THE SITCOM TRIALS - October 21st 2011 Manchester

NEW:

THE SITCOM TRIALS Manchester Oct 21 2011

The second of this year's Manchester Sitcom Trials will be taking place at the Lass O'Gowrie on Friday October 21st 2011 at 7.45pm and you are invited to enter scripts. Upload them to the SitsVac files.

You will find The Brief there, that tells you the very simple guidelines you
need to follow for your script entry (it's short, it has very few characters in,
it has a cliffhanger, it has to be funny).

Deadline for script entries is midnight Saturday October 1st 2011.
Deadline for reviewing and voting for scripts is midnight Sunday October 9th 2011

Tickets for the event itself, which is part of the Manchester Comedy Festival, only cost £3 and details are here.

There is more detailed chat about the event and between writers here on the British Comedy Guide Forum,and you can see lots of videos from previous Sitcom Trials, including the TV series and the most recent season at the Leicester Square Theatre at SitcomTrials.co.uk or on the Sitcom Trials YouTube channel.

More details on Wikipedia and you can follow us on Twitter & Facebook

We look forward to receiving your entries and to see you at the show.

Kev F Sutherland
Creator and Executive Producer The Sitcom Trials

Hi Kev,

I'm listening/reading/paying attention.
Good to hear that it's running again. Now where did I leave my writing partner?

Do we have to sign up to yahoo to enter?

Quote: AJGO @ August 19 2011, 10:34 PM BST

Do we have to sign up to yahoo to enter?

View original

I fear you do, yes. It's got a File set-up that I'm used to using. If anyone can suggest a flashier, newier, more impressive place we could upload files to, read them and vote on them, I'm always open to ideas. But, yes, joining the Yahoogroup is needed so you can upload scripts to the Files, and indeed read everyone else's.

Kev F

Thanks for clarifying.

Less than a month to get your entries in for the Sitcom Trials in Manchester. And if that isn't excuse enough for bumping this thread back up the forum, I don't know what is.

most of the entries will probably come in the last week or even day, like last time,

Reminder everyone, Sitcom Trials coming up, deadline for scripts.

Buy tickets here: http://www.manchestercomedyfestival.co.uk/10mcf_show.aspx?event=691

Google for other details - they're out there (probably at http://sitcomtrials.co.uk)

Is anyone doing this? The 7/3 timings I'm finding a bit tricky to do well(at all) (should've started before now)...

The first Act doesn't have to be 7 minutes--it can be 8. And, although the usual rule is that one page equals one minute, that's usually when there's action being described. Dialogue tends to run faster. Unless it's being performed by Terence Stamp.

Will they be happy with less than 7/3? Or does that look like I haven't bothered?

(Sorry Tel, you're out)

I thought the problem was going to be squeezing things into that timeframe rather than padding them out!

No padding!! Just a naturally occurring cut-off point has occurred...

Well the rules say no more than 8 minutes, so anything below that is acceptable, technically.

If you do a first act of two pages, though, you might be playing with fire.

Hi all,

As always, rules are made to be broken. If you can keep to the Sitcom Trials guidelines it would be a good thing, and writing something way too long would be a distinct disadvantage. But if your script is funny, and you're having difficulty compressing it to 8 minutes, it would be better to send it in a funny but slightly long state than not enter it at all.

If it's funny enough, it might get a chance. Bring em on, let's have some fun.

Kev F