Friday, July 6, 2012

6th Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest announced

The latest incarnation of the Industry Insider Screenwriting Contest has arrived:
A New England Matriarch with a week left to live pledges her fortune to whomever in her small town fulfills her dying wish.
The intriguing logline comes from Oscar nominated screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, Pocahontas, Party of Five), who will also serve as judge.

As always, the only restriction is the logline itself.  It can be any genre you choose.  Deadline for submitting the first fifteen pages of your script is September 15.

2 comments:

Cavan said...

Your log line: "A New England matriarch with a week left to live pledges her fortune to whomever in her small town fulfills her dying wish" is grammatically incorrect.

You have "whomever" as the subject of the verb "fulfills." That can't be.

The correct clause would be "whoever in her small town fulfills her dying wish."

The problem is that the writer shortsightedly thought only "whomever" is the object of the preposition "to"; that's not the case. The entire clause is the object of the preposition "to" and the clause must have a normal nominative case subject, to wit: "Whoever."

It's hardly a good example of professionalism if you can't even write a grammatically correct log line.

J. M. Gaffney

Melinda said...

I didn't write it.

The intriguing logline comes from Oscar nominated screenwriter Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, Pocahontas, Party of Five), who will also serve as judge.

I just looked at the 7/6 email announcing the logline and it said "whomever". I copied and pasted it from there. It's since been corrected on their website to "whoever".

It's hardly a good example of professionalism if you can't even write a grammatically correct log line.

If I ever meet Susannah I'll pass that along.