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What I do try sometimes, if I'm sent a invite to a contest, is I look at who's reading / judging, or who's promised to read or judge as a prize, and I write to the individual or company directly.
If he / she is willing to take part or become a prize in a contest, then they are certainly willing to read a script that is pitched well.
I trust and continue to trust MovieBytes.Com for information related to screenwriting contests where one can see crowd sourced feedback about various contests.
I'm not sure if you guys can see this as it's from a Facebook writer's group, but the guy who runs Screencraft is taking open questions about this today live between 6Pm and 7PM (UK Time) but you can post questions now. I've already posted a load.
Thanks for the clarification on what has been going on with Coverfly and other screenplay contests and coverage services. I admire your passion for this.
I've backed off a bit on allowing coverage services to advertise on SimplyScripts as I just can't judge the quality of work being done. As for contests, I continue to urge folks who may consider entering a contest to check out https://moviebytes.com and look up the contest information there.
Mark,
Thanks for being the conduit on this. One cannot see the thread unless one joins that person's Facebook group which I find somewhat suspect... Would love to hear your views on this, also.
In general,
Like CJ, I don't have a dog in this fight and I'm just trying to present the facts to folks and them each person come to his/her conclusion.
Reading all this stuff about Coverfly can be a bit scary, not knowing who to trust. If it’s true, it sounds like what they did was like what Cambridge Analytica did to Facebook to draw a comparison.
If you're still listening, can I chyme in on the contest debate? Just one guy's opinion.
When you were throwing money at contests and the Blacklist, you were probably doing it for the same reason I have. Because you're just some guy that lives nowhere near Hollywood. And you had no contacts...no reputation.
I mean, put yourself in the Producers shoes. When a producer goes on Script Revolution, how do they sort the good from the bad? They can't read through thousands of scripts to find a needle in a haystack. Contest placement (even non-nichol/ Austin IMO) helps with that.
Now you've got a name for yourself, you have lots of followers on Twitter, but what about a guy like me? I'm just a nobody living in butt-fuck nowhere, Canada. I haven't posted my scripts yet to Script Revolution, but I was planning to after this contest season.
I'm a big boy, I know what I was doing when I spent the entry fee. I want to gauge my skills against other amateurs so I can improve my craft...I don't see a crime with that.
My vote is to keep contest placements on Script Revolution...but in the end it's your baby. I can respect your decision either way, CJ.
So yesterday, I made the tough choice to remove all confirmed awards other than Nicholl and AFF. This has reduced the number of award winning scripts on Script Revolution down from around 500 to 25 and I'm sure there's some members who will be angry about seemingly losing a form of status - even though these comp awards are borderline participation trophies.
IMO - this is a mistake. Why Nicholl and Austin but not PAGE, Final Draft, Scriptapoolza???? By only listing these two you are essentially endorsing them and discounting the others. Better to have none than two.
I'm not interested in the ins and outs of Coverfly, but I fully agree that all these paid things are a waste of time. There's possibly some mileage in the top Competitions...the rest are for vanity (if you win) at best.
The actual Industry is tiny and often directly related. Someone who is actually trying to make it seriously needs to be moving in those circles and networking.
An entire pseudo-Industry has developed around the actual Industry, which is far bigger in terms of numbers than the actual Industry. They've managed to convince people it is like a ladder, where you start at the bottom of the pseudo Industry and climb up into the actual Industry. It can happen. Rarely.
It's far more common to actually approach the Industry itself and pitch projects to make it.
As promised, here's the questions and answers from last night's live session. All answers are from John Rhodes, co-founder of Screencraft. All questions are from members of writer's groups, some are from me!
It's lengthy I know but hopefully informative. I've not included every question or comment to try and cut it down a bit!
Q - The recent anonymous blog has brought to light that several competitions and script services are part of the same company that runs Coverfly. What type of processes and monitoring do you have in place to make sure best practices are observed and there’s no conflict of interests?
A - Our guiding principle is to operate each company in the best interests of its customers and the long term sustainability of its business (which includes reputation, customer experience and word-of-mouth reviews and recommendations). There is some overlapping administrative support, but each company has dedicated staff as well - and of course, the competitions each have unique readers, juries, process and network of industry relationships. Please let me know if you have any specific questions on this topic. Hope this helps clarify. Thanks for the question.
Q - Hi John, thanks for lending us your time in the name of transparency for the rumours that are flying about re: Coverfly online. I've read writers on Twitter saying they entered one of your contests, but they 'never' gave permission for the scripts to appear on the site and 'never' created an account. What do you think has happened here?
A - This is a misunderstanding. And I know the root cause of it. The short answer: we have never and will never create accounts for writers.
The longer answer: a handful of early users of our platform were unpleasantly surprised to see one or more of their screenplays already in their dashboard when they signed up. This is because their scripts had already been in the Coverfly administrative accounts of some of the various partnering contests, fellowships, labs and workshops using CF to manage their submissions. Early on, before we changed our messaging to make it more clear, some writers thought we somehow had acquired their scripts without their permission.
Here is an example that might help make our data use clearer (our data policy is listed on our website at Coverfly.com for more detail): 1. Writer submits one or more screenplays to a third party contest, Fellowship, lab or festival which manages submissions on Coverfly. 2. Coverfly does not have the right to use this data as it belongs exclusively to the writer and competition to which the writer submits according to the terms of whatever competition they enter. The entry is managed on CF, but CF has no authorization yet to access, read or share the entry. 3. When and if the writer signs up for a CF account, and specifically agrees to CF terms of service, the writer (and only the writer) will then be able to see and manage their submission data. 4. Optionally, the writer may choose to make their Script discoverable in CF’s searchable database, and it may show up on The Red List.
Coverfly is three things: 1. A writer dashboard to manage submissions data, store screenplays and aggregate evaluations and scores. 2. An admin dashboard for partner festivals and competitions to manage their submissions and readers. 3. An Industry dashboard for producers and managers to comb through the scripts and evaluation data (only the scripts and data opted-in to by writers - everything is private and not shared by default).
Q - If we do decide to make our projects public on coverfly, how much control do we have over which industry execs can read our script? Is there a list somewhere that we can see and are they carefully vetted to make sure they are legit and genuinely looking for material? Also would we get to know who has read them, as otherwise we might end up pitching to that company through another route when they have already seen it and passed? Could we be informed like I think they do on other sites?
A - There are currently over 100 industry professionals which we have carefully vetted before creating their Industry Dashboard. Additionally, we have a full time development executive combing through projects in the system and hand-picking projects for producers, managers, agents and development executives who are either looking for a specific type of project, or are looking for a particular kind of writer. We don't allow writers to see *who* has downloaded or read their script, but each time and industry professional downloads your script you would be notified. You can also see how many industry people have viewed your profile or clicked through to read more about your project. As you can imagine, the majority of our industry partners have expressed that they don't want to be publicly listed, as they aren't interested in receiving unsolicited query letters or submissions - however they are happy to be on Coverfly because they can peruse writers and easily search for projects by genre, log line keyword, format and average Industry Score.
Q - Scores. Can you explain a bit more about them? When a script gets loaded to Coverfly, it seems to get an initial score quite quickly and I don’t know how or what criteria is used. Then as it progresses through competitions that score changes. Is there the potential of competitions using this score to skip the script reading process? So for example, If I enter a Screencraft comp via the Coverfly portal and the script already has a score from another competition, could Screencraft use that score as the basis to reject or accept without farming the script out to their own readers?
A - Speaking for ScreenCraft, we would never skip reading and carefully evaluating a screenplay just because it has a pre-existing Coverfly Industry Score, for three main reasons: 1. we expect writers to continuously improve their drafts (writing is re-writing), 2. we want to help writers increase their Industry Score because we really want it to be a genuinely valuable metric to the industry 3. we acknowledge that there’s a degree of subjectivity, so we want the project to be evaluated by a fresh reader whose opinion can be included in the Industry Score algorithm and potentially show a stronger confidence in the aggregate score.
It’s important to understand that we do not want people to interpret the Industry Score as a metric of quality (especially if it’s only calculated off of one or two readers’ evaluations) — rather it’s a metric of degree of confidence of quality. So, by and large, an Industry Score will start out relatively low until at least 3 evaluations are aggregated. It’s also important to note that while most organizations charge, there are free competitions occasionally on Coverfly that are Industry Score-qualifying.
Q - Some competitions like Bluecat include some feedback notes for free. Although short, I do feel reassured that my script has been at least been read and assessed properly by these notes. I believe readers do write some notes for a report , so why not provide the writer with a brief summary so they have some idea of why they were rejected or even why they were accepted to the next stage of the competition?
A - I love this idea, and I really like BlueCat and its founder Gordy Hoffman. I also like your suggestion for all competitions to provide at least some kind of written feedback, report or score notes so that the writer has some context for why the reader decided to eliminate or advance their project. I can only speak for ScreenCraft, since that has been my sole focus for several years; we decided to provide optional (and strongly recommended) detailed notes, rather than offering cursory feedback to everyone. As you can imagine, it takes a reader a bit more time and effort to write constructive, helpful feedback on screenplay. We strive to keep the cost of evaluating each submission as low as possible, so the competition is accessible to people who don't have as much money to spend on the optional professional feedback. I'll put some more thought into this, as I really love what BlueCat does in offering a page of feedback to every entrant (even if it's at a slightly higher cost).
Q - Are employees excluded from competitions in sister companies?
A - Our full-time employees and owners are of course not eligible to submit to any of Red Ampersand's organizations' competitions (ScreenCraft and WeScreenplay).
Q - Am I right in thinking that the submissions portal does not allow different orgs to see one another's contests and info?
A - Yes that's correct. Each organization's administrator only has access to the projects submitted to their organization.
Q - In general, do your contests allocate and read (first read) scripts as the entries are received, or do you stack them all up until closing date?
A - Yes, each of our competitions' readers claim scripts as they come in. One of the reason we have 2 or 3 deadlines per competition is to encourage a more even distribution of submissions so that our readers can more easily pace their evaluation process.
Q - Can you offer any information about criteria for enrolling industry professionals? How do you evaluate them and how do you apply across-the-board standards (if applicable)?
A - We hire readers with at least two years of experience reading for reputable entertainment industry agencies, studios, management companies and production houses. When readers apply to read for ScreenCraft, for instance, we look at their relevant work experience, but most importantly we read examples of their past professional screenplay analysis (coverage or development notes). If they're up to our standards, we hire them as freelance readers to claim as much (or as little) work as they want. We have just over 30 readers - some of them only claim a couple projects per month, and some of them claim a couple projects per day. By allowing readers to choose what they want to evaluate in our system, we organically allow them to gravitate toward formats and genres that they enjoy reading or that they have relevant professional experience in reading. For instance, some of our readers have a background in comedy TV development, while others are more experienced in developing horror or thriller feature films.
Q - This will sound blunt, so please excuse me. What is the difference between the "quality" of a script, and the "confidence of quality" in a script? Right now, it does my head in.
A - If you're inquiring about Coverfly Industry Score, we emphasize that it's a metric of "confidence of quality" because if a script only has one or two opinions on it, then the Industry Score will skew a bit low because that's not enough data for industry professionals to feel confident in its quality purely based on the score data. As an analogy, if you're familiar with the film and TV review website Rotten Tomatoes which aggregates professional and amateur critics' reviews, a movie with only two reviews could have an aggregate score that's wildly divergent from what the true average review score of the movie will ultimately be when there are lots more reviews taken into account. So we don't want scripts with just one or two reviews getting pushed up the rankings to our industry partners unless we're really sure that they're top quality screenplays, and to be confident in the quality of a script, our Industry Score simply requires several reviews to determine a true weighted average. I hope this helps clarify -- I realize it's a pretty new thing we're trying to do, so please go ahead and ask any other questions that can help me clearly define the purpose and process of Coverfly's Industry Score.
For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK
Q - Can you tell us a bit more about The Red List: what it is/means, plus why it's used? Also, can other contests access this information?
A - The Red List is (to me) the most exciting feature of Coverfly, but to some people its the scariest. It's essentially a public leaderboard of projects that writers have opted to make discoverable by the industry pros on our platform and the project description (title, log line, Industry Score, and writer's name) are displayed as a dynamically updated ranking for anyone to see. Some writers love this - to be able to see how their Industry Score stacks up against others in their genre or format category - while others are mortified to have their project ranked and prefer to keep their projects private.
Q - Okay, let's say I'm disenchanted with trying to win contest $$$ because there are hordes of scripts chasing one rabbit. Can Coverfly help me find the producer who is looking for my particular writing skills, rather than buy a spec script from me?
A - Yes, absolutely. In fact, the reason we created Coverfly was to allow great writers a more systematic process for being discovered by industry professionals who are genuinely interested in hiring emerging talent for open writing assignments. In fact, while producers are indeed looking for great scripts, the most popular use of Coverfly from the industry side is literary managers looking for promising writers to develop and sign. As we all know, screenwriting is a competitive career, and it often takes a team of people working together to create momentum in this industry. Managers and agents are a very valuable part of the process for many writers. We wanted a more systematic (and less haphazard and sometimes downright nepotistic) way for emerging talent to be discovered by the industry who desperately needs fresh voices and creative talent.
Q - Are you permitted to reveal what score (%, threshold) allocated to a script, gets it through the first round of a contest, for example, say, to quarter finals? Taking Screencraft, which offers many categories of contest, is there a uniform threshold or do they vary per genre or per other criteria applied?
A - The threshold for ScreenCraft is based on percentage -- every script is read once, then the approximate top 25% advance to a second round of evaluations, and the top 10% receive a third round of evaluations (with each evaluation being averaged with its previous), which in turn determines the top 10 ranked finalists. This system isn't rigid, because we want to account for variations in volume and quality of submissions each cycle. As a frame of reference as to ScreenCraft's volume, on average, each ScreenCraft genre-specific screenplay competitions receives 500-900 submissions. The annual ScreenCraft Screenwriting Fellowship received just over 2,100 applications last year. The threshold for Fellowship tends to be a narrower percentage of scripts advancing because we want "quarter-finalists" and "semi-finalists" to truly merit those placements. The short answer is that after the readers' scores determine the cutoff, we do considerable careful deliberations before we announce the placements because we know that the quality of the scripts we recognize as advancing determines the quality of our taste and ultimately the long-term success of our organization to identify top rising talent.
For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK
Here's my two cents after I've waded through the whole thing. To me this isn't a scam but more of an awareness of how big and competitive the script competition industry has become. It seems quite similar to a production line. Writers quite often ask the question, how can a competition go through thousands of entries properly? Well, we are beginning to see how. Centralized portals, automated processes, outsourcing the initial script evaluation and reading to third-parties, a shared scoring system and bigger companies forming who run the entire chain.
There’s nothing wrong with such practices, it’s just business. This makes it convenient for the writer to enter single projects to multiple competitions, easier for script readers to organize their work and easier (and more economical) to run the competition. It’s just as all streamlined businesses, it is less personal, quality may suffer and there’s a huge amount of trust that everything is being done above board behind closed doors.
At the end of the day this is an industry based on writers and filmmakers submitting their hopes and dreams for a fee, yet all the vast majority get is a rejection email. That industry is huge and highly competitive as we’ve seen with this smear campaign. Yet, the amount of competitions that agents and producers actually take note of can be counted on with a single hand. This fact doesn’t stop loads of competitions springing up each year who do their best to give the impression that winning will give you a way in.
The advice is always the same - research the competitions, ask yourself what you want to get out of it and if your work is a fit, read all the T&C’s and make sure you understand them. That’s what logic dictates and it is good advice. But there’s plenty of desperate people out there who rush in with their heart. Then there’s those who are naive and inexperienced. All get taken advantage of. I think this industry could do with some oversight, some governing body that can enforce guidelines, stop monopolies forming etc. but I realise such an entity is an improbability.
Food for thought.
For more of my scripts, stories, produced movies and the ocassional blog, check out my new website. CLICK
Here's my two cents after I've waded through the whole thing. To me this isn't a scam but more of an awareness of how big and competitive the script competition industry has become. It seems quite similar to a production line. Writers quite often ask the question, how can a competition go through thousands of entries properly? Well, we are beginning to see how. Centralized portals, automated processes, outsourcing the initial script evaluation and reading to third-parties, a shared scoring system and bigger companies forming who run the entire chain.
There’s nothing wrong with such practices, it’s just business. This makes it convenient for the writer to enter single projects to multiple competitions, easier for script readers to organize their work and easier (and more economical) to run the competition. It’s just as all streamlined businesses, it is less personal, quality may suffer and there’s a huge amount of trust that everything is being done above board behind closed doors.
At the end of the day this is an industry based on writers and filmmakers submitting their hopes and dreams for a fee, yet all the vast majority get is a rejection email. That industry is huge and highly competitive as we’ve seen with this smear campaign. Yet, the amount of competitions that agents and producers actually take note of can be counted on with a single hand. This fact doesn’t stop loads of competitions springing up each year who do their best to give the impression that winning will give you a way in.
The advice is always the same - research the competitions, ask yourself what you want to get out of it and if your work is a fit, read all the T&C’s and make sure you understand them. That’s what logic dictates and it is good advice. But there’s plenty of desperate people out there who rush in with their heart. Then there’s those who are naive and inexperienced. All get taken advantage of. I think this industry could do with some oversight, some governing body that can enforce guidelines, stop monopolies forming etc. but I realise such an entity is an improbability.
Food for thought.
Well said.
- Enter them with eyes wide open.
- Enjoy the process. It's a challenge is all. It is not the path to the Oscars.
If you place high enough in most competitions you will get nibbles, requests and maybe even options. That's not a guarantee, but it's better than nothing. Most of the interaction I have gotten from "the industry" has been a result of contests. And if I had gotten no nibbles, I still found the competition process fun.
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