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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.

What Happens if You Win?

If your script does well in a competition this season, first of all, congratulations. That means your script was more original and better executed than the majority of other scripts in the same competition. This puts you in the top percentages. And that’s something to be very proud of. And maybe you even meet Shane Black and fly out to Hollywood for some meetings.

But what happens next? Is your phone going to start to ring? And if it does – what can you expect? Does this mean success is knocking at your door? It might. But proceed with caution.

Two things to think about:

One: Please be measured and thoughtful in your response to those who may contact you asking to see the script. Don’t freak out with joy and promise them exclusive rights to your script, all future scripts or your first born child. Don’t make a $1 option agreement with the first person who calls. Don’t be overly flattered; be cool and do a little research. Look up the person on IMDB Pro. What are his or her credits and professional credentials? Where is their office located? This may be a new company which has no credits, but click on the names of the principals; at a different company they probably do have credits of some kind. Or maybe this is a manager or producer who is starting off and is hungry and ambitious. That can work very much in your favor. But take a moment and look people up.

Two: You do have an arsenal, right? More than the one or two scripts you entered this year? Are you writing within the same genre? I hope so. You want to establish yourself as an expert in one genre. Many writers feel that they should write in many genres to prove that they have flexible chops. Don’t do this. It won’t prove anything, it just makes you less marketable. Line up your arsenal and have a look. Do you have another sample ready to send out if requested? Is it in great shape? Now is the time to get some feedback and assurance on your other scripts. A rep who calls and asks for more samples will be greatly turned off if it turns out the competition winning (or placing) script was your best work and that, in other words, you do not have “legs” as a writer.

So as you ready to turn in your script to competitions this year, make sure that while you wait for the results, you are hard at work on the next script. And the next one.

Silver Screenwriting 2010

Screenwriters! Our scriptwriting competition is a contest like no other. In our neverending quest to make you a better writer, The Script Department and Julie Gray created the most effective  screenwriting competition for writers. Even with over $13,000 in prizes, we reward our entrants with something even more precious than silver or gold — a chance to kick-start a career. 

In this, our third year of existence, The Silver Screenwriting Competition has so far welcomed a record-breaking number of scripts and we love it! So much so that we had to extend our deadline to June 1st!

We’ve also raised the bar because this year, the top ten finalists will be judged both by Julie Gray AND by Kristen Campo, CE at Fuse Entertainment. Kristen will also be taking a meeting with the Grand Prize Winner.

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!

Check out the grand prize for 2010!

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
  • A day of meetings with 2 managers
  • $3,000 in cash

Submit today for the chance to come to LA, kick-start your career by building relationships, and experience what it feels like in the day of a life of a writer in Hollywood.

For questions you may have about how to enter or more descriptions of our awesome prizes, please email us HERE. Be patient, you guys are going nuts this year!

Kodjo's LA Adventure

2009 Silver Screenwriting Competition Winner Kodjo Akeseh Tsakpo Kodjo Akeseh Tsakpo, the Silver Screenwriting Grand Prize winner, after being absolutely exhausted from flying to and fro and all of his meetings, etc. has returned to Merry Olde England, gathered his strength and sent us his brief take on what his trip was like:

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So by winning The Script Department’s opportune Silver Screenwriting Competition 2009, I’ve been flown to Los Angeles for meetings with Hollywood insiders and won a cool haul of prizes. So here I am – back in the UK, suitcase empty, study area a mess and the script to my left boasting the win in thick bold type – the latter is all I wanted but I ended up getting so much more.

I’ve spent the best part of a year in hibernation writing and rewriting SHIFT, and, whilst script-editors and writer-friends encourage, read and feed back nothing beats the accreditation of placing at competition. Nothing beats the accreditation of winning. Whilst always harbouring a passion for SHIFT I’ve always been aware that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Though employing the tenets of a standard thriller, its narrative hook gives it complexity and, hopefully, depth. It’s labyrinthine and multi-layered and, at times, convoluted but necessarily so. In short – it does itself little favours when presenting itself to readers. But I don’t care. I’ve loved it. I’ve loved writing it. I’ve loved re-writing it. And, up until now that fulfillment was a satisfactory reward.

Due to the time difference, I awaited Julie’s call long after all my colleagues had gone home. I simply expected more questions about my eligibility to be in the competition – why can’t she just email me? So in that regards, being told – “You’ve won.” – pretty much made my year. Seriously – to go back to LA, meet agents, managers…taste root beer (which, for uninitiated, tastes like Coke but with MORE sugar in it) was more than I could have hoped for but exactly what I wanted when I entered the competition.

So what did I take away from LA 2009? That Los Angeles is populated with more generous people than the rest of the world gives it credit for. From Julie and The Script Department going well above and beyond their capacity for hospitality to the writers, agents and executives that took time out of their heavy schedules to read some Japanese-sounding Brit’s ‘metaphysical thriller’ – and from them giving one-to-one advice and support regarding the maintenance of a Hollywood career to the yet-to-break-in writers who I was blessed to befriend at the Screenwriters Expo a few days later. Aside from the airfare, the hotel and the unrivalled access to inner-Hollywood, winning this competition has ensured that I’ve left town with two of the most valuable commodities any career-forging writer and/or director should have – validation and friendship…

…and a Macbook Air, Final Draft 8 and money. In short, I’ve been humbled and I’ve had a blast but now the real work begins. So, till next time, which won’t be long, adios y buena suerte and my thanks to The Silver Screenwriting Competition and Julie Gray.

Kodjo
Kodjo and Steve Faber (WEDDING CRASHERS) one of my favorite people in this world.
Kodjo
With the wonderful Jeff Bushell (BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA)
Kodjo
Three time black list writer, Josh Zetumer (DUNE, BOURNE IDENTITY)
Kodjo
Yay! Brand New MacBook Air!
Deadlines & Info

Golden Age of Television & Short Script Deadlines

Early Bird: August 15, 2010
Regular: September 15, 2010
Extended: October 15, 2010
FINAL: November 15, 2010

Silver Screenwriting Announcements

Quarterfinalists - July 1st
Semifinalists - August 1st
Finalists - August 25th
Grand Prize - September 15

Your Prizes
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