we’ve moved – to scripped!

Check it out – www.scripped.com/blog.

It was bound to happen eventually. So now you’ll see all our fancy posts over there.

Cheers!

interview with Creative World screenwriting competition

Hey folks,

Here’s an interview I had with the Marlene Neubauer, co-founder of the Creative World Writing Competition. I wanted to post it so you all get a better sense of why their banner is up on every page of Scripped.com this month!

Creative World Awards (CWA), co-Founder Marlene Neubauer
An interview with Marlene Neubauer regarding the Creative World Writing Competition.

Ryan: Who sponsors CWA, and what is their background in the industry?
Marlene: In addition to the growing list of prominent companies and executives that have committed to reading our finalists, Heather Waters and I are the key sponsors for the 1st Annual Creative World Awards. Before segueing into producing and writing, I worked for over 15 years in film distribution with such companies as Capella Films (AUSTIN POWERS, MY LIFE, CARLITOS WAY); Pathe Distribution (IN THE CUT, THE GIRL WITH THE PEARL EARRING); Mobius Pictures (THE WENDELL BAKER STORY starring the Luke and Owen Wilson, BORDERTOWN starring Jennifer Lopez); and GreeneStreet Films (UPTOWN GIRLS, SWIMFAN and WEDDING DAZE starring Jason Biggs). Heather Water’s background ranges from the performance side of film to writing and producing for television. If you wish, you can view the CWA website to get a more extensive list of our sponsors’ credits.

R: Why enter a screenwriting competition?
M: There are several important reasons for entering. A top one is exposure. Most emerging writers don’t have access to agents, producers or production companies and screenwriting awards and festivals provide an important venue to bridge this gap. I would recommend entering several contests as an important way of increasing your exposure. Getting your script in the hands of the decision makers is what it’s all about. Also, mentioning any placement in a prominent competition increases your chances of getting seriously read at production companies. Inline with that, these competitions also provide an important catalyst for meeting writing deadlines, providing valuable feedback and simply, getting your script read.

R: What do you offer your winning writers?
M: In addition to a prize award, we, at CWA, have made it our goal to find emerging talent and give them access and exposure to key industry people. Through the judging review process and post award circulation, our winning screenplays will be sent to top agencies, major studios, managers, producers, and international financers. In addition, several companies have committed to reading our top finalists. These include: Mel Gibson’s Icon Films & Entertainment (APOCOLYPTO, PASSION OF CHRIST); Crystal Sky (BRATZ, GHOST RIDER); GreeneStreet Films (UPTOWN GIRLS, SWIMFAN, TENDERNESS starring Russell Crowe); Voltage Pictures (FLYBOYS, PERSONAL EFFECTS starring Ashton Kutcher). Be sure and check out our website for the rest of this list. In addition, we also have a myriad of companies that are not listed but have also agreed to participate.

R: Who judges each phase of the competition?
M: The first round of judging is done by qualified, hand selected readers and professionals. If your script advances to the quarterfinalist round, it will then be read by multiple industry professionals who will help determine which scripts advance to the semifinalist and finalist rounds. The top three winners of the 2008 Creative World Awards will be determined with the help of leading industry executives.

R: What advice can you offer to Scripped writers?
M: Write from your heart, set your intention and get your work out there. Any way you can! Along with entering contests, take a trip to LA, surround yourself with like-minded individuals. Deals are made everyday in coffee shops, restaurants – you can meet a contact just walking in the street. Remember the industry is screaming for good scripts. So if you feel your script is ready to go out then you’re half way there. Be sure to check out our video showcase on our website. Each week a key industry individual offers invaluable tips on the whole filmmaking process.

R: Why is CWA excited about Scripped.com?
M: Heather and I are very excited to be teaming up with Scripped.com and its writers. What Scripped offers writers is invaluable and unprecedented to date in the industry. It’s this kind of creativity and support that writers need and we applaud the Scripped guys’ efforts for thinking and creating outside the box. The most important thing for a writer is to get your thoughts and ideas on paper and now with Scripped.com there is no excuse.

Don’t forget to give this competition a shot! Prices go up on July 1, so submit now!

This Week’s Feature Showcase on CWA

Just an FYI, everybody. From our CWA partner:

Creative World Awards ongoing video showcase THE BUSINESS OF STORYTELLING is up and rolling. This week features Tomas Jegeus, Co-President of 20th Century Fox International. He jointly handles and overseas the international releases of all Fox’s titles. Following him in the upcoming weeks:
Anthony Mandler, one of the industry’s hottest up-coming feature directors. His background includes being one of the top music and commercial directors as well as a world renowned photographer.
Mark Gooder, CEO of Mel Gibson’s Icon Entertainment Group. He overseas the production, acquisitions and distribution of all of Icon’s films.

Don’t miss out on these valuable insights. A slue of prominent names will unveil through out the summer.

Deadline for regular entry is June 30th! www.creativeworldawards.com.

Edward Burns Joins Scripped Board of Advisors!

I just watched Purple Violets on iTunes. I needed something to occupy the 4-hour bus ride between Boston and New York this weekend, and I figured I should catch up on some movies.

I also learned that Purple Violets was the first major motion picture to be released on iTunes. I figured I owed it to Edward Burns to have a look.

It’s a movie about the complex romance between two authors and their friends. I always find it a bit odd when writers write about writing. Being at MIT and enjoying math theory a bit too much, I think of it as a fractal. You know, one of those things like a letter A which, when you zoom in, you see is composed of other little A’s. And when you zoom in on them, even more tiny A’s.

But that’s not really what I was thinking about as I watched Eddie’s movie. I was actually thinking how lucky we are to have him involved with Scripped.

In the coming months you’ll hear more from Eddie and Aaron Lubin, his partner in production. With their input and guidance we will build Scripped into the superb online screenwriting community we know it can be. It is our summer goal to make this the most happenin’ place to write, protect, and even distribute your scripted content. You can also expect to hear from Eddie and Aaron directly through a few new features we’re building right now.

If you have any ideas, please don’t be shy. Tell us by commenting here or writing to us at contact@scripped.com. We love to hear from you. Even Sunil and Zak will spend their weekends checking the Scripped email inbox.

I know because I check it too.

Below is a copy of the press release that we issued today!

Los Angeles, CA – On Monday, May 19th, Producers Edward Burns and Aaron Lubin reached an agreement to join Scripped Inc.’s Board of Advisors. Scripped Inc. is a digital media startup that launched “Scripped Writer,” a web-based screenwriting software platform.

Burns and Lubin will help the web-based startup’s short and long term business strategy. Scripped launched the beta version of its web-based screenwriting software in January of 2008 and has since built a user-base of over 5,500 writers from all 50 states, as well as from 50 different countries. Scripped is currently being used by students from UCLA, USC, Santa Clara University and Grand Rapids Michigan Middle School amongst a host of other educational institutions.

“We are thrilled to add Ed and Aaron to the advisory board,” said Sunil Rajaraman, president and CEO of Scripped, Inc. “Their industry knowledge will help us guide our short and long-term thinking. We want to provide the best possible services to our user-base and Ed and Aaron are the right guys to help us reach that goal.”

“Ed and I are excited to be joining Scripped’s Board of Advisors,” said Aaron Lubin. “We think the site will provide cost-effective access to screenwriting software and resources for aspiring young writers to succeed. We are looking forward to collaborating with Sunil, Ryan and Zak to help make this site a success.”

About Scripped, Inc.
Scripped Inc. developed Scripped Writer, the first completely free web-based screenwriting software for writers. Scripped Writer is an innovative software that functions like a standard word processor but automatically formats and catalogs each screenplay element according to industry standards. Scripped was co-founded by Sunil Rajaraman, Zak Freer and Ryan Buckley; Rajaraman is a former senior strategy consultant, and UCLA Anderson MBA student, Freer is a producer/director and graduate of the Peter Stark Producer’s Program at USC and Buckley is a dual degree student Harvard and MIT. To learn more, visit http://www.scripped.com.

About the Producers
Edward Burns has written, directed, starred in and produced eight feature films, including the award winning Brothers McMullen, She’s the One, Sidewalks of New York, The Groomsmen, and most recently Purple Violets. Burns’ gained worldwide critical acclaim for his performance as Private Richard Reiben in Saving Private Ryan. In addition, Burns has starred in several feature films, including James Foley’s Confidence opposite Dustin Hoffman and Rachel Weisz, 15 Minutes opposite Robert De Niro, and most recently the 20th Century Fox hit romantic comedy 27 Dresses opposite Katherine Heigl. To learn more, visit http://www.edwardburns.net.

Aaron Lubin has produced several feature length films including Looking for Kitty, The Groomsmen, Ash Wednesday and Sidewalks of New York. Lubin produced Purple Violets with Burns, which was the first feature length film to debut on iTunes. The move to release Purple Violets on iTunes was considered a pioneering move in the film industry, and the movie has since received positive critical acclaim. Purple Violets won “best feature film” at the Savannah Film Festival. Additionally, Lubin worked on the NBC television show The Fighting Fitzgeralds starring Brian Dennehy, as well as several Saturn commercials, in producing capacities.

…And we’re back!

Yes, it took a little longer than expected, but we’re back!

Thank you for your patience as we completed another monthly update. We apologize for not giving you notice prior to this upgrade, but our server administrators required that we complete it immediately, and we take their demands seriously.

Regards,

The Scripped Guys

scripped frenzy – epilogue and confession

To my loyal readers: I am sorry. I let you down. I, like many before me, did not complete the Frenzy. I had a vision, I had an idea, and I let the idea sit, then fester, and then dissolve. And now it is May.

I blame it on my schooling. MIT and Harvard, while probably not any harder than other programs once you’re in, still do a good job of lathering it on from time to time. We also had a huge month for Scripped. Lots of documents to be written, people to contact, and planes to catch. Sunil and Zak would not have been pleased if I didn’t put 100% into our latest round of document edits. Fortunately, we have some big news to show for it (just stay tuned… :0)

But I digress. The point of the Frenzy, I’m well aware, is to let all matters of the other 11 months outside of April go the wayside. I understand that, but like so many things, it is easier said than done! Instead, I will make it my own personal mission to do a great screenplay this summer, when the 3 of us Scripped founders go full-time at the same time for the first time ever. I’ll have 3 months to do it. That should work better.

To those of you who finished, I salute you! Congratulations for completing your first (or thereabouts) screenplay, and thank you for using Scripped. We are honored to serve, and please believe we sacrificed our own participation to make sure that your experience was the best it could be.

Minus that little glitch on April 1, I believe we have delivered. As you go forward in your writing careers, you can count on us to continue to provide the best screenwriting experience on the Net.

And it will keep getting better! More to come…

my brief history with writing

Writing is a strange thing. For me it comes and goes. There are times in my life when I’ve been diligent and writing is easy; at other times, it feels forced and I don’t do it. But it has been a part of me for as long as I can remember.

When I was very young my mom would sit me down and make me write an essay when I did something wrong. I had to explain in my own words what happened and why I behaved the way I did. After we talked about my actions, she’d give me a hug and go on to correct my spelling and grammar. I learned early on that writing well was important.

I had my first poem published when I was 6 years old. It went in some sort of children’s writing compilation and I didn’t care much about it then. It was a poem called “The Kerplumpkins” that described the history of a family of gnomes that lived in a pumpkin patch. Or something like that. I don’t really remember, and I think any copies of that poem are long gone.

At the 8th grade graduation I won the writing award. It should have gone to my friend Jose, who beat me in the spelling bee competition that year and is now a writer with the Washington Post. He and his team recently won the Pulitzer for their coverage of the Virginia Tech massacre. He’s also just a really good guy.

When I was a student at UC Berkeley I found that the easiest way to get stuff done was to write about what I wanted. I had a passion for environmental sustainability back then, I still do, and I decided to see how far I could take it. So I wrote some proposals like this about ways to institutionalize sustainability that got all the way up to the chancellor. He liked my writing well enough to fund a few of these ideas, and ultimately I pulled $100,000 out of him. The American Association of Universities in Washington, DC kept him from retiring and he and I managed to stay in touch. I’ll visit him out there in a couple weeks.

Finally, when it came down to applying to grad school, I moved in with my grandpa in Lafayette, CA to conjure up my inner applicant. I wanted to get into top schools, and I decided to shoot for policy programs. So I wrote.

My Princeton Woodrow Wilson School application was due first. It was tough. I didn’t feel good about my story or my writing. I had friends offer edits and I still didn’t like my application when it went in. I didn’t even make the waitlist. Cambridge University’s Land Economy was next. I got in. Phew. But Harvard was the real prize and I didn’t want to reuse the old essays.

I remember sitting in the back patio of my grandpa’s house with a glass of Trader Joe’s red wine. It would usually be 8:30pm, my favorite time of day during the Bay Area summer, just as the sun sets. I took that time to rethink, rewrite, and then reedit each of the five essays required by the Harvard Kennedy School. This time it was just me. No friends, no mom, just my thoughts and my story. I wanted to get in by writing with my heart first. I know that sounds corny, but it was important to me at the time. I felt good when I sent it off.

And then I got in. I spent a few weeks in Europe and saw the World Cup in Berlin. It was 2006. When I returned home in August I had a text on my phone from Sunil. He said he had a great idea. It was Scripped.

I moved to Cambridge, MA and together we started writing. First it was a business plan, then it was about 10 emails a day. And now we’re helping other writers do more writing.

We’re very proud of that!

And now to the Frenzy…

scripped frenzy – prologue #2

Sorry for the delay, folks. Turns out you can’t blog from China! I don’t know how they do it, but the Party knows which are blogging websites and which are not, and from inside the country my browser cannot find WordPress. God bless America.

Fortunately, China has other things going for it, like cheap food, cheap taxis, some great universities, and very cheap beer. In fact, I even had two cans of Tsingtao on the plane ride back to the homeland so I could sleep better. And believe me, sleep I did. China is also in the middle of an incredible infrastructure boom. This is no 3rd world country; it has all the fixings of a major metropolis. There’s a maglev in Shanghai and 8-lane streets throughout Beijing. The internet is slow and censored but it is certainly available, and often is free at cafes. The people, from my limited perspective, are friendly and happy. But then again, I mostly saw and interacted with the business class. That’s less than 1% of China.

But, according to the project I worked on as part of MIT’s China Lab, there are plenty of writers in China! A website, run by ChineseAll, gets 50 million uniques each month and has content driven by real Chinese authors. It’s almost like a Scripped for novels, which is why I was so enthusiastic about working on this project. This is a model that works, and in China they’re already ahead of us, 50 million users strong. This was the best spring break ever.

Unfortunately, it meant I didn’t get my outline done, but I have a bit more inspiration and real-life experience than I left with, and that should count for something. I also read half of William Goldman’s book, Adventure’s in the Screen Trade, which I thought was marvelous. Then the time change caught up with me and I fell asleep. Still, I feel invigorated and excited to do this Script Frenzy.

I’ll  do my outline today in entrepreneurship class. The writing starts tomorrow!

scripped frenzy – prologue #1

Well, here we go. Scripped is on its way, and it certainly keeps us busy. I also notice from our analytics that people are actually reading this blog. I guess that means we need to be careful about what goes up here. Bummer.

There is a lot I wish I could write. We’re being compared to certain other companies you might also know about. But competition is good. It means there is a market for free online screenwriting applications. Surprise! People like free stuff! It becomes a competition, I suppose, for the best writing community and/or embedded writing tool. That’s the main difference between us and the other guys. But I don’t want to (or simply can’t) dwell on that here. Instead, I’ll write about a another kind of competition: Script Frenzy.

I was on a bus between Boston and New York City last year with an old friend from Berkeley, telling him about the nascent form of Scripped. He thought it was cool and wondered how we would get users. “Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you run a competition for scripts, just like NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month?”

“Hmm,” I replied. “That’s interesting.” And I put my headphones back on.

But the idea stuck, and I visited the NaNoWriMo website and discovered the Office of Letters and Light. Then, to my surprise and near-dismay, I found it, the actual embodiment of the idea from the bus: Script Frenzy. Shoot, I thought, they took our idea. Then I remembered something I learned back in elementary school: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So I joined their email list.

The first Script Frenzy happened in June 2007. It was awesome. I didn’t participate, but I still thought it was awesome. I liked receiving their emails as I sat in a garage in Los Angeles, scheming up Scripped. When they asked for donations, I said hello, and tacked another $50 onto my student debt. To my delight, they wrote back.

Thus began a very friendly relationship with the founders and organizers of both the novel writing and screenplay contests. With the Office of Letters and Light located just across the San Francisco bay from where I grew up, it was easy to meet in person. I was taken immediately by their passion and dedication and hoped Scripped might be able to contribute in some way. Since we offer Scripped Writer for free and do not charge for PDF export, it seemed natural that they might suggest our website to their new writers.

We are also thrilled to promote Script Frenzy to everyone in the Scripped community. In fact, I’m so excited, I will also blog about my first Frenzy experience. Write a full script in the month of April? No problem!

All in a day’s work.

New European script market

I just caught a post in Variety about the emergence of a new script market. This is something we’ve long thought could work in the United States, particularly for short-form webisode-oriented video. It seems the obvious logical next step in the storied breakdown of Hollywood.

I suspect several new markets will soon emerge in the United States as well, with different combinations of TriggerStreet and ScriptShark functionalities. We’ll probably throw our hat in the ring too, and learn our lessons from Europe.