Tag Archive for Willamette Writers

FiLMLaB Grand Prize Winner Announced!

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,…

Jill Kelly Book Signing for Broken Boys

Jill Kelly

Jill Kelly will be selling books and reading from Broken Boys, talking about villains and detectives, and answering questions about the writing life. Tuesday May 10, 7 pm Where: First Cup Coffee, 41st and Woodstock, Portland About Broken Boys: Maggie Morehouse has a husband who ignores her and a grown son who doesn’t need her.…

Will There Be A Bug Eyed Bill For 2016 FiLMLaB?

film poster for 2015 FiLMLaB winning script Bug Eyed Bill

We are preparing for the 2016 FilmLab launch this Tuesday, January 5th, at Tabor Space! We’ve had lots of helpful suggestions as to what the contest should look like this year: shorten the page count to just four pages (because seven isn’t hard enough!); have two writing prompts instead of three; utilize the conference theme as…

Bug Eyed Bill Premiers At The WWC

As Willamette Writers heads into the last two weeks of organizing their annual conference, finalizing details for workshops, classes, pitches and celebrations; FiLMLaB, likewise, is putting the final editorial and post-production touches on winner Mark Scarbrough’s short film, The Robbery. Yes, it is a film now, his short script transformed by director Michael Parisien of…

How to Lose FiLMLaB and Win BlueCat: An Interview with Susan Fleming

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…

FiLMLaB Has A Winner!

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…

Navigating the Notes

Getting notes on your screenplay is never fun. Thirty years of writing scripts for studios, producers, and directors has taught me that. The reason is simple: They only address what’s wrong with your work. Rarely do they applaud what you’ve done right. In fact, they can be so devoid of praise that by the time…

FiLMLaB Reveals 2015 Celebrity Judges

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…