Festival Research Part II: Electric Boogaloo

The following is a transcript of my interview with Joan Wai, Program Manager of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships Screenwriting Competition. It was a wonderful interview and I plan on following the festival throughout the years, maybe even submitting a screenplay of my own one day.

Q: How many entries did you get this year?

A: We received a record number 7,511 entries this year. This is our fourth year in a row breaking our record on the number of entries.

Q: What is the reading process like for the first submissions?

A: To assure a blind read, we ask our entrants to submit their scripts without their names or any identifying information, but about 25% of entries have left their info on there. So every script that's submitted is checked for contact information. The blind read is to eliminate any bias a reader may subconsciously get when they see a script from LA for example--one reader might think oh this will be derivative but a script from North Dakota will be fresh, or vice versa. We also hand assign every script to our readers. We track our reader genre likes and dislikes to give every script its best chance possible in the competition. For instance, if we have a sci-fi script that needs to be read, we will only assign it to a reader who likes sci-fi. There are additional factors that we take into account to get them a fair read. Safe to say, our assignment of scripts is a very laborious and painstaking process.

Q: How many people do you have reading the first round of entries?

A: We have over 70 readers in the first round.

Q: Who is typically chosen as a reader in this case?

A: We use professional readers with industry experience, some of them work in development. Many of our readers have been reading for us for a long time. New readers tend to come from referrals by our existing readers.

Q: How do you score entries? Do they use a scoring template/rubric? Are there scoring guidelines?

A: Every reader is required to attend a two hour orientation before they can start reading for us at the beginning of the season. We review our scoring guidelines and there is a score sheet where they write scores and comments to support their scores for every script they read. I also review score sheets our readers submit and provide feedback to all the readers for quality assurance.

Q: After the first round, how many are left? How does the reading process change with each round?

A: From the 7511 entries this year, 378 advanced to the quarterfinals, and 149 advanced to the semifinals. We will have our finalists soon, but in previous years, there's usually 10 that make it to the finals.

Points are accumulated as scripts advance in the competition. Every script gets a minimum of two reads. The first and quarterfinal rounds are read by our readers. In the semifinal round, we have members of the Academy volunteer to read. The volunteers come from various branches, so it's possible for a semifinalist to have an Academy member producer and screenwriter among those judging their script. In the finalist round, the scripts are read by the Academy Nicholl committee which is composed of Academy members as well. This year's committee is chaired by Robin Swicord, she's a member from the Writer's Branch.

Q: How far in advance do you send out your call for entries? How do entries typically roll in? Early? Late? In waves?

A: We aim to open our competition sometime in January. We announce it via our Academy Nicholl Facebook page and a press release goes out at that time. We set up three pricing tiers to try to space out the entries. Earlier is better for us in terms of processing of course. But lots of people like to wait until the last possible moment to keep working on their scripts before submitting it. Over 2000 entries came in on the last two days of this year's competition.

Q: How many paid employees do you have each year? How many volunteers?

A: This department consists of three paid full-time employees, the Director of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships, the Program Manager (myself) and the Program Assistant. We also have one or two temps helping us during our crunch period of submissions. Then there's our army of readers who we pay to read for us. The volunteers are the Academy members in the semifinal round and the Academy Nicholl committee.

Q: Do you use specific programming, trafficking, budgeting software? Do you like it?

A: We have a proprietary database that we use to track all our entries including the scoring and assignment of scripts as well as reader genre likes and dislikes. It's very sophisticated on one hand but it's also quite the process developing it with programmers to the point where it is today and it still could work better! We also use Quickbooks to print out check requisitions to request payment from Accounting for our readers. The Accounting department does the heavy duty work of tracking our spending and provides monthly reports for us to review and audit.

Q: What community outreach do you do outside of your festival season to keep your event on the public's radar and/or to raise funds?


A: Speaking on screenwriting panels is one way we do outreach, the majority of our efforts is via social media  press releases/coverage. We have a contact list of our quarterfinalists, semifinalists and finalists that we release to industry who request it. We tend to get press coverage when we announce our finalists and for our awards ceremony. The entry fees we receive go toward paying for the administration of the program, but the fees we receive come nowhere close to covering all the costs. In 2013, the Academy Nicholl Fellowships program received about $380,000 in entry fees. The program distributed $175,000 to the fellows and spent over $300,000 judging the entries alone.

Q: Can you describe what happens when somebody is chosen as a fellowship recipient (for instance, the fellows dinner and other such things)?

A: We host the fellows (flying them out to LA if they don't reside here) during awards week which includes a lunch with the Nicholl committee and a lovely awards ceremony. The week is capped off by an annual get-together where the new fellows are introduced to prior year fellows. Also, every month we host a lunch for the fellows to network. It?s a nice little community?a true fellowship of writers.

Q: How long have you been with the competition? What do you wish you had done differently or better when you first started out? What do you wish you knew then that you know now?

A: July was my 8th year working full-time here. Before that, I was a reader for the Academy Nicholl Fellowships, so a very long time. The competition is always evolving, every year we look for ways to improve the workflow and process for our entrants. Last year and this year we started releasing reader comments to our entrants as a bonus to those who reached a certain point in the competition. Last year we changed the annual awards dinner to a staged reading of script page excerpts from the Fellowship winning scripts which we will be doing again this year. The constant re-evaluation work is worth making this the best screenwriting competition in the world. I'm not very good with names so it took a while to learn all the names of our Fellows. That's something I wish I could have learned faster.

Research for Interview (The Academy Nicholl Fellowships Screenwriting Competition)

1.      What time is your interview scheduled and who will you be talking with when you call/skype?

            I will be speaking with Joan Wai, Program Manager of the Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting Competition at 3 PM on Sunday 9/7.

2.      Who started it and who runs it?

         It was started by Gee Nicholl and Julian Blaustein in 1985, after meeting with the Academy’s then-Executive Director Jim Roberts and then-Executive Administrator Bruce Davis. Robin Swicord is the chair of the Writer’s Branch, currently the head of the committee in charge of the competition, while Joan Wai is the Program Manager. Greg Beal – director.

3.      What is the mission of the festival/conference? (copy and paste the first paragraph)

         N/A (no mission on their website)

4.      How does this compare with their actual programming choices from the past two years? Be specific in describing what they program (mode, categories within mode, niche, Political? Global? Local? Gender? Sexuality? Race? Any themes that you see? etc...)

         They accept screenplays worldwide regardless of any particular theme. A lot of the screenplays that have won fellowships over the years have been dramas, but there are enough in other categories that it does not feel like a particular theme of the competition’s.

5.      Where is the event?

         The Academy is located in Los Angeles, but the members of the committee are able to judge the scripts from anywhere.

6.      When is the event? (Give dates from last year if not current)

         Quarterfinalists were notified by August 1, and Semifinalists were emailed in early September. The fellowship recipients will be notified in late October.

7.      How do you submit? Snail mail, online, withoutabox, through their site, etc...

         You must submit a PDF file of your script, as well as their Online Application form through their own website.

8.      When are the deadlines to enter? Early? Reg? Late?

The deadlines for this Past Year: Early – February 28; Regular – April 10; Late – May 1

9.      How much does it cost to enter?

         Early - $35; Regular - $50; Late - $65

10. Who’s eligible, what are the guidelines to enter?

         Screenwriters may submit if they have never made more than $25,000 from writing fictional work for film or television. Entries must also be original works written in English by either one or two writers working in collaboration.

11. Is there a Student category?

         No. In the event of a student winning the competition, he or she would simply defer the beginning of the fellowship year until after the completion of his or her educational requirements.

12. What formats do they except for jurying? DVD, Vimeo, Flash drives?

         The screenplays must be submitted in PDF format.

13. What formats do they except for exhibition/screening?

         See above.

14. How many films screened at the festival last year?

         Five fellowships were awarded last year: Four individual writers and one writing team.

15. How long is a typical shorts block or paper presentation block at their event?

         N/A

16. How many films or papers do they program per block?

         N/A

17. How do people register to attend? Is there a cost to attend as a guest?

         N/A

18. Look at sponsorship page and see what businesses. Grants and private entities give money to the event. Figure out how many of each kind and note any leads that might be useful to us.

         A lot of the money to support the competition comes from entry fees, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences support any additional costs.

19. What are their sponsorship levels and incentives for each level?

         N/A

20. Did they have a kickstarter or indiegogo? What incentives did they have for each level of donor?

         No, they do not have a Kickstarter or Indiegogo.

21. What kind of non-traditional film/video events have they had before? Things like Installations, 'Visual Soundwalls,' VJing etc.

         N/A

22. Are there ways in which they have expanded the typical film screening event? How have they branched out from sitting in a dark room in front of a screen?

         They have branched out a lot from the beginning. Back in 1986, it used to be that only scripts from California were accepted, but now anybody from across the world can enter, as long as the screenplay is submitted in English. They originally had 99 entries in their first year, but last year, they broke their previous record and received 7,251 entries.

23. Is the layout easy to navigate? What makes it easy?

         The layout is fairly easy to navigate, with pages clearly labeled to know where you can find anything.

24. Is the layout difficult to navigate? What makes it difficult?

         The page for the competition is part of the greater website of oscars.org, so it can be difficult to find just going through the Academy’s website and sometimes it can be difficult to lose track of the various subsections.

25. Can you find the information you are looking for on the homepage or via a link on the homepage?

         If you go to the homepage of oscars.org, you can easily find the Academy Nicholl Fellowships through a link. Going to the main page for the Fellowships, you can easily find the information you’re looking for through various links.

26. Aesthetically, what catches your eye? What's cool about it?

         The fonts are pleasant and it’s all organized very neatly on the main page.

27. Aesthetically, what doesn't fit in? What makes it look bad?

         It does not make the site look bad, but it would be nice to have a bigger font on some of the explanatory parts of the site (describing what certain links lead to and such).

28. Should there be more information? Is the page too bare?

         The homepage is fine, but on the About page, the spacing between the lines makes the page feel more bare than it really is. This is not because of lack of information, though, as they have plenty of information on the page.

29. Should there be less information? Is the page too busy?

         No, the page never feels too busy, even though there is plenty of information on it.

30. What would you do differently if you were to redesign this website?

         I would put some of the information in the FAQ section in the About page, or the Rules page, since there is a lot of useful information that somebody could be liable to miss there.

31. What would you keep the same if you were to redesign this website?

            The design and layout of the general space is very well-done and easy to navigate around, so I would keep a lot of the design.

Confirmation and Meeting Time

Talking with Joan Wai over the course of this week, we agreed to a time of 3 p.m. on Sunday, September 7th.

In other words, we spoke earlier today and I'm very excited to share all my information in the coming week on my blog. So, stay tuned, because it's gonna be great.