FINAL DRAFT BIG BREAK TV

We’re waiting on some big news from another winner, fingers are crossed. Many others have been repped and started careers. Our 2010 winner is in the writers room of Newsroom. 2013 Big Break Contest Finalists Marco van Belle & Kat Wood signed with Zero Gravity Management. You can hear more about his experience here. He has sold a pitch to Disney and been hired to do a rewrite for Will Smith.

Shelly: Our biggest success is Larry Brenner, our third-place winner in 2010 whose script Bethlehem is about to go into production this year. Tell me about some of the contest’s success stories. If you win Big Break, it is a game changer.

FINAL DRAFT BIG BREAK TV

We’ve added a TV category and an awards show. We’ve gone from not quite 1,000 entries to just shy of 7,000. We offer over $80,000 in cash and prizes and next year we’ll be adding some exciting new sponsorships and opportunities in 2014 – our 15th year. Shelly: We’ve been able to expand our prize offerings from the cash amount to the long list of sponsor prizes as the company has grown and our relationships have broadened. How has the contest evolved over its 14 years? Guiding them through their winning experience was my good friend Shelly Mellott, VP of Events and Services for Final Draft, who champions the writers and their scripts to anyone she comes across, including Johnny Depp whom she tackled outside The Standard while he was shooting scenes for his latest movies, to announce (indicating Nicholas Horwood) “This is the guy who’s gonna write your next movie!”.īefore we dig into the winning experience, I asked Shelly about Final Draft’s Big Break contest. The winners of 2013’s Big Break Screenwriting Contest were: Nicholas Horwood, who won the feature film category with his historical war screenplay, LANCELOT, and Kenny Kyle, who won the television category with his NEWSROOM spec. Meaning, I have no idea what it will be like, taste like, smell like to win a contest and get a manager and sell a script.” This is, to put it simply, to give all the writers out there who dream of winning a screenwriting contest something to envision. One of my clients once wrote to me: “ I cannot envision myself achieving the goal. The reason I am writing this is simply to share with other writers what I’ve been fortunate enough to observe, and because, through spending time with the contest winners, I was reminded what a fantastic vehicle Final Draft’s Big Break Contest (along with a handful of other contests of this stature) is for emerging screenwriters looking for some much needed-recognition in the screenwriting space. However I am not paid to write this blog post I have no vested interest in any way, nor am I under any sort of contract to help market or get the word out about this contest. the misconceptions? And are there real, actual benefits to winning the big prize? To help illuminate all of this, I decided to share the experiences I gathered during the two days in early January that I spent tagging along with Final Draft’s Big Break 2013 Contest Winners.įull disclosure: I am the career coach for the writers who win the Big Break contest. What are the benefits of coming in on top of a big competition? What are the realities of winning vs.

While many may dream of winning, few actually know what the practical experience is actually like. And Final Draft’s Big Break, which has amassed the sort of reputation that puts it right at the top. Instead, industry executives turn their focus to screenwriting contests that produced big winners before. But industry executives don’t read winning screenplays from every contest out there, big and small. Therefore, contests provide an invaluable service to the industry: Identifying scripts and writers that industry folks should be reading. Agents, managers, producers and development executives use this as a vetting mechanism, i.e., if a screenplay makes it all the way to the top, surely it must be worth reading. That is, after all, the point of it all: To enter a high-visibility competition, and beat out thousands of screenplays for the top prize. Though many enter, only a few get to have the winning experience. If you have been writing screenplays for film or television and trying to break into the industry for any length of time, chances are you’ve entered a screenwriting competition or two in that time.

Final draft big break