Confessions of a Contest Judge

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  • #16
    Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

    Originally posted by gregbeal View Post
    Nicholl judges are not writing coverage, just reading the scripts and filling out a one page score sheet, so it's closer to an hour or so per script.
    I didn't think a feature script could be read beginning to end in under an hour. That's impressive

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    • #17
      Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

      It's not a college class. It's a competition.
      There are no grades. No one cares whether or not you finished your homework. They care if you have succeeded in creating a world compelling enough to suck the reader into it and keep them reading through the end.
      How much do you think a production company is going to read?
      The fact of the matter is that pretty much anyone with the gumption to finish an entire screenplay who feels it's good enough to spend $50 plus postage to enter a contest is a somewhat decent writer. That's 5000 somewhat decent writers, all with pretty decent ideas and fairly coherent stories to tell.
      Whittling that down to the top 10 or 5 or 1 that's worthy of a prize is gonna require a little elimination. It's like the end of Indiana Jones where they put the ark in the giant warehouse and we see that this box that Indiana has gone through so much to find is just one of many, many secret boxes in a giant warehouse.
      Last edited by cvolante; 08-09-2010, 03:35 PM. Reason: Because even though Lawrence Kasdan is a god, it's best to stick to the subject. :D

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      • #18
        Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

        Originally posted by killertv View Post
        I didn't think a feature script could be read beginning to end in under an hour. That's impressive

        Reading screenplays is what some of these people do for a living. I knew a guy who (during busy periods) would read 6-8 screenplays a day and provide coverage on all of them. And he READ every screenplay from beginning to end.


        I could not do that. Good readers impress me. Bad readers depress me. LOL



        .

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        • #19
          Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

          Originally posted by KenRichards View Post
          Good readers impress me. Bad readers depress me. LOL
          haha i agree to an extent though anyone can be a bad reader - too much depends on their personal taste, mood, what they ate for breakfast, etc.

          what really depresses me are bad writers who won't take good advice like "make your first ten good"

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          • #20
            Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

            An experienced reader should be able to read a script and write coverage on it in two to two-and-a-half-hours.

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            • #21
              Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

              Originally posted by cvolante View Post


              It's not a college class. It's a competition. There are no grades.



              How much do you think a production company is going to read?


              I want to comment on your two of your points above.


              First, you are right, it is not a college class. It is a competitiion. But there are grades. Every screenplay is graded. And as the point I made in my earlier post, you can't grade certain aspects of a screenplay by reading only 10 pages.


              Second, it doesn't matter how much attention a production company gives to screenplays. These screenplays are not being submitted to production companies for consideration of possible production. They are submitted to a screenplay competition to be judged against other screenplays. Which I mentioned above, can't be done if you only read 10 pages of each screenplay.


              .

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              • #22
                Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                Well, if a page of a screenplay is supposed to equal a minute of screen time, then conceivably a screenplay can be read in the same amount of time as watching a movie.

                Personally, it takes me a couple of hours to read a screenplay. But I'm no pro.
                Nobody's perfect.

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                • #23
                  Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                  Couple of hours? 30 minutes tops. Should be a lot of white on those pages
                  and it's 100 pages.

                  Sign a script isn't great: You can read it and stop to come back to it later.
                  "I talked to a couple of yes men at Metro. To me they said no."


                  http://wagstaffnet.blogspot.com/

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                  • #24
                    Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                    Originally posted by C.C.Baxter View Post
                    Couple of hours? 30 minutes tops. Should be a lot of white on those pages
                    and it's 100 pages.

                    Sign a script isn't great: You can read it and stop to come back to it later.
                    it takes me a couple of hours too. i like to relax when reading. and i'm definitely no pro either... but 30 minutes seems ridiculous for a 100 page script.

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                    • #25
                      Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                      Took me a month to read a friend's script. I could only stomach 3 pages a day. I wonder how long the notes are going to take me.
                      Last night, Jesus appeared to me in a dream and told me that loving me is the part of His job He hates the most.

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                      • #26
                        Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                        Wow. Must've been a very bad script. A good script doesn't let you put it down.

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                        • #27
                          Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                          Originally posted by wildswan View Post
                          Wow. Must've been a very bad script. A good script doesn't let you put it down.
                          Exactly. I'm an awesome friend.
                          Last night, Jesus appeared to me in a dream and told me that loving me is the part of His job He hates the most.

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                          • #28
                            Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                            Originally posted by NikeeGoddess View Post
                            it takes me a couple of hours too. i like to relax when reading. and i'm definitely no pro either... but 30 minutes seems ridiculous for a 100 page script.
                            Well I read the first 20 pages... middle 10 and then last 10. 30 minutes. Goes a lot faster also if you just read the dialogue and the **** they underline.
                            "I talked to a couple of yes men at Metro. To me they said no."


                            http://wagstaffnet.blogspot.com/

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                            • #29
                              Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                              Originally posted by killertv View Post
                              No, but I could tell you it's a terrible film. These opening screening processes aren't to FIND the winner - they're to DROP the losers! The winning script will be read beginning to end because it's an entertaining read beginning to end. Anything less is not the goal of screenwriting.

                              Ultimately, the best script in any contest will have a good first ten pages. The top ten should all meet that qualification. Why would anything less even be considered to be a potential winner when out of thousands of entries there will certainly be others with a great first ten pages?

                              Angus has the right idea - they'll read the first couple of lines for sure. The point is that a seasoned writer will hook them there. Someone who knows the craft will have the reader wanting to finish the first page after the first line and the rest of the script after the first page.
                              Once again I think there're too many assumptions here.

                              You say you could weed out the terrible scripts/films. True. But when a judge can only allow 3 scripts out of the 200 they read to move on to the next round, you CANNOT tell what the best 3 are by skimming the first 10 and randomly selecting a few other pages.

                              No one's saying the first 10 shouldn't be good. But you can't tell whether a whole script is good unless you read the whole script.

                              I'm willing to bet more than the "top 3" from that round had a solid first 10. Odds are, some of the "losers dropped" were better than the top 3. How would you know for sure if you only read a few pages?
                              Looking to take the "Bono" off my screenname.

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                              • #30
                                Re: Confessions of a Contest Judge

                                No one's saying the first 10 shouldn't be good. But you can't tell whether a whole script is good unless you read the whole script.
                                there is definitely some truth to this. it's demonstrated in the flick adaptation where guru robert mckee says something like, "the ending is most important. people always remember the last 10 minutes of the movie." and then they proceed to make the last 10 minutes of this flick all wacked out and completely disjointed so that we would remember it.

                                there are so many contests out there. maybe one could be first and last: you send in the first 10 pages and the last 10 pages/set up and resolution. lol!

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