Here you go, everybody! The top 50 scripts of over 1,000 submitted. So this represents the top 5% and that's quite an accomplishment! The 20 semi-finalists will be announced on August 1st.
Abeyta, April & Kim Nunley — Super Ted
Amdahl, Joseph- A Boy in the Woods
Axelrad, David & Michel Plaxton — Machine Gun Kelly: The Real Story
Barlowe, John & Irin Evers — Miss Christmas
Bauer, Kristin — Edultery
Booth, Thom — Jaunt
Bowlden, Kelli — Venus Envy
Brown, Harold — Dewey and the Magic Library
Burningham, JR & Tess Ortbals
Cambria, Craig — Canaries
Catz, Sarit & Gloria Ketterer — Instant Karma
Cecchini, Ron — Blue Lady
Dilier, Matthew — The Sandbox
Donald, Mike — Cortex
Donald, Mike — Shadow Trade
Donnelly, Scott & Joe Douglass — Cows
Downs, Christine — The Jupiter Syndrome
Evans, Corey- Death's Horizon
Farrand, Carol — Nobody in My Family Has Sex
Fass, Rick- Love Erasers
Figel, Rich — The Doll
Fortune, Jules — Better Than Broadband
Headley, Jason & Michael Tumino — Seniors
Hoover, Stephen — Buried South of Galatians
Hoover, Stephen — Ghosted
Hoover, Stephen — To Live, Press 1
Luu, D.N. — Faithful
Jackson, Ryan — Fix
Knutson, Forrest — Samurai High
Lammey, David — Shotgun Wedding
McCoy, Michael — Under the Rising Sun
McMinn, Dave — O Boy
Moore, Sherry Lynn — Hunting Season
Nolan, Tom — The Quick Way Home
Puterbaugh, Joseph — The Jack Johnson Story
Ridone, Steve — Colby on the Potomac
Rosen, Jane — Ancestral
Sayle, Allie & Liz — Troublemakers
Sheehy, Rich — The Intake
Simpson, R. Ian — Paraplizzle
Spiegelman, Bruce — IsiS
Stein, Christopher — Moment of Conception
Shyu, Tony — Macau Twilight
Stirling, Bruce — The Embalmer's Apprentice
Wasserman, Daniel — Stowaways
Watson, Robert Keith — Bank Robbing for Dummies
Wiggins, Joseph — Amsterdam XXX
Wolfe, Celeste Chan — Spotnik
Tze Yun, Sun — The Sun Rises East
Zakalik, Marc — Drumadoon
Now, a word to those of you who didn't place. Why god, why? you might be asking yourself right now. There were two of three reasons your script didn't move up to the quarter finals and they are (broadly speaking) a) your script had significant format, spelling and language usage problems b) your first ten pages were not entertaining, the genre wasn't clear and the tone was all over the map and c) subjectivity.
Now a small (but loving ) slap on the wrist and weird pattern I will note: this year, the scripts that didn't make the cut were far worse than the scripts that didn't make the cut last year. The scripts that made the cut, however, were far better. I have no idea why this is but the scripts that are moving up to the next round are going to be VERY tough to judge. I have my eye on about ten or twelve that I particularly like but on the other hand, I read one that was SO excellent for the first seventy five pages — great, right? — and then tanked out with a confusing, illogical, lazy ending.
So the real judging begins now. Can you write opening pages that engage, that are professional, that entertain and intrigue? Can you write with the proper format and without eight (YES, true story) pages of action lines first? Great. That makes you a quarterfinalist. Let's see what you quarters can show us beyond that. This is where the going gets much tougher.
Good luck to you all and for those who didn't make the cut here but did somewhere else, don't forget subjectivity is at play here, so don't be too downhearted. As I am wont to say, until they invent the Read-a-tron 5000, you have to make do with live humans who have experience and background reading scripts. If you didn't place anywhere else, take this as a sign that you are completely NORMAL and just need to keep writing. Don't take it too seriously or too personally. Every single person who took the time to enter and who tried his or her best is a winner in my eyes and if you've ever met me you don't doubt the truth of that. Onward!
Topic: SilverScreenwriting Competition
Author: Stephen Hoover
Posted: 07/01/10 04:50 PM
