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.

More Screenwriting Tools

I’ve been trying to learn as much about screenwriting as possible, though I doubt my knowledge will ever rival Zak’s. That being said, I’ve been surfing around for experts’ advice on screenwriting, etc, and came accross this site: http://thedialogueseries.com.

Here is what they have to say:

THE DIALOGUE: Learning From the Masters is a groundbreaking interview series that goes behind the scenes of the fascinating craft of screenwriting. In these 70-90 minute in-depth discussions, more than two dozen of today’s most successful screenwriters share their work habits, methods and inspirations, secrets of the trade, business advice, and eye-opening stories from life in the trenches of the film industry. Each screenwriter discusses his or her filmography in great detail and breaks down the mechanics of one favorite scene from their produced work. To purschase these DVDS visit www.thedialogueseries.com.

Looks interesting!

Navigating Screenwriting on the Net

Hey all, I’ve been in contact with other entrepreneurs in the screenwriting/net world over the past several months and I just wanted to highlight a site I came upon called “Coverage Ink.” Be sure to check them out at http://www.coverageink.com. Here is a quote from Jim Cirile, the founder:

The most important thing to know is Coverage, Ink is by writers, for writers. We’re not owned by a big corporation. We’re owned by me–Jim Cirile–a writer. I founded CI as a reaction to the coverage services out there, which I found to be overpriced, and oftentimes the coverage was hostile or useless. Worse, some of those people have a carrot and stick approach — promising you ‘industry access’ if you get a consider or better, when more often than not this is vapor — as I learned from personal experience. Writers are generally hardworking and broke! Again, I know this firsthand. We just want someone to help us with gentle guidance. So when I pony up money for an opinion, I want it to be creatively constructive, as opposed to belittling or insulting. I want people to feel empowered and have a real idea how to better their script after they work with us. I use my own company to develop my own scripts all the time, submitting to my readers under pseudonyms and paying the full rate. So I know what we’re doing works, and the 99% positive feedback we get from our clients bears that out. I also hand-pick and test all our readers personally to make sure they know their stuff. That’s what CI is all about

Coverage Ink is running a screenwriting competition called “Writers on the Storm”, which runs through July. If you submit a script to CI, it is automatically entered into the contest. Grand prize is 10gs…. maybe I should figure out a way to get Zak to enter.

Now if only we were as innovative as some of these other companies out there… Ryan, maybe we need you to sell a kidney soon.

Thank You!

Thanks to Jason Arnopp for writing such a nice post about us in his blog: http://jasonarnopp.blogspot.com. We at Scripped are always happy to hear feedback like this. We are very self-deprecating and hard working, and we want to create the best product possible for our users. We are a long ways away from perfection, but we are working hard to get there.

Headed home today to Northern California, which is very exciting. I think that’s it for now…

Miami

It seems like I only write when I’m on vacation, but I swear, I actually do work from time to time. I was in Miami this past week for Spring Break and my girlfriend and I had an awesome time. We attended the Miami Masters Series tennis tourney, spent a lot of time on the beach, and just generally had a nice time. We were lucky enough to sit in the IMG Luxury box thanks to my sister and brother-in-law and we watched Novak Djokovic lose and Rafael Nadal win (which is great because I am a huge Nadal fan and I dislike Djokovic). My sister interviewed Nadal after the match, and was nice enough to mention her in his blog. He’s a great guy…. The picture above is a bit weird – my iPhone somehow skewed the way the court looks….

On the Scripped front, we have a huge week ahead of us. We’re gearing up for Script Frenzy and we have a few big meetings ahead. We’re really excited about the way things are going, and really appreciate all of your positive feedback. Please let us know what feature you’d like to see next!

Clean Kitchen

 

This week is finals week at UCLA, but fortunately I have no finals. Instead, I have to deal with writing a 20 page paper, and giving two presentations. I’m not sure which I’d rather deal with – papers, or presentations. Regardless, I think we can agree that both are an incredible pain.

 On the bright side, I FINISHED MY FIRST SCREENPLAY ON SCRIPPED! I am super, super excited about the work I put into this thing – I hope my screenwriting professor likes it. I talked about it before, but it’s basically about two middle-aged guys competing for leauge tennis glory. It’s almost like a “Dodgeball” for 40 year olds.

 Oh, and I also cleaned my kitchen, which I’m super proud of. It has been weeks since I’ve had any meaningful time to clean anything, so I’m happy about that. Userbase is growing, positive feedback is rolling in, and we’re really happy about the site!

Import (Beta) Ready to Rock

You didn’t really think we would leave you without an Import Function, did you?

When you start a new script, you will now be able to import an old script from Final Draft, CELTX, Movie Magic, or any of your other favorite screenwriting programs. Test it out by starting a new script today!

For guidance on how to use import effectively, please refer to The Help Center.

Fortune Small Business – March Issue

Scripped is going to be featured in Fortune Small Business Magazine’s March issue. Below is a picture of Ryan and I “working.” We owe the UCLA Entrepreneurs Association, and The Price Center a huge thank you.

Home Sweet Home

I’m in the bay for the weekend taking a much needed break from Los Angeles. My dad and I are going to check out Pete Sampras’ supposed “comeback” at the HP Pavillion tomorrow. He plays former world #2 Tommy Haas – he was originally supposed to play Marat Safin, but Marat Safin is probably drunk on a beach somewhere. Talk about a waste of talent – Marat Safin is a lazy drunk who should have at least 5 grand slams by now, but for his lack of discipline.

Ok, enough about tennis, let’s talk about Scripped. We grew by ANOTHER 25 users today and Ryan, Zak and I are thrilled. Thankfully, all three of us are incredibly self-deprecating so I doubt we’ll ever “rest on our laurels.” We are already thinking of the next services we want to release (some of which are almost fully developed) to our community. Free screenwriting software, if you have not already figured out, is not our end game. The three of us are idealists, but we think we can further the art of screenwriting by doing more than just providing free software.

Ryan is working the MIT circuit, while Zak continues to be the man behind the grand vision. I have to hand it to Zak – out of everyone I’ve met in life, he has the absolute BEST work-life balance. He just has a good head on his shoulders (but he has terrible taste in television).

Oh, right, what am I doing? Well right now I’m watching LA Confidential for like the fiftieth time and I just ate too much at a restaurant called Palo Alto Sol. HIGHLY recommend it if you haven’t tried it. Did you know there is a Counter in Palo Alto these days? Crazy.

Screenwriting Class

This quarter, I decided to enroll in Dee Caruso’s screenwriting class at the school of Theather and Film at UCLA. One of the great things about going to business school at UCLA is that you’re allowed to take electives outside of Anderson. I took an intro to directing class a couple of quarters ago, and I’m planning on taking some foreign affairs classes before I graduate.

The screenplay I’m writing (using Scripped of course) is about two 40-something defense contractors who compete off the court in meaningless league tennis matches. I’ll tell you more about the plot later (hey, I don’t want to give away my great idea), but I am excited to be writing my first Scripped screenplay.

I’ve included a picture of the WGA event (previously unpulished) for your viewing pleasure…..