Golden Age/Short Script Quarter Finalists

Hello everybody, and please forgive my tardiness in announcing the QF’s for the Golden Age of Television/Short Script Competition.

Spec Scripts
Penney Alldredge, Big Bang Theory: The Holmesian Deduction
Nick Barton, Modern Family: Special K
Ashley Bkaskar, House: From Africa With Love
Cynthia Furey, The Office: Newsletter Contest
Keith Kuramoto, Californication: Big Rock Finish
Jeff Kirschner, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Quid Pro Quo
Brando Martin, Modern Family: Letting Go
Jennifer O’Brien, 30 Rock: Wookie Life Debt
Kevin Parnell, Castle: No Small Parts
Don Puffer, 30 Rock: Mr. Bumblebore
Erik Ratliff, The Office: Dunderopoly
Christopher Sansome, Hawaii Five-0: Blame it on the Rock
Logan Slakter, Modern Family: If I Only Had a Brain
Chris Warner, 30 Rock: A Day in the Life
Chris Warner, The Good Wife: Untitled

Pilot Scripts
William Balas, Murphy’s Last Stand
William Balas, Blue City
Nick Barton, Eugene
Craig Berger, Solver
Skip Berry & Vale Newton, Gone
Beth Curry, Odd Lot
Christine Downs, Lazarus
V. Dudek, Boomers and Bohdis
Jason Michael Ford, The Hill
Dan Franko & Chris Mueller, Subbin’
Chad Hugghins, Prototype
Melody Johnson & Zizi Qui, Homefront Girls
Melody Johnson, The Timepiece of the Good Doctor
Keith Kuramoto, Laugh Track
Laredo Levine, Spread
Jeffrey J. Marks, The Service
LeeAnna Neumeyer, Dirt Rich
Jennifer O’Brien, Monkey Business
David Polk, Boss
Mark Sarlan, The Game of Life
E.M. Spairow, Recursion
Lee Tidball, Midnight Princess
Christopher Valin, The Nemesis
Leah Weatherby, History of a Book Club
Kent Williams, Lost Cause

Short Scripts
Teri Carson, Chucky’s Feast
Henry Crum, Waritos
Jason Michael Ford, Picture Girl
Warren Paul Glover, Luck’s Ran Out
Warren Paul Glover, Performance Heart
Millar Prescott, Autumn Leaves
Christoph Schinko, Carla
David Schroeder & Alfonso Orsini, Lana Lui
Rich Sheehy, Par for the Course
Elissa Van Struth, Jennifer: A Field Guide
Shari Young, The Dancer

Thoughts from one of our judges:

The first round of judging brought a variety of exciting scripts and extremely talented writers with stories to tell. There is no doubt that the future of television is not without great ideas.

The strongest pilot scripts I read were those with dynamic characters in circumstances that we haven’t seen before – women in roles we don’t usually get to see them in, people who find themselves in unlikely supernatural circumstances, a new take on “family.”  The writers of our strongest scripts not only clearly had a sense of who their characters were and what was happening to them, but they were also intimately aware of the worlds and futures they were creating for their characters. The strongest scripts left me wishing for more and gave me a sense that the writer too was wishing for more. In their final scripted words, I got the sense that those writers clearly had more to say, bigger places to go, many mysteries to uncover.

The strongest spec scripts I read had a keen awareness of the world the characters they were writing for already exist in, and they were careful to be respectful of those worlds as they had their own fun within them. Giving true words and realistic situations to a character created by another writer is a skill not every writer possesses, and our strongest spec script writers absolutely had that skill.