O'Reilly and
picked up by Level 1 Entertainment for low against mid-six figures.

Note that this does not say that the competition had anything to do with the sale. It says that it was discovered (possibly because the writer sent query letters to every production company in town, or had an agent) during the time the judging was going on. The Hollywood Reporter's article that I read on the sale said nothing about Scriptapalooza.

Scriptapalooza FACTS:

We are in our 7th year as a screenwriting competition
All the judging is done by 60 production companies
Entertainment Weekly Magazine calls us 'One of the Best'

Well, that's something, at least. Of course, Entertainment Weekly is not a trade paper, it's a supermarket slick.

We promote the top 13 winners for a full year

On their website?

The top 30 winners get software from Write Brothers

I'd be wayyyy more impressed if the software were Final Draft, which is more the industry standard as far as I know. But bear in mind also, the software costs the Movie Magic people about $15 a box -- they just charge hundreds of dollars for it. So a few dozen promotional copies is no big deal.

Finalists, Semifinalists and quarterfinalists get requested consistently

There are any number of development execs at small production companies who need to justify their paychecks. Of course they request the scripts. But you could send them query letters yourself. In fact for the price of entry to the contest, you could send every single development exec in town a personal letter. Or you could send them an email for free.

The Grand prize is $10,000
We post all the requested scripts by companies on website
We get calls from companies looking for material

"Despite it's [sic] frivolous name, Scriptapalooza is the best screenwriting competition I know."
- Robert McKee

Uhhhh ... what about the Nicholl Fellowship, which is run by the Academy? Project Greenlight (also, incidentally, sponsored by the Write Brothers)? Chesterfield?

On the other hand, why would Robert McKee know what the best screenwriting competition is? He gives good seminars, and he's got a lovely book, but he's not a buyer. Or, for that matter, a screenwriter.

Actually, the best screenwriting competition in the world is the WGA Awards... but your movie needs to get made first.

I think screenwriting competitions (with the exception of the three above, and anything run by a studio or network) are a BIG FAT WASTE OF MONEY AND TIME. If you have a good hook, query letters will get your script read, and if the script delivers the goods, it'll get optioned or bought. If not, nothing will.

If winning one of these other competitions has helped you, let me know, and I'll probably retract the above. [UPDATE: Three months later, no one has.]

Huh... now maybe will they take me off their spam list?