There is only ONE way to break your script into the industry…
Make it really, really good. Specifically, good enough to survive the threshing machine that is Hollywood coverage. That system comprises studio and production company readers, with script stacks on their desks, whose job is to cut the wheat from the chaff. Those coverage readers put scripts into the right hands, using an industry method so consistent you can give your own script a significant head start by applying their evaluation and rewrite techniques before sending your work into the world. The Austin Film Festival Coverage Program gives you that strategy and helps you to implement it.
EVEN LAWRENCE KASDAN NEEDS HELP
Every good writer has a good reader. For established screenwriters, it’s often a producer, a spouse, or a fellow screenwriter. Whoever it is must be objective and fluent in the language of screenwriting. Austin Film Festival Coverage Program readers are trained to provide constructive, Hollywood-savvy feedback. This means the Austin Film Festival Coverage Program provides you with a reader who will pull back the curtain and show you exactly how industry professionals gauge a script’s power and functionality. Rewriting, restructuring and re-envisioning is a challenging process, and everyone deserves support and insight along the way.
DON’T JUMP INTO THE FIRE…
Yet. The Austin Film Festival Coverage Program gives you a dress rehearsal before the big night, so you can work out kinks and build up confidence. Because your script gets one shot when it hits the Hollywood system, its entry has to be spectacular and potent. The Hollywood coverage system won’t share why your script is or isn’t moving forward, but the Austin Film Festival Coverage Program gives you all those notes and more. You will also receive critique and solutions.
AFF’S COVERAGE PROGRAM LOVES YOU
That’s why we’re hard on you. Our Coverage Program is like your favorite professor, or a revered boxing coach: stern, kind, tireless and proud. The feedback you get from the Coverage Program will be honest, extensive and relevant; it’s the kind of response you expect from someone who cares and is invested in your success.
While Austin Film Festival celebrates the art of screenwriting, we are also wholeheartedly engaged in its rough-and-tumble business side. Tailoring your script to industry needs can provoke great creative frustration, but the process does not have to be a bitter compromise. Austin Film Festival’s sincere support of writers has made it a hub for industry talent, and the Coverage Program is yet another way to channel that energy to you, to pave an avenue for your arrival into the larger community. Bottom line: we take our role in helping rising talent very seriously, and we have had great success in doing so since 1994.
The fee is $105 for feature screenplays up to 130 pages* and $85 for teleplays and short screenplays, turnaround is within 60 days, and you get:
- A logline as strong and functional as the one a production company will develop for your script
- A thorough, extensive, honest and constructive evaluation of your story
- A plot synopsis similar to the one a Hollywood reader will write for your script
- A professional assessment of your script’s market potential
- A market-relevant rating, from “excellent” to “good” to “fair” to “poor”
- An industry-style recommendation: “recommend,” “consider” or “pass.”
- NOW OFFERING EXPRESS COVERAGE!
- For an additional $50 per script, you’ll receive your notes in half the time – within 30 days!
- *Scripts over 130 pages will be subject to an additional $5 charge and then $5 for every 10 pages thereafter.
SCREENPLAY, TELEPLAY OR SHORT?
All the above! Our Austin Film Festival Coverage Program readers include screenplay-savvy professionals as well as readers intimate with the particular procedure in teleplay evaluation. A teleplay is often read as a writing sample, making the writer hireable by a showrunner for industry-specific reasons. Our Coverage Program treats each format in the market-appropriate way, so your work is as eligible as possible for the right outlet.
SUBMIT ONLINE!
Please note the following:
- This form is NOT for submitting to the Screenplay & Teleplay Competition.
- If you have problems using the online submission form, please try using another browser
Using a mobile or tablet to submit online?
FYI – Our online forms are easier to use on desktops and larger browsers.
Don’t see where to pay? Scroll up!
*Coverage Requests will only be processed when the online form and payment have been submitted in the same session.
Coverage turnaround is 60 days. Expedited coverage turnaround is 30 days. Shorts coverage turnaround date is 14 days.
*Turn around time starts on your payment date
SUBMIT BY MAIL
Return your signed, completed entry form, along with your entry fee and other required materials, to:
Austin Film Festival
1801 Salina Street
Austin, TX 78702
Please include a self-addressed, stamped postcard for each submission if you would like acknowledgement of the receipt of your entry.
I find the AFF screenplay coverage to be especially observant and insightful, every bit as good, and often better, than what I see coming from the average studio reader.”
– Curtis Burch, President of Latitude Productions