The most exciting part about winning FiLMLaB is getting the opportunity to be a part of the production process and learn from all the many different talented professionals involved in the production. I can’t wait! “ – Shaun Radecki, 2016 FiLMLaB winner
Last week our four finalists consulted with screenwriting mentor and 2016 FiLMLaB Director, Randall Jahnson, before diving into an optional script rewrite; a chance to improve their original seven page script with notes from our Celebrity Judges.
By Thursday night, all of the revised scripts were in and ready to review by our Producers Circle, a collection of past and present FiLMLaB producers that included Mark Scarbrough, Michael Parisien, Christopher Alley and Randall Jahnson. Sunday, they hashed it out: seven hours of reviews, evaluations and debates over which script should be selected for production. Seven hours is a long time and a good indicator of just how difficult it was to choose a winner from our talented finalists, but choose they must.
Willamette Writers congratulates Shaun Radecki, the 2016 FiLMLaB Grand Prize Winner for his script, UNDIMMED.
The 2016 FiLMLaB Winner!
UNDIMMED tells the story of a man tortured by regret as he struggles to undo the mistakes of his past.
Originally from ‘Chicagoland’, Shaun spent time in L.A. and New York doing production assistance before deciding to relocate to the Northwest. He discovered the FiLMLaB Contest while moving his family to Portland. During an overnight stay at The Holiday Inn he told his wife, “I’ve got to find a way to keep writing when we get to Portland.” He googled ‘writing in Portland’ and found Willamette Writers and FiLMLaB. Intrigued by the contest prompts, he submitted four scripts in 2015, one of which made it all the way to the Celebrity Judges. In 2016, three scripts made the quarterfinals, and two were finalists.
Ultimately, the producers were won over by the intrigue and mystery of Shaun’s character, Grant, in UNDIMMED. “I first fell in love with movies in kindergarten when my dad told me I was too young to watch Rambo. I snuck out of bed and watched the whole movie hiding in the hall — the images of exploding jeeps and helicopters still vivid in my mind.”
The contest is over, but Shaun’s work is just beginning.
This week he will meet with his director and work on further script revisions as the two try to combine their artistic visions and develop a shooting script. When he’s not busy revising, there will be preproduction meetings to attend, crew to line up, actors to cast, locations to scout, set and sound design to figure out, to name just a few of the tasks in our immediate future. None of these fall on to Shaun alone, but at FiLMLaB, we invite our winning writer to learn about the process by participating in it as much as they are able.
So congratulations once again to our FiLMLaB Grand Prize Winner.