MoviePoet.com

A while ago I found a website called MoviePoet.com that sponsors a monthly contest for short screenplays. They give you a different theme each month for screenplay. You are free to come up with any idea you want that you think fits that theme. However, your screenplay cannot be any longer than five pages. You have a month to write it and to submit it. Then the next month the members of the site review and vote on your work. The names of the screenplay writers are removed from the script so you do not who exactly wrote what.

The month of September was the first time I enter one. The month’s theme was the following: “One is the Loneliest Number” There were a couple of stipulations on what your script had to have. It could have only one person in it. There were to be no dead bodies in it. You could not use off-screen voices. And you could only have one actor in it.

Here is my entry for it entitled “Focus”. (NOTE: Requires Adobe Reader to view it) This is the script as it was submitted. I have changed nothing in it. I got the results of the voting on it today. This is the type of feedback I need more of.

Screenwriting has been often referred to as being the “art of problem solving”. You create the problem such as character, plot, etc. And then it is up to you to find the solution to it. Screenwriting not only has to tell the story but it must also show the story. It is a visual medium. There are so many things going on the screen at once. The actor(s). The cinematography. The music. The action. The dialogue itself. And how all of these things happen at once. It really requires more the viewer to be more than a passive witness to it. But back to the writing portion. Five pages of script may not seem to be that hard to write. It does not take as long as you think it might to write five pages plus. The hardest part about writing is the fact that you have to edit and rewrite constantly. The hardest part about being “creative” is that what ideas I have never come out in completed form. They have to be shaped out. In this case, they have to written down and rewritten over and over. There is no magic formula. It is never the same process twice to get a solution. You have to make sure everything is being used to “efficiency” in the script. This is very true in a short screenplay. The hardest part of the creative process is that is never over with. As the feedback of my entry pointed out. I am not at the place I think I was on the “learning curve.” My education process is pretty much a matter of “D.I.Y.” versus “trial and error”. It at least does not require taking on more student loans.

If you want to check out another past entry from another contest then click here for Customer Service Representative: Nick. It was based on a theme too. The script had to be based on the idea of “In a Nick of Time.” (Requires Adobe Reader too) It did place in the top ten of contest once. Winning like that felt good. However, there never was any real feedback. That would have probably have been better in the long term. But it was what it was.

I did enter MoviePoet’s October challenge. I know right now I am going to be hit on format again. As for the November challenge I do not know if I can come up with an idea. But I have a month. The theme for the month is just not my favorite topic.