2012 Countdown: Four Weeks To Go
Thursday 5th January 2012
There's just over four weeks to the final deadline for The Sitcom Mission 2012. How are you getting on? Oh, and Happy New Year.
We've had a few interesting things to report, the first of which is the publication of our ebook Your Sitcom Mission... Should You Choose To Accept It (pictured), which is out now on Kindle. We've been hugely privileged to work with the brilliant John Vorhaus on this, and he's contributed a fabulous chunk of it. John has huge amounts of experience as a Hollywood script writer and is a script consultant and production advisor the world over.
If you haven't checked it out yet, please feel free to do so and it won't break the bank at under four quid at the time of writing (the price fluctuates because it's linked to the dollar and the Amazon.com price of $5.99). Amazon link
The great thing about an ebook is that you can update it any time, and we'll be adding to it our experiences of The Sitcom Mission 2012 in time for next year's competition. Unless, of course, the Mayans were right and there'll be no more sitcoms, world or, fortunately, Celebrity Big Brother.
We're very proud of our ebook, and we'd love you very much if you went and bought a copy. And even if you don't, we're still proud of it. As you should be when you complete your sitcom.
What else? Well, now that it's January we're on the MovieBytes.com radar, which is an American site which lists loads of script writing competitions. Because of this, we're getting a number of emails from our US cousins asking if they're eligible to enter. Our first rule is: the competition is open to anyone. That means anyone! As long as you chuck us a tenner, we don't care who you are!
Last year's final had a sitcom by a German entrant which was highly commended by the judges, and the year before we had a sitcom in the semi-finals by an Australian who had moved to the UK. We get entries from around the world - Canada, Russia, Zitfaceland. Ok, we made the last one up. But don't let geography put you off, and we don't require that you come to the UK to see your entry performed if you get through to the performance stage.
And speaking of international interest in our contest, we're now being followed on Twitter by a Manchester United footballer. We're not going to say who it is, but he cost more than you could afford, unless you're a multi-millionaire that is. We checked out his tweets and he's a really funny guy. We're really hoping he enters the competition, he's practically guaranteed to get through to the finals on PR value alone. No, wait, I didn't say that. Doh!
Anyway, our forum on British Comedy Guide is a great place to share your thoughts about your script and how you're progressing, and if you're struggling you'll feel much better if you know that others are in the same boat. Of course, if you're struggling, there's an ebook that might help...
And now? Right now we're busy reading the Silver entry scripts. Entrants get a critique from both of us and these have been described as extremely helpful and worth every penny... brilliant... very useful and very detailed. Interestingly, we don't always agree (is there anything so subjective as comedy?) but we like to think that getting two different perspectives on their work can only be a good thing. Who wants to read the same critique twice?
We're back at the Priory Arms in Stockwell on Saturday for an Introduction to Sitcom Writing workshop and we feel that we've finally found a home. A large (quiet) room above a pub that serves real ale and excellent food. When we did our last workshop there almost everybody stayed till closing time and the workshop carried on informally over drinks. We can't guarantee that every workshop will run for 13 hours, but we do promise that they're good value anyway.