Outstanding Screenplays Shorts Competition offers you an opportunity to have your short film script produced for a guaranteed budget of $10,000. 

Our FIVE Oscar  WINNING Judges will decide this year’s Grand Prize Winner. These are all creators who have the experience of bringing compelling shorts from concept to script to the finished film — and they all WON the HIGHEST AWARD in the industry for their produced short films. 

The Jury:

Top scripts are considered by our unprecedented Oscar-Winning jury of short film writers, directors and producers. Our jury includes:

Chris Overton - Academy Award® Winner for his short film ‘The Silent Child’

Chris Overton is an Academy Award® winning director, producer and a member of the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Chris has been working professionally in the industry for over 20 years. 

Chris is the CEO of Slick Films - an Academy Award® winning independent production company who won The Oscar® for Best Live Action Short Film at the 90th Academy Awards. Slick Films’ highly experienced roster of writers, directors and producers are constantly pushing the boundaries of filmmaking in pursuit of starting important conversations and making films with a social conscience. Slick Films tell stories. Stories with heart, stories that entertain and stories that are driven by equality, diversity and change.

Meghan Ross - Head of Creator Success, Seed&Spark

Meghan Ross is the Head of Creator Success at Seed&Spark and previously worked for VICELAND and SundanceTV. She’s also an Austin-based writer/director/comedian who was selected for 2022 Women at Sundance | Adobe Fellowship and Sundance Episodic Lab 2021-2022 for her comedy Here to Make Friends (also her personal tagline). Her shorts made The New Yorker’s Best Shouts of 2020 list and she was nominated for The Webby Awards for If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to God I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth, featuring narration by Jon Hamm. Her writing has appeared in Reductress, VICE's Broadly, TV Without Pity, The Toast, and other defunct but beloved sites. She hosted the late night show That Time of the Month for 5 years and the Instagram Live show No One Asked For This for 2 pandemic years. Most importantly, Meghan’s an aspiring stage mom to her rescue pit-lab, Dreidel.

Shawn Christensen - Academy Award® Winner for his short film ‘Curfew’

Shawn Christensen graduated from Pratt Institute with a BFA in Illustration and Graphic Design. After graduating, he formed indie rock band Stellastarr* and, while on tour, wrote and sold many screenplays, including Sidney Hall (Fox Searchlight) and Karma Coalition (Warner Bros.). Stellastarr* released two albums on RCA Records and a third album, independently. In 2011, Christensen's short film, Brink, was an Official Selection of the Tribeca Film Festival and won "Best Festival Film of the Year" by ShortOfTheWeek.com. In 2012, his short film, Curfew, won over 40 awards in Film Festivals before winning the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards.

Martin Strange-Hansen - Academy Award® Winner for his short film ‘This Charming Man’ and Academy Award® Nominee for his short film ‘On My Mind’

Graduated from the Danish Filmschool in 2001, with the Student Academy Award® winning graduation film FEEDING DESIRE. His next short film THIS CHARMING MAN won an Oscar® in the Short Live Action category in 2003. Creator of the first Danish webisode in 2008 the Webby Awards-Honoree PINLY & FLAU. His previous short film JENSEN LIVES HERE gained a nomination nod by annual Robert awards by The Danish Film Academy.

His latest short film “ON MY MIND” nodded an Academy Award® nomination in the Live Action Short-Film category earlier this year.

Chairman for the Danish Filmdirectors Association in 2010-2013, subsequently Vice-chairman 2013-2015. As an avid short film lover, he has acted as head of program at OFF Odense International Filmfestival in 2012, and jury member at numerous short film festivals including the Clermont-Ferrand & Interfilm Berlin.

Martin Strange-Hansen has a long track record of nurturing and developing new talent as Commissioning Editor at Filmworkshop Copenhagen, Filmworkshop Odense and Filmworkshop Aarhus, as well as a mentor for young filmmakers at most Danish Filmschools. 

A voting member of AMPAS® as well as The Danish Filmacademy. 

Besides writing and directing his own projects Martin Strange-Hansen also acts as a script-writer for fellow directors.

Mat Kirkby - Academy Award® Winner for his short film ‘The Phone Call’

Mat Kirkby is an Oscar winning writer/director, directing over 100 commercials & music videos out of Ridley Scott Associates in London, with videos for Adele, Muse, Basement Jaxx and Fatboy Slim, over 500 million hits on Youtube, and ads for Nike and Playstation. In 2015, he won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film for directing The Phone Call, a short drama film starring Sally Hawkins and Jim Broadbent. Kirkby wrote the film with his colleague James Lucas who both had family who worked on helplines. The short had its world premiere at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival, where it also won Best Short Film. 

Kristóf Deák - Academy Award® Winner for his short film ‘Sing’

Kristóf Deák is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, film producer and editor who is best known for his work on Sing, which earned him critical appraisal and recognition including the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film at the 89th Academy Awards.

The Prizes: 

Grand Prize: 

Your Short Screenplay PRODUCED for a GUARANTEED budget of $10,000. 

The winning Short Screenplay will be PRODUCED by Academy-award winning production company Slick Films and crowdfunded with a filmmaker friendly crowdfunding platform Seed&Spark, with the minimum budget of $10,000 guaranteed by Outstanding Screenplays! 

We're happy to be partnerned up with SLICK FILMS - an Academy Award® winning independent production company. Slick Films specializes in Short Films and their highly experienced roster of writers, directors and producers are constantly pushing the boundaries of filmmaking.

We're also pleased to announce that we have a new partnership with SEED&SPARK, a crowdfunding resource with no platform fees, the highest campaign success rate in the world (88%), and a track record of setting filmmakers on a path to success.

TWO MENTORSHIP FR0M TWO OSCAR WINNERS: 

One writer of the 15 finalists will receive a MENTORSHIP from Academy Award® Winner CHRIS OVERTON! 

One writer of the 15 finalists will receive a MENTORSHIP from Academy Award® Winner MARTIN STRANGE-HANSEN! 

Finalists:

The top 15 Finalists will receive: 

* Each of the 15 finalists will receive an EXCLUSIVE one page written feedback report from one of our 5 OSCAR-WINNING judges! 

* Each of the 15 finalists will receive 1:1 mentoring with Seed&Spark’s crowdfunding specialists! Seed&Spark is a crowdfunding resource with no platform fees, the highest campaign success rate in the world (88%), and a track record of setting filmmakers on a path to success.

Semi-Finalists & Quarter-Finalists:

* All quartefinalists, semifinalist, finalists and winners will be published on our Instagram and all our other social media accounts. We currently have more than 2.1 MILLION followers combined and this will be an important exposure for you and will create more opportunities for your screenplay and your writing career. 

Check out our Instagram here.

* Your script will be sent to our Judges & specially chosen members of our industry contacts. You don’t need to be one of our finalists to have your script sent out. If we notice an interesting script that we know a certain producer, agent, or manager will be interested to read, we'll contact you and ask if we can send it to a certain industry contact.

All Entrants:

LIVE WORSKSHOP - CROWDFUNDING TO BUILD INDEPENDENCE

Thinking about making a movie, show, or web series? Great! We wanna watch it.

But first, how are you going to fund it? And when you’re finished, who’s going to watch it? We've got answers!

Most people think of crowdfunding as ‘friends and family’ fundraising for a project. But we're going to show you how crowdfunding can not only get your project off the ground — it can help you build a sustainable film career through a direct connection with your audience.

Join Seed&Spark for this can't-miss Crowdfunding to Build Independence workshop to learn:

- Why audience building is essential for a film career (and crowdfunding)

• - How to define, find, talk to and grow your audience
• - How to prepare for a successful crowdfunding campaign (including goal, incentives, and communication plan)
• - Why staged financing might be right for you