Message Board

I once wrote scathing stuff on moviebytes about Donna Lee's Hollywood Scriptwriting Institute (HSI) monthly contest - mainly about how she randomly wouldn't award prizes for some months and was pocketing the money while lumping together many months of scripts to one prize. Her website is down and HSI isn't listed on Moviebytes anymore. Does anyone know what happened? Just curious...

I don't know, Irin, but if you're responsible for killing it, I hope I can do the same with the cowrite "contest".

I didn't enter that one, but I've got your back!

Ouch! Good to hear

I pulled her up under Hollywood Scriptwriting Contest (HSI). The link labeled Hollywood Scriptwriting Institute is down. I guess we'd better put the cork half-way back on.

A long, long time ago, I remember looking into this contest. Glad for the heads up. Thanks. However, if you want a really good experience, read my post about John Schimmel -- I'd be interested to know if anyone had ever heard of him and / or would be interested in using his services.

I won this contest once awhile ago. She sent everything promptly and I still have the very nice certificate. Sorry to hear it went downhill.

I was Honorable Mention (2nd Place) in HSI a few years ago, but then recently, I entered and no winner was announced for several months. She made excuses (ones which I feel bad if they are true, but other Moviebyters posted that these were excuses she'd made in the past). She then bundled the 4 months of scripts she was late on and announced just one winner (and one runner up) instead of the monthly winners. That means 6 less winners (and prizes). But my point was - that regardless of why the results weren't given on time (let's face it, most contests post the results late!), there is still not reason for her to bundle several months. Her excuse was that it was late to announce the older contests. Like I said, if the scripts were read, there's no reason not to name winners. It showed me that she was just making excuses to not give out the prizes.

Irin - maybe she's too nice to say "oh, good god, these all suck." LOL

Seriously, I think sometimes people don't realize how difficult it is to read a bunch of scripts. It's time consuming. Someone starting a contest (and I've considered one for shorts) needs to calculate how much time they are willing to spend reading scripts, picking the top ones, announcing the winners, sending prizes,...

But the quality of the scripts is irrelevant. If she's taking the money, she has to award the promised prizes (and certificates).

Imagine if a contest announced a $10K 1st prize and $5K 2nd prize. Then, months late, they decide that they're only going to give one $1K prize. It's the same thing. She had read all the scripts. Her excuse for not awarding the prizes was that it was too late to award them? Huh? I don't know about you, but I've never turned down a prize that was given to me late.