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Normally, I'm all for "the more the merrier", but we've also had a lot of people who just submit, but don't read anything in return. However, last time Don did a good job on letting people know who was not reading. That helped a lot.
I think, what I meant was that when there were fewer entries and they were all by active board members, there seemed to be more care in the comments.
IMHO, having 40 entries and a lot of them being total strangers who don't read or never show up here again, does not help this site. Well, at least not the forums. Maybe that's just me though...
The best scripts in the OWC are almost always from the active board members. The worst of the bunch tend to be from people who don't post on here and don't make the effort to comment on other scripts, or even respond to the comments about their own. The challenge would hardly suffer from losing a few of these leeches.
For me, I try to make the effort to read all of the entries if I enter the challenge. When there's only a week or two to read 30 to 40 scripts it can be tough to get them all read in that time and leave constructive feedback. Especially when you know some of the scripts you are reading are by people who will not even bother to contribute. So some of the comments and reads get rushed to cram them all in. I think that's why Pia is saying the feedback was given more care when the entries were fewer, because you knew the feedback would be appreciated and responded to.
Having some of the crappier entries definitely detracts some time that could be better spent writing constructive criticism for the serious entries. Don's system of letting us know which scripts are by active members seems to help, but there is still a fair bit of clutter in the end. Is it possible to remove scripts from the forum if the authors don't comment on a given number of entries? Even reading and commenting on 3 other scripts would seem feasible for everyone IMO, and that is really not making much of an effort at that. For people who don't participate at all, can't we just take their entries down? Just a thought.
Memwipe - Sci-Fi, Action, Thriller (114 pages) - In a world where memories can be erased by request, a Memory Erasing Specialist desperately searches for the culprit when his wife becomes a target for erasure -- with his former colleagues hot on his trail.
Scuba Diving? Beware the zombie dolphins. They're fierce this time of year. Course, the zombie guppies's are also runnin', but they have such tiny little mouths...
Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently - Dove Chocolate Wrapper
Oh, I'm so sorry, I kind of massinvited for you(( Accidentally really. In my defense - I never speed read and I try to read many. I kind of had an idea but seeing that you want to keep it to true members...
My challenge in these things is to try and get a script out in a single week that I think could have potential as a film...I've failed in the past to even get one in in time.
Sorry I'm slow to catch up on this thread. My feeling is that probably what needs to happen in the future is a tier system.
--First tier: Beginners or people who rate themselves as beginners.
--Second tier: Those with some experience, but just hacking it out. These folks would probably be most of us. Some times we have strokes of brilliance, but mostly, we're just struggling to keep our heads above the water.
--Third tier: The writers that have it down. They can sit down in a four hour session and have a story so well crafted that it would make most of us want to curl up and die because we know we are way far off that mark.
For myself, it's a challenge just to get through one of these events. I don't find them easy at all. Come to think of it, I'm scared of participating in another one.
Another oddity surrounding this particular iteration of the OWC that I submit for your consideration is the propagation of the curious word "pisstake".
Not a word I generally use myself, but its adoption here has certainly been unusual.
A search of the May 2010 board for the word "piss" reveals 40 instances of the word in its various forms in 32 posts -- mostly in the form of "pisstake".
I was kind of disappointed this particular go-round, as I generally do look forward to these.
I know that a certain amount of bitching and groaning always accompanies the announcement of the OWC genre and theme -- and I realize they are meant to be challenging -- but in the future, I would hope they are also a bit more conventional.
I would also point out (to somebody...who could it be?) that one of the most successful "star" scripts around here -- a good, filmable script as opposed to a pisstake -- arose from a nice, straight-up horror challenge back in the day.