This was my Portfolio Short film from my writing course at Vancouver Film School. We had a limit of four pages in which to tell a story and showcase our style as a writer. We also only had three hours in which to shoot the piece, which means our choice of locations and characters was limited.

While I feel I can write in many genres (such as comedy, adventure, and science fiction, for children or adults), given the limitations I went with a short little story about “fucked up teenagers”, my favourite kind of teenager. Here is The John, about two teenage hustlers who accidentally kill a john. It’s NSishFW.

It is directed by Jim Bates and stars Maggie Ma and Matthew McLellan.

Scriptapalooza is an annual competition for screenplays, original TV pilots and TV spec scripts. In the TV category there is a $500 grand prize, but the real prize in Scriptapalooza comes in having your script read by a large pool of producers and agents all at once – a tad quicker than querying over and over again.

I’m planning to send in my Venture Bros. spec script, “Ready, Steady, Die!” by the October 15th deadline. I have to go over it one last time and punch up the humour!

The only problem is the pesky little $40 USD entry fee. It’s not that much at all – I’ve paid $50 CDN for the 3-Day Novel Contest in the past, and the Scriptapalooza fee is worth being read by so many literary agents and producers. However, these days I’m but a poor student living hand to mouth, working the occasional late-night shift at the movie house (which is also the only place I get to see movies!) and mooching off the rents.

I thought, would it be totally presumptuous to ask the internet for assistance? I know there’s at least some of you out there, and perhaps a portion of you would be up for helping a new writer out? Perhaps?

If you’re still listening, and you’re willing to take a chance, here’s a handy Paypal link you can use! Every little bit helps! But I won’t be offended if you don’t – there’s plenty of far needier charity cases out there that could use your help!

If I win any prize money, I promise to give the amount raised back to a charity of your guys’ choice. I’ll put it to a poll. I could also promise to do this when i am actually making money and not living hand to mouth, but I don’t know if that’ll ever come true. I hope so! You’ll be the first to know, internet!

At the beginning of 2009 I started a one-year writing for film and television course. It’s a very intense and short course running from January to December with only two full weeks off during the entire year. We are writing constantly, both independently and in collaborations – short films, TV spec scripts, TV pilots, and feature film scripts. There are also some opportunities to collaborate with other departments at the school (through not often enough in my opinion). One such opportunity is the Weekend Film Challenge which happens each term. Teams of film production students are assigned a short script (by the writing students) and have the weekend to shoot it with students from the acting and makeup programs.

Twice my script has been chosen as part of the Challenge. When the films are finished, they are screened at a little awards ceremony the instructors put together. The first time, my script “Round One” won “most outstanding screenplay”, as well as “most outstanding” film, ensemble cast, and a bunch of other categories. It was a really nice introduction to film school, as that was in my first term!

My second Weekend Film Challenge script was shot this past weekend and hasn’t yet been screened.

There are also opportunities to submit scripts to the acting department, digital design and film production department for their projects. Even without collaboration, however, this writing program provides us with a pretty diverse portfolio at the end of the year, if you stay on top of your work and learn to rewrite effectively. So far we’ve written a number of short films, a TV spec script for a show of our choosing, another spec script for a children’s cartoon show, an original cartoon series pitch pack, a full length feature film, an outline for a second feature film, and several comedy sketches. In the coming months we’ll be able to work on more TV specs, another feature, an original TV series pilot and bible, as well as taking courses in writing for video games, graphic novels, journalism, and writing for commercials and web series.

Read more