Screenplay Competition Submission Strategies

woodcarver

woodcarver

Well-known member
I've got a couple of feature length screenplays that are close to being ready to submit to competitions and screenplay categories at festivals. However, I've never submitted a screenplay to a competition before and I was hoping someone could point me to some information about giving your screenplay the best shot at competition. For instance, should I submit to "smaller" competitions to build up a reputation for the script before I submit something to a more well-known competition? Stuff like that. Any advice, links would be wonderful.
 
They have gone through multiple revisions and have each been read by about thirty people from different walks of life. They have both had table readings by actors.
 
Most feature scripts go through multiple revisions/drafts and having table reads with actors is something which is handy to see how dialog and other things are working/not working. I know with one of my current feature projects, "Plastic" I went through a number of rewrites for each draft as I would only register drafts and only did my first table read with actors after the fourth draft.

Only you, however, can decide if something is ready for what you wrote it. One of the things I've found is that winning something in a competititon/festival and having something produced because of that are two different things. Last year a project I DP'ed called "La Fontaine", won the best drama award at the Banff World Media Festival. A particular company was flapping its arms up and down to represent it and got the creator to sign a one year deal with having them rep the project in distribution circles for television. Well here we are just over a year later and that deal expired at the end of August. The rep company didn't do squat.

So get your scripts entered into something right now if that's what the purpose was in writing them.
 
Well, I have work that is ready--or at least as ready as it will ever be. My OP was strategies for getting scripts into festivals or competitions--strategies that go beyond just writing a good script. For instance, with short films, there are several festivals which sometimes function as feeder fests for bigger festivals. A programmer at a large festival, like Sundance, might call a programmer at another, smaller fest and ask if they have anything they'd recommend. Knowing this might help one get a film selected to show at Sundance. I'm looking for any info along those lines. Like, start small, build a little rep then aim for the more well-known competitions. I'm not really thinking about production right now.
 
What do you hope to get from the competitions? I think that will help you figure out which ones to enter.

I've only entered two in my life (because I'm a pro, and 99.99% of competitions don't allow it) and both were just to see how I would do. Both were also scripts that were less commercial and more art-house oriented.

Are you looking to open doors, get read by producer-judges, find out how you stack up? I think your best bet is to figure out what you want and then find the contests that might provide that.

- Bill
 
screw these festivals - save yer money - buy a gh2 or a new bmc camera - and make a feature you can afford to make. my 2 cents.
if you do submit - good luck!
 
I'm looking to see if any doors will open and to find out if any professionals are interested in the kind of material I write. "make a feature you can afford to make" as a filmmaker, I'm not terribly interested in directing feature-length, narrative work. Documentary is what I'm interested in making. Writing screenplays and my production interests are not really linked.
 
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