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In The News
For Immediate Release Project Greenlight Picks Top 30 Screenplays Amateur Filmmakers From Across the USA Earn Distinction as Top Writers Among Largest Screenwriting Community, and Praise From Miramax Producers as Strong Potential Writer-Directors of Miramax’s Greenlight Film Los Angeles, CA – January 8, 2000 -- Project Greenlight, a first-of-its-kind venture from Miramax Films & TV, HBO and LivePlanet, today announced that it has selected the top 30 screenplays in its screenplay contest—from entries submitted by more than 10,000 people. In addition to the contest, Project Greenlight provides access and an inside view into the filmmaking process for the general public. The top 30 screenplays come from individuals or teams of amateur writers from all across the country—38 people in all, seven working in teams and 23 as single entrants (29 men and nine women). The contestants range in age from 19-60 years old, and come from 13 different states and the District of Columbia (CA, NY, WA, VA, NC, GA, IL, TX, PA, AZ, UT, NJ, FL, D.C.). Project Greenlight, the largest active screenwriting community in the world, invited amateur screenwriters, aged 18 years and older, to submit original screenplays electronically to the Project Greenlight contest at www.projectgreenlight.com, from September 25, 2000 through November 4, 2000. Miramax Films has committed to providing the winning contestant or team's screenplay with a $1 million production budget, and to hire them to direct the film, which will be executive produced by Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Chris Moore. Further, Miramax Films guarantees distribution of the film in theatres. At the same time, Miramax Television will chronicle the making of the movie in a 13-episode documentary series, slated to air on HBO in early 2002—taking an insider's look into the movie-making process. "We are very happy with the contest so far, and think that we are going to find a great new voice in American film from among these 30 screenplays," said Chris Moore, CEO of LivePlanet and producer of the Greenlight film. "One thing we think should happen is that other people who make movies should take a look at all of these scripts—because they are the best rated scripts out of thousands of submissions, as judged by the Greenlight community, a bigger group that represents the film-going public better than a 400 person test screening in some theater in the LA suburbs. There are probably a few of these scripts that would be great movies, even beyond our eventual winner." The top 30 screenplays were chosen in several stages of the Greenlight contest. First, more than 7,000 of the submitted screenplays qualified for the contest. Members of the Project Greenlight community, both contestants and registered reviewers, read and evaluated each screenplay at least three times. These reviews narrowed the contestant pool to the top 250 screenplays. Next, each individual contestant or team submitted a three-minute filmmaker's video to Project Greenlight. Because the winning screenwriter or team will be hired to direct the Miramax film, the filmmaker's videos served to allow the producers to "meet" the filmmakers in order to evaluate the personal qualities of the contestants—such as leadership, vision, talent and creativity. The producers of the Miramax Film (Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Chris Moore), Miramax executives, and LivePlanet's www.projectgreenlight.com producers all evaluated the filmmakers' videos. These evaluations determined who would become the top 30 potential filmmakers. "Each of the remaining contestants has written a great script so the filmmaker's videos were an opportunity to demonstrate directorial ability," said Billy Campbell of Miramax Television. "Each creative presentation gave us a sense of the the filmmaker's personality and points of view which is crucial in deciding who is going to take the reins of any film. The spirit of Greenlight is to draw back the curtain on the filmmaking process and through the HBO series, the audience will get to see the repercussions of the votes they cast as the film comes to fruition. The top 30 screenplays will all be read and evaluated by Miramax and LivePlanet producers, and the field will be narrowed to the top ten finalists. Each of these top ten finalists will be given a filmmaker's kit (including digital video cameras and computers with editing software) to make a short scene from their screenplay. The evaluation of these scenes will determine the top three finalists, who will have personal interviews with the producers of the Miramax Film. The winning screenplay will be selected on or about March 15, 2001. The list of the top 30 Screenplays and their authors is posted on the Project Greenlight website (www.projectgreenlight.com) and is available HERE.
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