This month we launched an exciting new free screenplay competition for screenwriters. 50 Kisses gives you the opportunity to see your two minute script, as part of a larger feature film, on a cinema screen near you.
Sound good? Read on.
There are only two things we need you to do, but it is very important you do them.
1) Write a two page screenplay set on Valentine’s Night.
2) Enter it into our free London Screenwriters’ Festival Feature competition by June 29th
That’s it.
Sounds simple. Doesn’t it? That’s because it is.
Not only is this an opportunity for you to get a screenwriting credit on a feature film, but it costs you nothing to enter. Nothing.
If opportunity knocks, you’ve still got to be bothered enough to answer the door. So are you going to be bothered enough to make this happen for yourself? For those of you unfamiliar with what an opportunity looks like, this is one.
When the writing competition closes on June 29th, our Judges will scour the script pile and choose the 50 best scripts. These 50 scripts will then be released to the filmmaking community. The 50 best films (one per script) will be chosen and edited into one beautiful feature length film set on Valentine’s Night.
We have lots of exciting and participatory things planned around 50 Kisses but as with all great films it starts with you, the writer. Your script is the cornerstone to this project.
So, what you waiting for? We want your kiss by June 29th.
So, this weekend marks 6 months until the London Screenwriters Festival (AND THE CLOSE OF THE EARLY BIRD OFFER) throws open its doors for the third year. We know from experience that those 6 months will go fast.
It’s the summer after all. It’s all sunshine and sangria not scripts and seminars. But we want you to know, we are planning to be bigger and better than ever before.
What have we got waiting for you?
Keynote Speakers – We have had such names as Griff Rhys Jones, Robert McKee, Chris Vogler and Linda Aronson grace our stage – and Skype – to address the London Screenwriters Festival directly. This year we are working on a schedule of speakers that will make even the seasoned Screenwriters Festival veteran raise their eyebrows.
Seminars – From 50 ways to break into the business, to should I write a short script? From Pitching to Hollywood to how can I get my radio script produced? We try to cover all the various ways into, and route up, the business. If there is something in particular you want to see, then tell us, and fi we agree others will want to see it, we’ll try to organise.
Workshops – It’s not just about being talked at, it’s about participating too. Workshops like Script Editing Live, where your script talked through and discussed with a professional script editor, will be back. As will our workshops on motivation and keeping your focus as a writer. Come, learn and enjoy!
Speed Pitching – Perhaps most popular of all is our speed pitching. You get assigned three industry executives that you can pitch your project to. You have two minutes each pitch – can you do what it takes in two minutes to get them to ask for script? One writer did last year and is now in Hollywood on a multi-million dollar project. Could you be one of our success stories next year?
Networking – Do not underestimate how good networking with other writers can be. Not only can you meet people who will regale you with battle stories from the screenwriting trenches, but you’ll also meet writers you may want to collaborate with, or read scripts for. Use the downtime between all the exciting things happening at LSF to be a networking machine.
We’ll announce more and more of our confirmed speakers and seminars over the course of the summer, but we want to make sure you are there. If you haven’t already taken booked your place, then do so here (http://www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com/tickets/) and get the most out of your ticket, and our new delegate network, when it launches.
You may not have heard much from us, but we have been beavering away at the LSF office. We have a whole new website infrastructure that we will be launching soon, and we are also remastering all of the LSF videos, from 2010, 2011 and the Comedy Festival in 2011. We are going to make ALL of these sessions available to all of our delegates.
Our fab intern Leah has begun working her way through nearly 100 video sessions, re-strapping, titling, rendering, exporting, uploading, checking, MP3 podcasting… it’s a mahoosive task, but once done, all our sessions will be in one place and ready for LSF delegates to watch.
Once they are done and the website has been beta tested, if you have ever bought a ticket for any festival, you will be getting an invite tom come and explore our whole new writers playground!
Love Team LSF x
PS – You can still get your LSF pass in March for £30 a month for eight months – sign up here (Scroll down to March Madness). Or get the full pass below for £240 and maximise your tax position – remember training IS tax deductible).
I have to pinch myself to think that it was only late October, four months ago, that I attended the London Screenwriters Festival for the first time. The growth in my writing portfolio, confidence as a writer and the opportunities that have come from both of those have been exponential. And although those were not necessarily the things I wanted from the festival, I’d have settled for them if you told me that’s what I’d get going into it.
Before I went, I felt like an absolute charlatan ordering 500 business cards with “Screenwriter” boldly stated under my name. That nagging little devil in my head was screaming “What a waste of money, you fool! Sack this off and go on holiday instead” Even the – usually more relaxed – angel on the other side was grimacing at the audacity of it. I hadn’t, after all, had anything produced, so how could I stand in esteemed company call myself a screenwriter? It’s borderline delusional.
Until last year I would describe myself as an aspiring screenwriter for in my head that is what I was. It was something I wanted to do, someday. The truth is labelling yourself as “aspiring” gives you somewhat of a safety net. It means you can wriggle out of doing it. You can let life get in the way and stop you from writing. After all, you’re only aspiring to be a screenwriter, you aren’t really one. Brutal truth is if you really want to succeed, you need to do away with the safety net of aspiration and declare yourself a screenwriter. Be bold. Yes it is scary, but there is power in the boldness that you can capitalise on.
For me, the London Screenwriters Festival was an opportunity to stand in a room with other people and declare myself a Screenwriter for the first time. What was amazing is it wasn’t just me who finally believed it, it was those I said it to too! No-one sniggered, no-one rolled their eyes and no-one corrected me. That was very powerful indeed.
The environment surrounding the festival was so incredibly supportive that when I left on the Sunday evening – applause ringing in my ears from Chris’ rousing “Go get ‘um tiger” speech – that I admit, I felt a little let down going back to real life. There was a big open road out there and somehow I had to take the knowledge I had gleaned over three and a bit days and map my way to the next suitable point in the road.
Here’s the thing. Going to the London Screenwriters Festival itself will not get you to where you want to be, but taking massive and consistent action after it will. So I did. First things first, I banished all traces of aspiring or new from online profiles, I just was. Secondly, I established a writing routine and I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And wrote. And when I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about writing. And when I wasn’t thinking about writing, I was dreaming about writing.
Since then what has happened? Well, I am a Blue Cat Screenplay Quarter Finalist with a feature I wrote. I have just won the Circalit “Get Your Short Film Made” competition – a little short of mine will be made by Jason Wingard who won last years Virgin Media Shorts. Another short of mine is in production via a Canadian film making collective. And I have commitments from three other filmmakers to put my short scripts into production this year.
In the wide world of scripting and screenwriting, I am fully aware I am nothing and no-one. I trumpet myself because no-one else is going to do it. But I’m getting there. I’m a step on from yesterday and a quantum leap on from this time last year. So here’s my challenge to you, let this years London Screenwriting Festival be your springboard. Let it be the moment you decide to step out from the shadows and declare “I’m a screenwriter”. You never know where it might lead.
The London Screenwriters Festival and Guerilla Film organisation is looking for a new kick ass manager.
Is this you?
We are looking for someone who can meet a challenge head on, offer terrific organisational skills, charm the pants off people we need help from, research new opportunities and speakers, as well as pitch in pretty much everywhere else when needed. Much like our existing team.
You should be enthusiastic, fearless and enjoy working in a dynamic team.
So core skills you would need…
Organisation
Computer organisation (Excel / Word etc)
Highly collaborative
Take action kinda person
Research
Charming communicator
Understanding of social media
Understanding of the film, TV and screenwriting businesses
The position will be freelance at first, and working out of our offices at Ealing Studios. The job will start in March and you will manage a small team.
This year we will be running a number of events and this person will be pivotal to all of them.
This is actually our fourth website for the London Screenwriters’ Festival, if you include the Comedy Writers Festival site.
If this were a script, it would be Draft 4. And like any near complete screenplay, in the coming months, we will do the obligatory polish, and updates of course! While we are using different tools to build a website, the process is so very similar to story and script development.
We have finally locked in final dates for LSF 2012 too, Friday 26th of October through to Sunday the 28th. We did look at moving the dates either earlier or later, but for lots of logistical reasons, we couldn’t do it, though we do plan a move in 2013. Yes we are now planning that far ahead!
We hope you like our new site and blog and would love you to contribute your thoughts and comments too.
Swing back soon as we have a few surprises up our sleeve also.
If you haven’t yet, do follow us on Twitter @LondonSWF
While most of you where in bed and snug on Sunday morning, the newly formed LSF Decorating Team hit the LSF office and managed to paint the whole room by the time the sun was setting. It is now all shiny and clean, hoorah!
The main reason fort this is that we are subletting out some desks to writers, an initiative that we started in January, and one that is succeeding. The plan is to make the LSF office 100% sustainable AND provide a fertile and productive community environment for screenwriters.
So thank you to the Decorating Team, LSF veterans Hillary, Teddy and Lucia, you did a splendid job. Next weekend and it’s the flooring and desks, before it’s ready for action.
In the past few weeks there have been two stories of extraordinary success that should resonate with you as a filmmaker. In both cases, the creators earned in excess of a million dollars using the web as their shopfront.
Earn A Million With Kindle Success
Amanda Hocking had been writing novels for years, but had always met with the same negative response from publishers. To support her passion for writing, she held down a job working with disabled people and earning around £12k pa.
In 2010, enough was enough and Amanda self published ‘My Blood Approves’ treading familiar teen heartache and paranormal ground. Within six months she was selling enough to quit her job. In January 2011 alone she sold 450,000 copies! Amanda was not printing books, but selling them on the Amazon Kindle. No warehousing, no stock, no upfront investment aside from her time.
Amanda made the first book in the series available for just $0.99, with the sequels coming in at $2.99, cunningly hooking her readers.
So why did she succeed where others failed? Amanda clearly LOVES the genre and she is as much a fan as her readers. She also engages enthusiastically via her blog and social media.
Last year, it’s estimated that she earned around $2m from Amazon Kindle sales alone. Her success now proven, she has of course secured traditional publishing deals as well as a film deal.
You can publish to Kindle right now. It’s not rocket science. The door is WIDE open.
Shoot Your Comedy Set and sell it for $1m
Last year, comedian Louis C.K. filmed a performance and sold it online for $5. And in his words there was ‘no DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.’ In just over one week, he had made over $1m and it’s still selling now.
While his name may not be known to UK audiences, he is know in the USA and already had an established fanbase. In his words he considered it “a $5 impulse that 225,000 people had.” Still, no-one thought his fanbase would be SO engaged.
He also asked people not to pirate it by saying…
‘I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without ‘corporate’ restrictions. Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.’
Piracy is unavoidable and there are some torrents our there for sure, but not as many as you might expect. The real question is, did it significantly harm sales? At over $1m in just over one week, does it really mater?
Louis has subsequently promised to ‘pay-bonus’ his staff for working so hard, as well as give a huge chunk to charity (around 25%).
1. They know their audience and they care about them.
2. They have both invested time in order to get good at what they do. Neither of these guys are overnight successes, even if they look like they are.
3. Their product is cheap, so cheap in fact that most people won’t think too long about it, they will just buy or not buy.
4. Their stuff is easy to buy. If you have a kindle, it’s very easy to buy a book. The site for Lois C.K. is VERY simple and clear.
5. Both are cheap allowing for impulse purchases.
6. Both embraced new platforms and new models for distribution.
7. Neither have a middle man / distributor.
8. I suspect neither went into it with the clear goal to make $millions.
Not all of these lessons and strategies would work as well for film makers, but it does prove that if you somehow capture the zeitgeist, you can become an ‘overnight’ success.
Due to overwhelming popular demand, we are offering the recurring £24 a month payment plan for the London Screenwriters’ Festival 2012. Spread the payments over 10 instalments between now and October 2012. Use the button below to sign up.
We will in due course contact you to join the relevant online groups for the 2012 festival. As a bonus, we will be sharing some of the 2011 seminars in the 2012 group, so you will get access to some of the best sessions from this years festival. So be sure to join that group when you get the emailed invite.
Look forward to seeing you there!
Chris Jones
Creative Director, The London Screenwriters’ Festival
Ben Williams is Producer’s Assistant to a leading UK Producer as well as screenwriting and directing his own films, most recently a beautiful tale of fandom and friendship in his short film“The Fan”.
It struck me chatting to him over a cuppa at the London Screenwriters’ Festival, what an important link between Producers and screenwriters (not to mention everyone else on a film) that a Producer’s Assistant is, and yet how little we really pay attention to the people who do this work and what the job itself is. So I asked Ben to answer a few questions for us to tell us a little about his work and he was kind enough to share a few thoughts.
Can you tell us a little bit about your work as a Producer’s Assistant and the sort of things it entails on a day to day basis.» Read the rest of this entry «
