NSI Script to Screen Competition - PART 1 of ???

Well another year of the National Screen Institute "Script to Screen" competition has come and gone, and for the second year in a row I managed to make it in before the 200 allotted entry spots were full.

It's a CRAZY competition. Here's a rundown of how it works.

The competition opened June 9, and runs until August 8, or until the first 200 spots fill up.

To enter, you must send in the following:

1. The logline for your movie pitch - One or two lines that sum up what your movie is about

2. 1 page outlining the story - Just tell the broad strokes of the movie... INCLUDING the ending.

3. A 12-15 page treatment - Basically, you must break down the movie, scene by scene.

4. A 3-5 page sample script - Just write out a scene, so they can see whether or not you know what you're doing.

5. Resume!

Though I recieve e-mails form NSI, somehow I missed the competition announcement, and only found out about the start date 2 days before.

I had no idea what I would do for the pitch, but then my wife, Arlyn, reminded me of a ball hockey movie I had mentioned to her a few years ago. So that locked it. I would start writing that pitch.

The idea for this flick came to me in the aftermath of the Vancouver City Riot in 2011, when the Vancouver Canucks lost game 7 of the Stanly Cup finals. The riot was ridiculous... A bunch of people came downtown that night, not to watch hockey or cheer on their team, but with the intent to destroy the city.



But it wasn't the first time it happened:



This was back in 1994, when I was in grade 12.

Now at the time of the 2011 riots, I was already trying to think of a modern day ball hockey movie I was calling "The Sac"... it was essentially a rip-off of "The Sandlot" but in a cul-de-sac.



It was going to be a very Canadian flick that I could try pitching around to Canadian film companies. I didn't quite know where I wanted to go with it story-wise, or what would set it apart from all other sports underdog flicks, but I knew I wanted it to be family friendly... and a movie that would have a sense of nostalgia for any kid that grew up in Canada playing ball hockey (or street hockey... if that what you called it).

I got to thinking how when we were kids, when it came around to playoff time, and hockey fever hit the city, we would spend a lot of time after school playing ball hockey and discussing the games.

It hit me that a story that took place back in 1994, during that crazy playoff run might be a lot of fun.

I pitched it to friends, and they liked it... but then I sort of forgot about it. It was always in the back of my mind, but I never sat down and got working on it.

Until now.

I met with my writing partner, Kev, and our friend John, and threw down some ideas. When I left Boston Pizza that night (the place Kev and I hammer out ALL our ideas), I had the entire movie in my head. Now I just had to get it down on paper before the deadline. The competition had just opened and there were 50 submission for the 200 spots taken on the first day.

CONTINUED!

Speaking of Rogen... Bound 3!

This is OOOOOLD news now, but since I've mentioned we are currently working with Seth Rogen on his new flick, I figured I may as well show off a side project Kev Pavlovic and I worked on for him.

This came about really quickly... I won't go into boring details, so I'll just say we were asked on a Friday if we would be interested in helping Seth Rogen and James Franco with their video spoof of Kanye West's "Bound 3".

At this point, they (Seth and James) were already using Kev's bike for the shoot, but now it looked like we would be taking their green screen footage and comping in some background footage to make it as close as possible to the Kim and Kanye version.

We worked 24 hours straight to have it out by the Monday morning, and in the end, we were more than happy with it.



It didn't take long for someone to put up a shot by shot comparison vid as well



They were a LITTLE worried that Kim and Kanye (especially Kanye) would lose their shit over it.... but they knew better. When the world all loves something, can you really be the one yelling "NOT FUNNY MOTHAH FUCKAH!!!"



One of the highlights... working on it got invited to "The Interview" wrap party... where they screened it repeatedly...

And that wraps of the Bound 3 adventure.

And yes, this does mean if we ran into Seth and Franco on the streets, they would have no idea who we were until we yelled "WE MADE BOUND 3!" at which point Seth would laugh, nod "oh okay!" and then head on his way.

BFF's.

BLOG RETOOL!

Well this last year I got pretty busy with work and so my personal projects kind of got left in the dirt. However, over the last couple of months, my day job hours have eased off a bit and I'm finally ready to get to that long list of projects I've been sitting on.

So while this site that was meant for documenting and showing off work created by myself and my talented chums through "House of Ten Productions", it actually turned into a blog updated once a year to countdown to Christmas.

SO, that said... time to steer this site BACK to it's intended purpose, and hopefully get busy enough with House of Ten projects to be updating A LOT.

I suppose I'm trying to take a cue from the two guys heading this whole project I'm on at Nitrogen, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg.

The amount of shit these two have going on at the same time is crazy and inspiring. These two are currently at the point in their careers that they COULD take it easy, but instead seem to be working harder.  I guess when you've reached that point when you can get almost any idea you have put into production, you take advantage of the situation.

That said, we are obviously NOT in that situation. But just because people aren't clawing over each other to throw money at House of Ten projects, doesn't mean they can't get done. It's just going to take a little longer. And just because no one is wanting to bankroll getting our projects to screen, it doesn't mean we can't do as much of the pre-production as possible on our own.

So House of Ten's new mission statement is simple: Follow the lead of two stoners from Point Grey that made it, and work our collective asses off to get our own stuff made. It's very similar to "fake it til we make it"