Last Day – Deadline Information
The FINAL deadline for all entries is midnight on June 11th 2010, California time. Please contact us if you have any difficulties in uploading. We’re standing by for the last rush. Good luck to everyone.
Deadline Approaching
1 June is less than a week away so we thought we’d write a few final tips.
Your Final Chance Looms!
No pressure or anything! But the final deadline for the Silver Screenwriting Competition is nigh. Like, super NIGH. It’s in one week.*
Give that script one more once over and scan it briefly for typos, dense action lines, etc. As the Psychedelic Furs once said, you can never win or lose if you don’t run the race. So give it a shot and see how you do. There is tremendous validation in placing on any level and let’s not forget the real possibility of actually winning. Somebody is going to win. Might as well be you pocketing cash prizes, setting up your new MacBook Air and enjoying lunch in Hollywood with Shane Black (Lethal Weapon, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang).
Toward that end, today between 3pm and 4pm PST I will be available for brief phone chats to answer any questions you may have about your script, the competition or the prizes.
Email me HERE to set up an appointment for today, May 25th, between 3pm and 4pm Pacific.
*Without a Box members have until June 11th
Three Days Til Midnight!
- and the race is ON! Get those scripts in quick as you can, screenwriters – the Silver Screenwriting deadline is on June 1st! For those in the UK and the US, this is a long holiday weekend – just enough time to give that script one more run through and submit!
The grand prize winner will enjoy four fabulous days in Los Angeles, meet managers, get producer reads and lunch with Shane Black. Oh and get $3,000 in cash. Oh and a MacBook Air. Not a bad haul!
Use your timely wisely this weekend and qualify in time for a shot to win all the goodies listed above and MORE.
In other news, RIP Gary Coleman – “whatchu talkin’ bout Willis” goes down with the best of ‘em.
Enter Now or Forever Hold Your Piece
Well the Silver Screenwriting Competition closes its doors for 2010 in just over two and a half hours. Phew! The scripts have been pouring in and especially in the last few days and hours!
This is your last chance for 2010, to win a MacBook Air, lunch with Mr. Shane Black (LETHAL WEAPON, KISS KISS BANG BANG), $3,000 in cash, hotel and airfare for three days in Los Angeles and tons more.
So either get to entering that script NOW or start writing one for NEXT year!
Television Writing Resources
David Milch Interview
The WGA – Writers Guild of America West, presents a series of free articles by members on writing for episodic television. Check it out here.
Google Books has some great titles listed already. Try them here.
The Writer’s Store continues a fine series of articles with a good overview of how to break into television from Lee Goldburg. Click here to read it.
Crafty Screenwriting has a fantastic selection of professional tv writing faqs from the trenches. This is an extensive resource, available here.
The BBC in the UK has a well respected Writers Room which includes plenty of help on writing television, plus some BBC scripts to help you understand the format.
Television Writing Links
Competition Update
We’re into the last two weeks, and scripts continue to flow in from around the globe. We’ve seen some great concepts and wonderful writing already. We’re hoping for many more as we have production companies hungry to read. In fact, we’ve had so many requests, across such a broad range of genres and styles, that we’re looking to pitch both the winning scripts, and those which make the grade and meet production criteria.
A major trend this year has been multiple submissions. Many writers are sending two or more of their scripts. Each entry is a small, valuable investment in each project, and a great, low cost way of moving a script forwards towards that sale at the end of the rainbow.
We’re delighted with the range of scripts. The mixture of settings, styles, genres and approaches to the craft is fantastic, and it shows that it isn’t the dull, middle of the road studio fare which is inspiring you, it is eclectic global cinema and quirky Hollywood artists.
So, please keep ‘em coming. We can’t wait to read more…
Congratulations to Fuse Entertainment!
A renewed, two year, 7 figure deal from Fox has been announced in the trades!
Fuse Entertainment, in case you didn’t know, is headed up by Michel Bondeson and is the company behind Burn Notice (search the archive for my interview of Matt Nix in 2009).
How lucky are we, at The Silver Screenwriting Competition, that our top scripts will be judged by Kristen Campo, VP of Fuse – a company which has got some serious jingle jangle in the pocket when it comes to developing scripts!
Hey, maybe our winner will be on the Fuse slate in 2011!
Silver Screenwriting 2010 Latest
It’s Not About How You Play.
It’s About What You WIN.
With over $15,000 in prizes, The Silver Screenwriting Competition awards our Grand Prize winner with something even more awesome than a new MacBook Air, an all expense paid trip to Los Angeles, script reads by managers and producers, three grand and lunch with Shane Black.
More than all that?!
Yeah. That’s right.
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80% of success is showing up.
-Woody Allen
Add a good script to the mix and you’re golden.
-The Silver Screenwriting Competition
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There’s nothing like coming out to Hollywood and playing the part of a writer on the rise.
Hey, we figure meeting the right people might be just the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. So enter today and see what happens. You might be coming to Hollywood sometime very soon and having the time of your life and the chance of lifetime. No pressure.
We’ll also back you to the hilt by developing the winning scripts with The Script Department’s Julie Gray and a host of top flight studio readers. Winning is just the first step and we’ll see to it that all the professional and commercial help you’ll need is on tap.
See what last year’s winner, Kodjo Akeseh Tsakpo had to say about his amazing week in Los Angeles, meeting Steve Faber (WEDDING CRASHERS) Josh Zetumer (THE BOURNE IDENTITY) and Jeff Bushell (BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA) to name only a few!
The Silver Screenwriting Competition seeks and rewards new screenwriting talent and encourage writers to raise the bar by writing innovative, well-executed scripts that take risks and think outside of the box office. Did you enter competitions for show, or do you want a real Hollywood writing career? The Silver Screenwriting Competition is the only contest with ongoing script and professional development. With over $15,000 in prizes, the 2010 SSC is better than ever in its third year, and taking entries until June 1st, 2010. Enter today for a chance to win an all-expense paid trip to Los Angeles where you will meet 3 managers to discuss your career and Kirsten Campo, CE at Fuse Entertainment with a new seven figure deal at Fox, plus Bedrock, Back Lot and Bedford Falls.
Execs from Fuse Entertainment and Bedford Falls are on the SSC selection committee, and will select the top three winners from the Competition’s top ten finalists. The Second and Third Place winner each receive two manager and producer reads of their screenplay, plus prizes totalling $6,750 in value: screenplay coverage and notes from The Script Department, gift certificates to the Writer’s Store, and $1,000 and $750 cash, respectively. All winners are also invited to attend SSC’s awards party in Los Angeles, where they will be recognized among industry players.
GRAND PRIZE
- MacBook Air
- Round trip flight to Los Angeles
- Lunch with SHANE BLACK
- A one-on-one conversation via Skype with Chris Sparling, writer of red hot Sundance feature BURIED, starring Ryan Reynolds
- 3 nights accommodations
- A meeting with Kristen Campo, CE, Fuse Entertainment, plus Bedrock, Backlot and Bedford Falls. Fuse just signed a 7 figure deal with Fox.
- A day of meetings with 2 managers
- $3,000 in cash
- Pilar Alessandra’s amazing 12 Week Weekly Workbook
- A free 30 Minute phone consult with Karl Iglesias
- A copy of Save the Cat Goes to the Movies plus the STC software package
Who We Are
Julie Gray, the founder of The Script Department, Hollywood’s premier script coverage service also directs the Silver Screenwriting Competition. Julie consults privately with a wide variety of writers and teaches classes at Warner Bros., The Great American PitchFest, The Creative Screenwriting Expo and has taught at San Francisco University in Quito, Ecuador, Columbia College in Chicago, West England University in Bristol and The Oxford Union at Oxford University. Julie lives in Los Angeles, California; her book Just Entertain Me is slated for release by Michael Wiese Publishing in April, 2011.
Named one of MovieMaker Magazine’s top blogs for writers and filmmakers, Just Effing Entertain Me is the destination for screenwriters interested in learning the ins and outs of Hollywood. With classes and workshops offered year round, mini-competitions and a forum for writers, Just Effing Entertain Me is the place to connect with Julie Gray. Read More
The Script Department
Let our crack team of professional readers give you the feedback you need to get your script into the right hands. Hands down the most respected coverage service in Hollywood, The Script Department has helped writers from all over the world get meetings, representation, options and competition wins time after time. Read More
Shane Black
Shane Black is one of the iconic screenwriters, justly famous both for his style, his headline grabbing ability to sign big ticket deals and his lasting contribution to the craft through his work with the Screenwriting Expo.
He sold his first screenplay Lethal Weapon released in 1987 for $250,000 and was paid $125,000 as a co-writer of Lethal Weapon 2 released in 1989. Since then he made substantially more money as a screenwriter. He received $1.75 million for his screenplayThe Last Boy Scout released in 1991, and $1 million for Last Action Hero released in 1993. At the height of his career he was the highest paid screenwriter in the Hollywoodmovie industry, making $4 million for penning The Long Kiss Goodnight. Black was the writer and director for Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Kristen Campo – Fuse Entertainment
Fuse Entertainment, a full service creative management company with a production arm has clients like Josh Schwartz (THE OC, CHUCK, Gossip Girl), Matt Nix (BURN NOTICE), James Vanderbilt (Zodiac, Spiderman 4) and producer Dan Lin (Terminator 4, Sherlock Holmes). Kristen Campo, CE at Fuse will be judging the top ten scripts along with Julie Gray.
KARL IGLESIAS teaches at UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program and Writers University. He is the best-selling author of The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, and Writing for Emotional Impact. He also writes the regular column on the craft for Creative Screenwritingmagazine. As a script consultant passionate about great storytelling, he specializes in the reader’s emotional response to the written page. He is a STAR Speaker of the Screenwriting Expo. Karl will be doing a 30 minute phone consult with the lucky Grand Prize winner.
PILAR ALESSANDRA is the director of the popular writing program “On The Page.” A sought after teacher and lecturer, she’s traveled the world teaching screenwriting and is in high demand at major writing conferences and film festivals. As a consultant, she’s helped thousands of writers create, refine and sell their screenplays. Her students and clients have sold to Disney, DreamWorks, Warner Brothers and Sony and have won prestigious competitions such as the Austin Film Festival, Open Door Competition, Fade-In Competition and Nicholl Fellowship.
Pilar jump-started her career in film as a script reader for Amblin Entertainment. With the formation of DreamWorks, she became Senior Story Analyst and a reader liaison between the studio and Robert Zemeckis’s company, ImageMovers. Her expert script analysis was also sought out by The Robert Evans Company, Cineville Entertainment, Handprint Entertainment and Saturday Night Live Studios, and work at Interscope Communications led her to a position as Senior Story Analyst for Scott Kroopf’s production company Radar Pictures.
Pilar teaches screenwriting and story analysis at the UCLA Writers’ Program. In 2001 she started her own company, “On the Page,” and in 2004 opened the On the Page Writers Studio in Sherman Oaks, California. In the interest of expanding access to her teaching tools, Pilar has created a new instructional “On the Page” DVD. She also presents weekly “On the Page” podcasts with guest hosts from within the industry. The shows regularly appear in the iTunes Top 100 list of film and TV podcasts.
It’s all about relationships
Back in the day, I was a production company reader. I drove through LA traffic in the heat and in the rain, scampering back and forth, going up and down elevators to pick up scripts from companies in Century City, Santa Monica and West LA. I had to keep within a radius of where I lived, you see.
When an email went out, I was available to read. I carried home heavy boxes of scripts. I read three scripts a day, five days a week. When I was sick, I read. When another reader was sick, I read. I read the last minute scripts, the overnights and the special favors. The best part was that I honestly really enjoyed that period of my life because I enjoyed the executives and assistants I worked with and because I got to work at home and I learned SO much about screenwriting and the marketplace at the same time.
There was another upside that I didn’t even plan on though. And that is the relationships I built during that time. Day in and day out, you get to know people. So when I tracked down some of the people I used to work for and asked if they’d be willing to look at the top three scripts from The Silver Screenwriting Competition, I was greeted with a pleasant and hearty YES, every time.
So it came to be that Bedrock Studios (headed up by Carey Granat, formerly of Walden Media), Back Lot Pictures (Eternal Sunshine, Sunshine Cleaning) and Bedford Falls (The Last Samurai, Blood Diamond) have all agreed to read the top three scripts in this year’s competition. Imagine how thrilled I was!
Now THAT’S paying it forward. Old school.



