Script to Screen gives writers a chance to win £5,000 in cash and £1,000 of hire kit to turn their winning script into a film and have it shown at the film festival. The five finalists on show were picked from 191 entrants this year and attendees got the chance to see their scripts performed by the Bath Spa University drama department.
The Judges
Gaby Chiappe
Started writing for television in 1998 on everything from Eastenders and Holby City to Casualty and Survivors. Most recently she wrote the script for Their Finest.
Sarah Gavron
Directed Suffragette in 2015. Her debut feature was Brick Lane which earned her a BAFTA nomination and The Alfred Dunhill Talent Award. Most recently she's directed Transparent.
Col Needham
CEO and human version of IMDb which he started as a spreadsheet. IMDb is now the top film website in the world with over 250 million unique visitors every month.
Listening to the judges talk before we got to the scripts was tremendous fun. They're all interesting characters, but Col Needham is amazing to listen to. Needham should probably have the title of King of the Nerds, he's definitely living the dream some of us wish we could.
The Finalists
Password Protect by Rohan Agalawata
A space commander awakes from hibernation 200 years into the future, but cannot remember her password, and her life support systems will shut down if she can't.
Scarred by Ivana Basic
Sophie, a 37-year-old pastry chef who recently underwent treatment for breast cancer, struggles to tell her new boyfriend Tom about her double mastectomy.
Home Wreckers by Carolyn Goodyear
A nervous boyfriend about to propose to his girlfriend has his romantic evening at home ruined when an unwanted, annoying intruder joins then and wrecks the occasion.
Strictly Halal by Avin Shah
The food crisis drives Rachel and Osama to find alternative sources of meat. But as neighbourhood cats disappear and the police close in, will their love prove taboo? Or tabby..?
Just Jewish by Lisa Ray-Jacobs & Simon Powell
The canny proprietor of marital agency, "Date Your Faith", attempts to save her struggling business by convincing a Christian client to embrace Judaism so she can win her man.
My Pre-Predictions
After reading the brief synopsis for each script I had a standout favourite. Strictly Halal by Avin Shah sounded like it had some amusing potential. This was the one I was rooting for.
The Scripts
How much time have I spent reading synopsis for films in my life? Too much to count. When will I learn never to judge a movie by its blurb? Evidently never. Having heard the scripts I had a very different feeling about everything.
Password Protect was a very tricky one. The script itself didn't feel great, but that's because a lot of what it's actually trying to do is create a scene of isolation and frustration. The finished product would be a woman in a ship talking either to the computer or herself, in a reading it's difficult to conjure that side of the piece, but you could visualise it.
Scarred's synopsis read like it was going to be sombre, and it was, but the way the story evolved through such a short space of time was wonderfully done. It illustrated the small things that people might not even consider and it shows them in an accessible way. The resolution of the story in the end was beautiful and damn it, I wanted to see the end of that film.
Home Wreckers... even if I'd just been handed the script to read I think I would have laughed at it. The two characters that we're given are so bizarrely relatable and the catalogue of disasters that befall them will almost certainly remind you of something in your own life. It was constant and unrelenting and yet by the end you knew this couple were perfect for each other. I only had one quibble as I listened but it was quickly resolved and I was back to laughing.
Strictly Halal didn't quite give me what I had hoped for, but it did give a dark take on the synopsis. It created the atmosphere of a county in crisis and the camaraderie and deceit that comes with it. I liked the story but I have to confess to being a little confused by it. Thinking about how it would look if it was turned into a film I'm not sure that confusion would disappear.
Just Jewish is a slightly dated view of romance in this modern age. Potentially one for a little jump back in history or some tweaks to make it believable in modern times. The way it was laid out worked really well and its inclusion of a movie montage would work well to create the scene without cluttering it with a lot of dialogue. You could certainly visualise the whole thing as it was being read.
All of the scripts were read by students from the Bath Spa University drama department, and if I don't see some of them doing films in the near future I will be shocked. The reading really does make or break a script. I don't know how long the students got to work with them but they certainly managed to grasp the material very well. Some were amazing, and some a little over dramatic to the point I didn't understand what they were saying, but they all managed to help create a scene for each script.
Something that felt a little obvious to me is that the scripts were written and not read. Sounds daft I know, but more than once I noticed the use of language that made perfect sense as a sentence but didn't sound right in natural speech for the character. It was interesting to note the differences like that and hearing the writers say similar things about how it came across off the page.
After the readings I had different predictions. Home Wreckers was my clear favourite, so much laughter from everyone in the crowd and the students were brilliant. It was truly hilarious to the point I had tears in my eyes. In complete contrast I wouldn't have minded seeing Scarred win, it was a touching short that could easily have been something bigger.
Drum roll please... do it, you know you want to...
The winner is:
Home Wreckers by Carolyn Goodyear.
This was Carolyn's third time as a finalist, and she proves that third time really is the charm. Home Wreckers was an amazing piece and I'm really interested to see the final product.
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