Press release from Film Victoria
Film Victoria is offering a special opportunity for Victorian early-career screenwriters with fiction feature film ideas in 2011/12. The Catapult Concept Lab will support writers to take part in an intensive workshop to develop a feature film concept to an outline or treatment with the aid of mentors, script editors, producers and distributors. Acting CEO Jenni Tosi said Film Victoria was extremely pleased to be able to offer support for new feature writers
through the Catapult Concept Lab.
“The screen industry thrives on creativity, and it’s important to foster new ideas from new talent to keep the industry vibrant, innovative and progressive”, she said. “Catapult Concept Lab will provide early-career screenwriters with a targeted, practical professional development opportunity. It’s about supporting them not just to get the feature film script right, but also to assist their project to find an audience and a marketplace, and ultimately move into production.”
Ms Tosi said the lab had evolved from Film Victoria’s popular Catapult and New Feature Writers programs, offered in previous years. “We’ve refined our strategy to ensure we’re hitting the three main objectives of development: assisting projects into production, developing scripts with an audience in mind, and enabling practitioners to gain essential skills they can use on future projects.”
Ten writers/projects will be selected to attend Catapult Concept Lab, which will comprise an intensive workshop, networking events and access to local and international mentors, script developers, producers and distributors. Applicants will be asked to provide three, one-line feature film concepts plus another more advanced concept for assessment, along with the first 10 pages of a sample feature length script. Shortlisted applicants will then be asked to provide the full length script, which will be used to further assess writing craft.
“If you’re interested in applying, you’ve got until 13 January 2012 to work on your concepts and script,” Ms Tosi said. “We expect to hold the workshop itself in early June 2012.”
Guidelines, templates and application forms will be available on the Film Victoria website in November.
For more information visit www.film.vic.gov.au. For up-to-date news about Film Victoria’s programs subscribe to eNews or follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/filmvictoria)