This weekend, on the BlueCat Facebook page, we are giving away a choice of a Feature or Short screenplay entry!

How would one of your original characters describe themselves in a Twitter bio? 140 characters or less? Best answer by Monday Midnight PST wins a free submission (short or feature) to the 2014 Competition. Past Free Entry winners ineligible. Limit three entries per person! Have fun! Submit an Entry!

On Twitter, we are giving away three Short Screenplay entries!

ReTweet or share/tag our June 1st Call For Entries to be eligible. Three winners announced early next week!

Good Luck and Have Fun!

Throughout the duration of the competition, we’ll often have Free Entry Contests on our Social Media where writers can win competition entries or workshop registrations. Check back often!

In an old clip, Anderson talks about fighting for his film, and in the accompanying article, he discusses “…his horrifying experience on his first  directorial feature, SYDNEY (aka HARD EIGHT), and how he survived and overcame.” 

They say the summer blockbuster season starts earlier every year. When you’re blasted by trailer after trailer of upcoming summer flicks, it’s hard not to notice the dearth of films directed or written by women. So what’s the story? Where’s the female presence in mainstream Hollywood?

Well, look no further than Dr. Martha Lauzen’s annual study of women in the film industry. As IndieWire.com says, “The results are, unfortunately, what you’d expect. In 2012, women were 18% of the directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers, and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films. This represents no change from 2011, which is supremely depressing.”

Click here for the article, and here for the study.

Best International Screenplay

Call For Entries

The BlueCat Screenplay Competition remains committed to the development of screenwriters worldwide.

In this spirit, BlueCat Competition gives the Joplin Award to the Best Feature Screenplay we annually from our entrants outside the USA, Canada and the UK.

The Joplin Award winner will receive a cash prize of $1500 USD.

Every submission from entrants outside the USA, Canada and the UK is eligible for the Joplin Award, while remaining eligible for all main competition awards and receiving written analysis on each submission.

All Short Screenplay submissions received by June 1st will receive their feedback by June 15th

All Feature Screenplay submissions received by June 15th will receive their feedback by July 1st.

This year, BlueCat will accept short screenplays and establish one of the largest cash prizes in the world for a short screenplay contest, with the winner being awarded $10,000. Three Finalists will be receiving $1500 each.

Overall, the cash prizes will nearly double to over $43,000, with the Grand Prize for the Best Feature Screenplay increasing to $15,000. Four finalists will receive $2500 each.

The Best Feature screenplay from the UK will be awarded the Cordelia Award and will receive $1,500.

Each Short Screenplay submission will receive one written analysis, while each Feature Screenplay entry will receive two.

Students will be eligible to submit their short screenplay at a discounted rate of $29 for the duration of the competition.

Entrants will be able to submit a short screenplay with an option not to receive feedback, and all submissions will be eligible for a Resubmission entry if received by the October 15th deadline.

BlueCat prides itself in its leading reputation as a community for developing screenwriters. We hope these great changes will cement our mission—-to support and develop the undiscovered screenwriter——in all of us, today and days ahead.

1. Immediate Tension Equals Immediate Interest

Though I did not have my stopwatch out while watching, I’d guess that the main story is not set up until at least thirty minutes in. That, however, doesn’t matter, because the writers (Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman, and Damon Lindelof) create tension almost immediately. As long as your characters want something, as long as there is some kind of tension, you can buy yourself time to set up the main story. In this case, Kirk (Chris Pine) loses command of the Enterprise as a result of a report Spock (Zachary Quinto) filed. He, of course, must get command of his ship back—but we know neither when nor how this will happen. This loss also creates tension between Kirk and Spock, and that tension lasts until the next layer of the story is put into place, and that next layer creates an even deeper tension. This layering of tension is accomplished again and again, expertly, throughout the film.

2. Internal Conflict Can Be as Dramatic as External Conflict

One of the reasons the Kirk-Spock relationship works so well is that, at times, they are not really two characters at all, but two sides of the same character. Kirk embodies the emotional side while Spock embodies the logical, and this allows the internal to be externalized through arguments between the two. This is exploited wonderfully during the first half of Into Darkness especially, during which Kirk is trying to decide whether to send 72 missiles down onto an unoccupied area of Kronos to which a terrorist named John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) has fled. They argue about whether Harrison should be brought back alive rather than killed without a trial, and the ethical consequences of this decision weigh heavily Kirk. The arguments might be entertaining, but the drama lies in Kirk’s internal struggle with the decision he must make.

3. Drama, as Opposed to Action, Lives in the Gray Areas

While it is full of action and adventure and one-liners that work more often than they don’t, Into Darkness is not a simplistic action flick set in space. Such a movie might be fun to watch, but it wouldn’t make you feel much of anything. The world of Into Darkness resembles our world in a way many summer blockbusters don’t, even those set in the here and now, and because of that it is a film with some emotional impact. As mentioned above, this is a world in which simply killing the bad guy is not immediately accepted as the right thing to do. This is a world where our hero might be forced through circumstance to ally himself with the man he was sent to kill. This is a world where that man might be complex and human and, in his way, sympathetic, even after he has betrayed Kirk. In other words, this is a world of genuine drama.

4. Subvert Character Expectations and You Increase Impact

Spock is cold, logical, unfeeling. We know this before the first frame of Into Darkness flashes before our eyes, but it is confirmed again while we watch, and then it is reinforced, so when Spock begins to cry toward the end of the film, we really feel it. These moments when characters contradict what we know of them for dramatic effect—when the non-feeling character cries; when the milquetoast finally stands up for himself against his overbearing boss; when the shy boy finally asks out the girl he likes—almost always work if set up properly, and work far better than they would have had the characters not been set up as they were. They work because they indicate growth and development, and that growth increases the drama of the moment.

5. Set it Up Well and the Audience Will Believe Anything

Kirk dies; Spock cries. It is one of the best moments of the film, and this despite the fact that I was certain Kirk would not remain dead.  I knew this because earlier in Into Darkness John Harrison’s blood—Khan’s blood—was discovered to be regenerative and possibly resurrective (which is, apparently, not a word). As soon as Kirk died, I thought of that blood and its special properties. That might indicate that the setup was heavy-handed, but it also indicates that it worked. When Kirk was resurrected I believed it absolutely because the potential had been set up earlier. This is, of course, Chekhov’s gun viewed from the other end of the play (or, in this case, movie): “If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired.” And if someone is shot in the second act, someone should be in possession of a gun in the first. These things work both ways.

Star Trek Into Darkness does so many things right that I’m even willing to overlook the lack of a colon in its title. I, for one, will be watching it again.

–

Ryan David Jahn is the author of four novels. His first, Good Neighbors, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Dagger, and his third, The Dispatcher, was recently optioned for film by Anonymous Content. His work has been translated into twelve languages. You can find out more about the author and his books at http://ryandavidjahn.com.

1. The Spirit of Christmas (1995)

In 1995, Fox executive Brian Graden paid Trey Parker and Matt Stone two grand to make a five-minute short he would use as his Christmas card. It went viral the way things did in 1995: people gave friends copies on VHS, and those friends gave other friends copies. Because of this short, Comedy Central hired Parker and Stone to develop a TV show. South Park premiered in 1997 and has been on the air since. In addition to South Park, Parker and Stone have made several movies, and their hit musical, The Book of Mormon, picked up nine Tony Awards. 

2. Bottle Rocket (1992)

Bottle Rocket is a thirteen-minute short directed by Wes Anderson, starring Owen Wilson, and co-written by the pair. Four years later it was made into a feature film. Since then Wes Anderson has directed Rushmore, The Life Aquatic, and The Fantastic Mr. Fox, among others, while Owen Wilson has had roles in over forty movies.

3. Six Shooter (2004)

This is a twenty-seven minute dark crime-comedy written and directed by Martin McDonagh, who went on to do In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. Though the short is unrelated to In Bruges, it is a clear precursor to that film; dark, funny, and polished. It won several well-deserved awards upon its release, including an Academy Award for best live action short in 2006, and paved the way for McDonagh to do features.

4. Five Deep Breaths (2003)

Written and directed by a man who went on to direct episodes of Grey’s Anatomy, The Wire, Jericho, Sons of Anarchy, Dexter, The Walking Dead, Californication, and many other shows, this short is where Seith Mann proved his skill. Five Deep Breaths was Mann’s master’s thesis at New York University, was awarded the Spike Lee fellowship while in development, and won awards at both the Chicago International Film Festival and the Los Angeles/IFP West Film Festival.

5. Peluca (2003)

Peluca was Jared Hess’s first film, a nine-minute black-and-white comedy that was later adapted into a feature film called Napoleon Dynamite. It was also one of Jon Heder’s first acting roles. Hess has gone on to direct Nacho Libre and Gentlemen Broncos while Jon Heder has gone on to act in thirty movies or television shows.

Some of these shorts were made for next to nothing while others had respectable budgets, and while the budget differences clearly show up onscreen, each of them still managed to showcase a writer-director’s talent well enough that he (and sometimes others involved in the project) went on to have a career in the film business. No small feat.

Ryan David Jahn is the author of four novels. His first, Good Neighbors, won the Crime Writers’ Association John Creasey Dagger, and his third, The Dispatcher, was recently optioned for film by Anonymous Content. His work has been translated into twelve languages. You can find out more about the author and his books at http://ryandavidjahn.com.

It is flashy and extravagant to a fault; distractingly, though intentionally, anachronistic; and lacks, for me, even a hint of humanity until the very end, at which point it’s simply too late.

Here are what I view as the film’s biggest flaws:

1. Its Use of Narration as a Crutch

I understand the urge to use voiceover narration to tell this story. It’s an adaptation of a famous novel told in first person, and the prose is, of course, fantastic. One would think that if any movie could use voiceover narration, this would be that movie. But I grew tired of it in a hurry. Almost every major story point is explained to us rather than dramatized, and those few that are dramatized are ruined by being redundantly and simultaneously explained as well. The film is full of crane shots, quick cuts, and CGI, all set to hip-hop music, but none of these things are used to further the story. They are used merely as eye candy, or ear candy, something for you to be entertained by while the story is explained to you in boring narration. In the end, it seems like such a waste.

2. Its Self-Indulgent Focus on Being a Spectacle

Movies should be about the stories they’re telling, and at its heart, The Great Gatsby is a simple story about a complex man in a complex relationship. Unfortunately, this is lost in a muddle of party sequences that go on for far too long, ridiculous driving scenes that feel like car chases despite being mere jaunts to lunch, and strange conversations at speakeasies that do little to further the story or reveal character. One could cut an hour from this film and have a tighter, more focused story which was richer in emotion, because that emotion would not have been buried under so much glitter.

3. Its Complete Lack of Verisimilitude

The Great Gatsby is full of odd moments that do not belong in a movie set in the summer of 1922. The vehicles all sound and drive liked souped-up muscle cars; the music, even the music characters listen and dance to, is never music of the period; the party sequences do not feel like parties so much as Cirque de Soleil performances; even the camerawork constantly reminds you that this is a movie of today. Authenticity is sacrificed at every turn for bright colors and hip music, and when authenticity is sacrificed so is the viewer’s belief in what he or she is watching. I was constantly aware of the fact that I was being “entertained,” and that awareness resulted in my not being entertained at all. I never fell out of reality and into the world of the film, which, I think, is what going to the movies is all about.

4. Its Redundancy

When a film spends so much time on spectacle rather than story, it is a mistake to repeat story points, but we are given Gatsby’s backstory twice. If Gatsby’s backstory was kept off screen until the end (when it is discussed for the second time), there would at least have been a sense of mystery about the character throughout the film, and with a good actor that mystery could have provided depth. We would know there is more here than we see. The ending could, then, have provided a powerful reveal, increasing the emotional impact of what we have already seen and shedding new light on all that has come before. Instead we merely have a rehash of what we have already learned. This weakens the middle section, which is slowed down by flashbacks, and it weakens the end, which lacks any revelation where a revelation could have been provided.