As the 2014 Film Coordinator for the Willamette Writers Conference, I was also in charge of overseeing the FiLMLaB competition. Round after round of judging took place until five scripts elevated to the coveted “finalists” stage. Those five finalist scripts were sent to Hollywood for our celebrity judge’s review. Susan Fleming’s SIX MONTHS OF WONDER…
After seven weeks, four rounds of judging and one rewrite, our 2015 experiment in writing has come to a conclusion: FiLMLaB has a winner! It was not an easy task for the Producers Circle who met last week to consider and debate the pros and cons of each finalist’s script. One script, however, to rose…
If you caught our blog last Thursday, then you know we gave our five finalists one last task: to rewrite their short script. With notes they received from the Celebrity Judges, and with FiLMLaB mentor Randall Jahnson to guide them, they were given five days to improve their scripts, with a deadline of midnight tonight.…
Oh, boy are we excited! After six weeks and three rounds of judging, we have our 2015 FiLMLaB Finalists! A very competitive set of eight scripts went through our Celebrity Judging panel where they were evaluated based on six questions for a possible 30 points (or 90 cumulative): On which page were you ‘hooked’ by…
Willamette Writers is excited to announce that screenwriting software giant, Final Draft, has signed on as an official sponsor for the 2015 FiLMLaB Contest! As such, all eight of our semifinalists have each won a gift certificate for a free downloadable version of Final Draft 9, valued at $250! “For over twenty years now, Final…
Every year, FiLMLaB solicits film professionals to assist us in determining the Grand Prize winner of our short script writing contest. It changes from year to year, but usually we try to coordinate with the Willamette Writers Conference and pull from their list of Film Consultants: producers, managers, agents and creative executives brought up from…
Bug Eyed Bill has tested a lot of writers in the 2015 FiLMLaB Contest. Integrating that character prompt into a seven page script has made the already difficult task of short form writing even more difficult. In the following eight scripts we see him as a blind art critic, a short order alien cook, a…
(reprinted with permission from our friends over at Portland Film Festival) With the departure of former Director of Programming, Don Andrews, to shoot and develop his TV series pilot, “The Winnebago Man” in New Mexico, long-time festival volunteer and “Encore IndieFilm Showcase” Director and Founder, Jason de Parrie-Turner is stepping up to fill the vacancy. De…
What an interesting season it’s been for FiLMLaB. We mixed things up this year by adding required prompts to the contest for dialogue (“I understand the urge.”), props (a lock of some sort), and perhaps the most interesting, a character prompt for “Bug Eyed Bill.” It was a real challenge for the writers who took…
