Festival Length

pmark23

pmark23

Veteran
Anyone else think that 1-1/2 months is too long?

Last fest I wrote the script, then almost missed submitting because I forgot about it!

6 pages is about 2 hours of writing and 4 hours rewriting. Even a week would be tonnes of time.

How about a 1-month deadline, then a two-week judging period, then a two-week rest/anticipation period before then announcement of the next fest? This leaves a two-month period between fests (so the organizers aren't swamped), and we don't have so long to wait-around after finishing our scripts.

Something to think about for the next fest...
 
Last time around, I might have agreed with you... but this time, with an idea completely eluding me so far, not so much. :) I think the current length is a good compromise between the quick-off-the-mark folks and the holy-crap-what-am-I-gonna-do peeps. (I seem to be much more the latter type this time around...)
 
Two hours of writing and four hours of rewriting? I wish it went that fast for me. I think a month and a half is good. This time I think I'm sitting pretty well because I already had a solid idea that I'm currently running through it's paces. Last fest it took me about half of the time to decide that Dead Men had enough legs to stand on and then I was still polishing until about two days before the deadline.

That was a very words way of saying that a month and a half seems good to me. :)
 
That's the tough part of writing for me. The "gestation period", in which I really can't write (or rewrite) but I have to let the story develope in my mind. Day-dreaming is underestimated and often confused with laziness--but there is a difference. ;)
 
Not all of us have the time to devote directly to one project. For me, the 1-1/2 months is too short as I have my day job, my family, I do a lot of coding for the fests here, etc. So to squeeze an hour here or there is a luxury, not a given.
 
Agreed with krestofre and Larry. Life's busy, and I don't have a solid idea locked in yet.

Plus - six hours, including rewrites? It would take me that long just to bang out a rough draft, even with an outline!
 
I definitely need more than four hours for rewrites. I commit at least a week for rewrites. And like everyone else, life has a tendency to throw me distractions.
 
pmark23 said:
Anyone else think that 1-1/2 months is too long?

Last fest I wrote the script, then almost missed submitting because I forgot about it!

6 pages is about 2 hours of writing and 4 hours rewriting. Even a week would be tonnes of time.
Click to expand...


Why don't you just enter 6 scripts then...no harm...???:nads:
 
Are you guys kidding me? 2 hours innitially and 4+ hours for rewrites? Good God, six pages for me means sitting down for like two hours and typing it out then waiting a bit before taking one last look at it, usually only correcting minor gramatical or spelling errors. I never do rewrites on my own work, I get what I want the first time. But who am I to judge? No one. Everyone has their own style and their own time constraints, etc.

EDIT: Realizing that may have sounded cocky. Definitly not meant that way, just sharing my personal style.
 
I'm honestly quite surprised at how long it takes most of you to write. At the rate some of you quote, it would take several years to complete a screenplay! At only two hours a day five days a week (I also have a job and family) I can bang-out a complete draft in five to six weeks, and a full rewrite every couple months afterwards. (To be fair though, I spend a long time plotting and planning -- about a month.) In the past few years I've written half a dozen screenplays, of which one is in development-hell, and the other is being shot this coming winter.

As for plotting -- it's only six pages. There's not much to plot! You have two to four scenes. First scene is the set-up, second/third is complication, fourth is the resolution.

I probably will write a few, and enter the best/weirdest one.
 
Does no one take forever just to come up with an idea? For me, personally, the 6 hours total is probably about right for writing it, but when you only have six pages, it takes me weeks just to bang out a good idea, then I have to refine that idea. With twenty pages, you can afford more leeway, but with six, you have to make every page count, and solidify a script to nigh airtight. That takes me at least a week or two of banging stuff around in my noggin, then life comes into play....
 
Usually it does take me a while to get an idea, or I just mentally wait until the last minute since I know that I can. What's strange is, this is definitly not my theme, but the ideas just started flowing in. I wrote one and then I realized what crap it was, then I came up with an idea for a different one that I started yesterday. I'll probably finish it up today and read over it tomorrow to make sure most of the spelling and grammar is good, then I will just hold onto it until submission time.
 
Herein lies the problem.

A vast majority of the people here have jobs on the side, or a lot of work to get done that is paid.

We had a VFX fest go for 2weeks and thought it was a good enough time. Needless to say I didn't get past the drawing board - well, the general construct anyways...

For these people, its not that much time at all. Takes forever when you have more important things to do.

My input. :)
 
Another thing to consider is that this isn't just a piece we would write for our own benefit, but to test our mettle with others (though it is a good exercise). It is a bit different when you are competing.
 
We'll see. If we have a third one we'll mess around with the length of time. I know that sometimes what we need is a little fire under our asses to get stuff done quicker.
 
I think a month is PLENTY. I just finished my second script, the one I will most likely be using. I know some people take hours of writing and several rewirtes but I just wrote it last night and just now and went over it fleshing it out a bit and now it is done. I am probably going to register it soon because in the future I am going to turn it into a much longer script, maybe a feature. In esscence this will only be an excerpt but it does stand on its own plot wise. I will probably make a thread soon, I just need to let this simmer and make sure I want to use it.

As far as time, I know people have jobs but if you squeeze in an hour a day for the month that is 30 hours of total work time! Good lord, I hope you don't need that long for a six page screenplay. Even if you just work 15 minutes a day that comes out to be 7.5 hours. Come on! Any longer would just be excruciating!
 
People relax. Everyone has jobs, and people have their reasons. I'm working on a feature. I find that I can't put this down without risking losing the thread of this piece. In a couple weeks I'll hopefully feel a little different to write a scifi piece.

It's great that people can write fast, but I'm not sure people take enough time to really rewrite though. Look back over the comments you received the first time around. There are pieces from the first time around that obviously stuck out as being written very fast with a minor rewrite thrown in. And then there's the pieces that were rewritten and worked to the bone over the course of a few weeks. Some of those pieces are really strong and tight. Fast does not equal good.

I think this just seems long because we lowered the page count to six pages. With all this talk of fast drafts and rewrites I'm expecting really good scripts. :)
 
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