Virginia Screenwriting Competition entries due by May 25

The Virginia Film Office is sponsoring the 27th Virginia Screenwriting Competition, created to provide Virginia screenwriters with a forum for their work and an opportunity to present their scripts to professional members of the motion picture and television industry.

The competition is one of the few in the nation requiring no entrance fee, and all entries receive a written evaluation from the first round judges.  Well-known past winners include Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan, who won in 1989 for his screenplay “Home Fries”, and Megan Holley, who won in 2003 for her screenplay “Sunshine Cleaning”.

Only Virginia residents or students currently enrolled in Virginia schools may submit screenplays.  Each script must contain either Virginia locations or locations that could reasonably be expected to be found in Virginia.  Feature film scripts must be approximately 90-120 pages in length. 

This year, the competition will also accept scripts made for one-hour television pilots, a reflection of the high-caliber of writing found in today’s television programming.  These must be approximately 60-90 pages in length. 

All scripts must be typed and submitted in a standard screenplay format.  Pages must be numbered, and must include cover page with title only. 

For the second year, the Virginia Film Office is accepting all submissions to the competition electronically.  The script must be saved in a non-editable format such as a PDF, with the title of the PDF the same as the screenplay. 

All screenplays must be e-mailed to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) no later than midnight on Monday, May 25, 2015.

Screenplays are first read by Virginia judges, and finalists are selected and submitted to a second panel of judges who are currently working professionally in the entertainment industry.  Three winning screenplays are then selected, and notifications of results are made in October 2015.  The three winning writers are each awarded a prize of $1,000 at the Virginia Film Festival in early November in Charlottesville, Va.

For further information, visit the Virginia Film Office website, http://www.film.virginia.org or ca,ll the Film Office at (800) 854-6233.