The premise of the competition was this. Write a three minute screenplay and submit with a sixty second video pitch explaining your piece, then wait. Of the resulting (One thousand and eighty) submissions five will be selected, four by a panel of judges and one by a public vote. Those lucky five will be flown to Queenstown in the south island of New Zealand, whereby they will meet their producer Barrie Osborne of Lord of the Rings fame, given a budget of One hundred thousand dollars, a small crew and two days of shooting at any location around Queenstown, then afterwards access to Peter Jackson's own post production facilities. At the end when all is cut and edited, Peter Jackson himself will judge the resulting five and select a single winner who he will then give as reward, the key to the fucking universe!
As you can understand the ramifications of winning said competition would be unbelievable. Something similar to inserting a rocket in your bum, lighting it and pointing yourself at the gates of Hollywood.
And so I started to work... then I reworked, worked again... deleted and started over... reworked, lost my mind, regained my composure and reworked... then finally I had an early draft of my current script.
With this early draft I began to pull in a little outside help. Starting with the most brilliant, the most fan fucking-tastic, Jeffrey Phillips!
Jeffrey is a graphic artist as his neat little business card so proclaims. I met him briefly at the networking function a month or so back (see older post) and had heard of him through his work with the well known Wade K Savage. If one is to visit his web-site one will see that this kids got talent. Through contact with him via email I told him of my plight, my inability to draw above sub par and he agreed to do some storyboard images for me.
A few days later Jeffrey emailed me the work and payment was agreed upon. All said and done I never even saw him face to face. The wonders of modern communication mediums!
The second wild card I drew was an old friend turned successful son of a gun John Sullivan! We studied together back in film prison where he developed a nack for editing systems and I developed.. well not much at all. He now works for the Television Program Fishing WA as camera man, soundy and editor. With his help and Jeffrey's work I was able to construct a most superior video pitch to sell my story.
The work completed I submitted my script and pitch on the buzzer. A submission I am truly proud of regardless of the outcome. But it would not have been possible without the help of those mentioned above. Great work guys...
Follow the link below to see the submission in its natural habitat:
One of Jeffrey's storyboard images that didn't make it into the final submission due to a fundamental change I made in the script. here it shall live forever as the alternative ending.
More of Jeff's work here : www.jeffreyphillips.com.au
No comments:
Post a Comment