As I mentioned in my last post, with a completed and revised screenplay for Dig Down, I decided the best option for myself was to enter it into screenplay competitions. Yeah, yeah, I know. I might lack some imagination when it comes to figuring out what to do with completed scripts, and I might just be a one trick pony following the same formula.
I felt I was still in the same boat though, not really knowing where I stood in terms of the quality of my screenplay. This medium was still relatively new to me. The only screenplays I’d ever read were three that I’d written, Lock the Doors and Dig Down, as well as an idea that I’d written as a screenplay 17 years ago called On the River, and the script for Crawl, which I downloaded and read when looking for examples of horror screenplays the previous year after submitting Lock the Doors to competitions.
There was still this need for feedback, so I could hone in on what needed the most attention. Screenplay contests themselves would do that as it would compare me against the field of other hopefuls who were also pitching their stories. And, if I could find some contests that offered specific feedback from the judges, that would help my understanding all the more.
I actually found I was throwing myself into the search for competitions more this time around. I think two things greatly contributed to that. The first was, as I mentioned way back in my posts about finding contests for Lock the Doors, I’d entered one, that felt I’d been lackadaisical, letting a week go by before entering another, and even when I entered two more, I had this unshakeable feeling that it was out of guilt for not pursuing it more aggressively sooner.
I guess I wanted to avoid the rut of following a bad habit.
The other aspect that I think contributed to entering more contests was that Dig Down wasn’t horror, and I felt actually fit with what a lot more contests might be looking for. While studios will always be looking for horror projects because they are cheap to produce, they don’t fare well against all the other genres out there in film competitions. However, something like Dig Down, which while a chase story, has a lot of depth to it, could hold its own against other entries. That alone meant there were more options for Dig Down to enter.
I ended up finding three contests, all of which offered not only feedback, but varying levels of feedback. This, in itself, left me with some decisions to ponder. I knew I needed notes, but what level of criticism and analysis was right for me?
I’ll explore the details of the options I was posed with, next time.