Page Awards 2012

[figment]

Originally Posted by PAGE Awards

Frankly, from an administrative point of view, it would be much easier and better for me if everyone who wanted to enter would just enter in January and pay the $39 rate. But of course, we all know that's not going to happen.
-- Jen

The highlighted portion above is illogical. It's your contest -- if it'd be easier on you to have ONE early and ONE late deadline (like most contests, including Nicholl) there's really nothing stopping you from doing so. And to the outside eye, the addition of deadlines can seem like the contest is just trying to cash in, even if that is not your intent.

If any contest -- including Page -- is getting writers repped and sold, then good for them. And good for those writers. However, if former or current contest participants can't bring up viable, logical comments or questions about a contest without being outed or lectured to, then that's pretty silly -- no one is questioning if Page wants writers to succeed. They're saying hey, WTF's with all these false deadlines? Does this feel right to you?

I felt a little bit the same way, the one time I entered Page, when I kept getting emails about your other -- expensive -- services. When I got one, that was fine; Page was simply making me aware of the other (notes, agent discussion things) services that they provided. When I kept getting them over and over, it made me think -- gee, I wonder if they are just trying to make money off of me?

I brought that up a long while ago in a different thread and you suggested I unsubscribe to your emails -- which wasn't the point. Any fool knows how to delete an email, the point was a legitimate contest was acting in a manner that seemed beneath it, and it made me reconsider entering.

This isn't a slam of you or Page. And I hope you don't feel attacked.

But as the person in charge of a contest -- it only seems logical that you'd want to know what MAY make potential entrants hesitate to enter, instead of castigating them for their opinions.

[NikeeGoddess]

so true.
the thing about the extra extended deadline was that the announcement came AFTER the final deadline. from an outside view it does look like you tallied up the entry fees and said, we need more!! i know you wanted it to look like you're doing the writers a favor, but the execution of it didn't work.
and doing writer's a favor is making them really stick to deadlines.

[Aspirant]

Originally Posted by beerbeastredux

On a side note, I saw my 5th bum pooping onto the street at Wilshire & Highland this morning (You see this a lot here in Los Angeles) now, back to the discussion.

What is wrong with you?

[lache]

I entered Page this year.

[Aspirant]

I agree with Figment and Nikee.

Originally Posted by KenRichards

These flame wars really are uncalled for. Page is a very reputable competition, in a landscape of thieves, liars and bastards. It really is one of about five competitions that is worth entering. If screenwriters can't handle the fact that there are fifty thousand of us out here competing for the maybe fifty or one hundred spec sales a year, and that every shot for us is a long shot, then get out of the game. But more importantly, quit your freaking whining.

Cheerful commentary, but, again, not the issue. What's currently being discussed has nothing to do with PAGE being a reputable contest (on which almost everyone agrees), or the competitiveness of screenwriting in general. And no one is "whining." It's just a narrow point about the way PAGE handles its deadlines.

[Anagram]

I've been thinking about this topic for a while and I think a lot of the anger is misdirected. Here's my train of thought:

1) The PAGE Awards are not funded by a grant like the Nicholl Competition.

2) There's a lot of people with it that work very hard, from the organizers to the readers, etc.

3) As much as I'm sure the people at PAGE love helping a writer trying to break through, in the end they can't make a living on just that altruism.

4) So in the end the contest has to make money for them, otherwise it won't be worth it (since it's probably a full time job during the months it's running.)

5) Changing the deadlines is (according to them) a way for them to stagger the entries so that they don't get swamped at the end. It probably also helps them make more money, but that's not a bad thing because see point 4.

6) The main beef with this seems to be that writers who had to submit a script on one of the deadlines got irritated when the new deadline was announced because they realized they could have had more time to perfect their script.

It's point 6 that's the problem. The initial deadline was set months and months ago (years if you checked last years schedule.).


So if you submitted a script that wasn't ready even though you knew abut the deadline months in advance, isn't it really your fault? Whether the deadline got extended or not, it's you who did not get the script in the shape you wanted in time.

I admit that I'm one of you. I like to tweak up until the last second and I would have loved another month to keep doing that.

But I never blamed PAGE for that - even if they extended the deadline, I'm the one who missed it first time around.


And if they do do it sometimes to raise more money, is that really such a terrible thing? If we're all acknowledging that it's a good beneficial contest, I hope they raise a ton of money.

Because it means they'll do the contest next year.

[NikeeGoddess]

most people understand that there is a financial cost to doing a great contest. and Page gives out some great prize money that's mostly spread out evenly. that's what makes it so attractive.

the graduating entry dates with increasing entry fees is the incentive to get your script ready on time. no one has a problem with that.

here's the point you're missing: in this case Page added the extra deadline AFTER the last deadline. if money were not an issue for people then they would know that had another 2 weeks to polish. so money was the issue... but for whom? it could be that Page didn't meet their minimum needed to fulfill all their promises. or it could be that they just wanted to make more money... and that's the american way, but we're not always happy about it.

[Manchester]

Anagram, I agree with you - except about #6. But I especially agree about 3 & 4 - no sin in making money.

As for the staggered deadlines - specifically, the way they are revealed, so to speak - I am not a fan of that. To me, it's the odd-man-out among all the other things about Page and the way it is run. Page's defense is that the late/later/latest entry deadline system they use is knowable, but I think that's not good enough.

Since we agree on the it's-OK-they're-making-money thing, maybe a better way for Page to discourage everyone entering at the last minute would be to do a version of what some other contests do: Announce all of the deadlines up-front, but increase the fees even more for later entries.

So instead of using the current 12:01 AM reveal mechanism of a new/even-later deadline, they should use a more aggressive pricing mechanism. Present a chart from the beginning that shows the first entry date and the last one. And, every two weeks after the first entry date, the fee goes up $10 (for example). IOW, it would cost a lot more to submit on May 15 than it does under the present setup, but everything would be out in the open.

Yes, with this approach people would bitch that Page is being "greedy" and "Why should it cost SO much more for me to enter in May than in March? It's not fair!" But I prefer transparency. As always, YMMV.

[PAGE Awards]

Originally Posted by figment

The highlighted portion above is illogical. It's your contest -- if it'd be easier on you to have ONE early and ONE late deadline (like most contests, including Nicholl) there's really nothing stopping you from doing so. And to the outside eye, the addition of deadlines can seem like the contest is just trying to cash in, even if that is not your intent.

If any contest -- including Page -- is getting writers repped and sold, then good for them. And good for those writers. However, if former or current contest participants can't bring up viable, logical comments or questions about a contest without being outed or lectured to, then that's pretty silly...

This isn't a slam of you or Page. And I hope you don't feel attacked.

No, Figment, I do not feel "attacked" by your post. Your comments are even-keeled and reasoned. However, if you reread those other posts that I was responding to, I don't think they were presented as "viable, logical" comments and questions, at all. And in each case, I think my response was warranted.

In that other thread that has now been closed, I did defend myself and my company, yes. Beer has made all sorts of wild accusations in this forum in the past, and mostly when I've run across them I've held my tongue because I think it was pretty obvious to everyone that he was just upset because he didn't win. But calling us a "Scam" right there in the title like that is defamatory. Will said as much in his post and closed the thread. Even though Beer says he did it as a "joke," it did not come off that way at all - especially given his history - and I felt it needed to be addressed head on. We work very hard here, and I will defend myself and my company. And I suspect if someone said those things about you, you'd defend yourself, as well.

As for my other posts, hey, call me crazy! I explained why we didn't write Emily the check she was wishing she would've received that she never asked us for (?!?) I responded to a couple of very nasty comments from someone who obviously had never seen all of our success stories and had no idea what a great impact PAGE has had on the lives of so many screenwriters. And I attempted to explain why we run our deadlines the way we do. Obviously, at that I failed. I'm very sorry, guys, but no matter how much you want us to, we simply cannot run our deadlines the way the Nicholl does. We evaluate scripts in multiple categories, and unlike any of the other big contests that receive thousands of entries, we offer Feedback. I know that writers really like getting Feedback and I know it's been very helpful to many writers, and that's why we do it, but it makes our job infinitely more complex and difficult.

Re the comment that you cite as "illogical" what I was trying to say was that it would be easier for me -- meaning me personally (well, and actually Zoe, too!) -- if we only had one deadline in January and got all the scripts entered then. It would also be easier for me if we didn't offer Feedback, if we didn't publish our bi-monthly eZine, if we didn't invite our Finalists to submit their latest draft for the Final Round, if we didn't do a lot of things we do. I'd rather be on the beach eating bonbons. But that's not what I'm getting paid to do, and I'm not the one making those decisions. And of course, it really wouldn't make any sense to only have one deadline. Most of the scripts would just be sitting here for all those months waiting to be judged when instead you guys could have the extra time to work on them. So, again, that's why the series of staggered deadlines.

I understand that some people misinterpret what we do, which is why I attempted to explain it. But obviously I can't explain it to everyone, and some people will always assume the worst, no matter what. And if that means they don't enter our contest, so be it. We're running it the best way we know how.

-- Jen

[Harbinger]

First and foremost, Aspirant, sorry... gotta call you out here. More than one of your posts seem like you're trying to police the thread. When anyone decided to get this essentially back on the original topic (which was 'views on PAGE'), you kept bringing them to task for supposed straying off-topic (which apparently was the deadline issue). Threads, much like conversation, diverge and the proceeding post isn't required necessarily to have any relevance to the post that preceded it. Although Beer's was probably a bit too out there--

--But I digress. Back to the subject of the thread.... which, by the way, won't in this post contain anything of the 'deadline' subject. I get that the organizers need to stagger the entries and I don't necessarily see how they make more money from a FINAL FINAL DEADLINE apart from maybe the one or two stragglers who were suddenly thrown a life line.

Think of this logically. If PAGE were being underhanded, what good comes of not advertising a final deadline until the last moment? That's like producing a brand new product, advertising that you will be selling this awesome new product in all major retail outlets until May 1st, but after that date there's no point in checking in your local supermarkets because it won't be there anymore. So no-one bothers to check the shelves. No customers bother to go to the supermarket that day. Despite the fact that, if they did, they'd see a poster on the storefront advertising an extended run of that limited product.

Makes no sense.

If you got the script in, you're happy and no need to return to the website till later, either to check out the cool little map-of-entrants-locations thing they do or check the QF/SF placings. If you haven't got a script in on time, you may end up not going back to the website assuming the ship has sailed. So in what way, in either of these scenarios are PAGE gaining some kind of advantage beyond what Jen has already stated in staggering the entries.

But again, I digress. And ended up embroiled in the whole deadline affair.

As to PAGE, I have huge love for this contest. And not just cause I've done well through them, but because I have never been given any impression other than that of an organization run with utmost professionalism. The speed at which they respond to emails is frankly ludicrous (speed....use the Schwartz!)

No other contest cares as much for the entrants. No other contest meets the deadlines with 100% accuracy. No other contest is as innovative in their neat little details and touches. And to prove that last one--

--PAGE was the first main contest to keep contestants updated with Judge comments via Twitter. Nicholl adopted the idea a year or two later.

--PAGE is the ONLY contest to include a cool little map detailing the locations and amount of entries in each and every country. So you have an idea of how many fellow countrymen you're up against... always fun.

--PAGE is the ONLY contest (or at least the first) to produce a fun little flash animation of the award ceremony. Doesn't sound like a huge deal, but trust me. You don't know tension till you watch animated golden envelopes slowly unfurling. It's painful and joyful all in one.

--PAGE was one of the FIRST contests to segregate entries into genres allowing scripts to not only be pitted against similar projects, but ensure that judges are assigned scripts that match there taste and sensibilities.

So, to sum up, the deadline thing (if that is an issue with some people) pales into absolute insignificance with everything else PAGE get right.

It's gets my HIGHEST recommendation. I would enter this contest over every other. And that includes Nicholl (although I would of course enter Nicholl as well. It's another great contest). Much love, PAGE.


PS. My ugly mug is on one of those success story pages. And I get a mention on the first success link. I'm now officially declaring myself PAGE ULTIMATE CHAMPION...... errr...... even though I didn't actually win....