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…
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…
(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…
We have arrived at the final week of the FiLMLaB writing contest. You can still work all week and through the weekend on your seven page short script, but it must be submitted by 11:59 this Sunday night. Plenty of time, really. If you’ve already submitted–congratulations; you are a rock star. You took a risk…
“Nobody knows anything…” William Goldman’s famous quote about Hollywood, may very well apply to the publishing industry as well; especially during this time of digital expansion and the resulting democratization of creative expression. The tools of production and marketing are available to everyone now, not just studios and publishing houses. What the long term net…
If you follow FiLMLab at all, you know that we haven’t been around terribly long–a mere four years, including this one. But this year’s contest is by far the most challenging. In the first two years, we asked that you utilize the annual Willamette Writers Conference theme in your short script (“Fresh Brewed” and “New…
