Silver Screenwriting Quarterfinalists!

I know everyone is going to rush to scroll down this list and look for your name and not read a thing I say until them. That’s fine. I’ll wait…

Abeyta, April & Kim Nunley – Super Ted
Amdahl, Joseph – A Boy in the Woods
Axelrad, David & Michel Plaxton – Machine Gun Kelly: The Real Story
Barlowe, John & Irin Evers – Miss Christmas
Bauer, Kristin – Edultery
Booth, Thom – Jaunt
Bowlden, Kelli – Venus Envy
Brown, Harold – Dewey and the Magic Library
Burningham, JR & Tess Ortbals – Terra Incognita
Cambria, Craig – Canaries
Catz, Sarit & Gloria Ketterer – Instant Karma
Cecchini, Ron – Blue Lady
Dilier, Matthew – The Sandbox
Donald, Mike – Cortex
Donald, Mike – Shadow Trade
Donnelly, Scott & Joe Douglass – Cows
Downs, Christine – The Jupiter Syndrome
Evans, Corey- Death’s Horizon
Farrand, Carol – Nobody in My Family Has Sex
Fass, Rick- Love Erasers
Figel, Rich – The Doll
Fortune, Jules – Better Than Broadband
Headley, Jason & Michael Tumino – Seniors
Hoover, Stephen – Buried South of Galatians
Hoover, Stephen – Ghosted
Hoover, Stephen – To Live, Press 1
Luu, D.N. – Faithful
Jackson, Ryan – Fix
Knutson, Forrest – Samurai High
Lammey, David – Shotgun Wedding
McCoy, Michael – Under the Rising Sun
McMinn, Dave – O Boy
Moore, Sherry Lynn – Hunting Season
Nolan, Tom – The Quick Way Home
Puterbaugh, Joseph – The Jack Johnson Story
Ridone, Steve – Colby on the Potomac
Rosen, Jane – Ancestral
Sayle, Allie & Liz – Troublemakers
Sheehy, Rich – The Intake
Simpson, R. Ian – Paraplizzle
Spiegelman, Bruce – Isis
Stein, Christopher – Moment of Conception
Shyu, Tony – Macau Twilight
Stirling, Bruce – The Embalmer’s Apprentice
Wasserman, Daniel – Stowaways
Watson, Robert Keith – Bank Robbing for Dummies
Wiggins, Joseph – Amsterdam XXX
Wolfe, Celeste Chan – Spotnik
Tze Yun, Sun – The Sun Rises East
Zakalik, Marc – Drumadoon

The quarterfinalists will be listed on the Silver Screenwriting website in just moments. It’ll just look prettier, that’s all. The 20 semi-finalists will be announced on August 1.

Now, a word to those of you who didn’t place. Why, god, why? you might be asking yourself right now. There were two or three reasons your script didn’t move up to the quarter finals: a) your script had significant format, spelling and language usage problems; b) your first 10 pages were not entertaining, the genre wasn’t clear and the tone was all over the map; and c) subjectivity.

Now a small (but loving) slap on the wrist and weird pattern I will note: This year, the scripts that didn’t make the cut were far worse than the scripts that didn’t make the cut last year. The scripts that made the cut, however, were far better. I have no idea why this is but the scripts that are moving up to the next round are going to be VERY tough to judge. I have my eye on about 10 or 12 that I particularly like but on the other hand, I read one that was SO excellent for the first 75 pages – great, right? – and then tanked out with a confusing, illogical, lazy ending.

So the real judging begins now. Can you write opening pages that engage, that are professional, that entertain and intrigue? Can you write with the proper format and without eight (YES, true story) pages of action lines first? Great. That makes you a quarterfinalist. Let’s see what you quarters can show us beyond that. This is where the going gets much tougher.

Good luck to you all and for those who didn’t make the cut here but did somewhere else, don’t forget subjectivity is at play here, so don’t be too downhearted. As I am wont to say, until they invent the Read-A-Tron 5000, you have to make do with live humans who have experience and background reading scripts. If you didn’t place anywhere else, take this as a sign that you are completely NORMAL and just need to keep writing. Don’t take it too seriously or too personally. Every single person who took the time to enter and who tried his or her best is a winner in my eyes and if you’ve ever met me you don’t doubt the truth of that. Onward!