Welcome!
www.austinscreenwriters.org is the
website of the Austin Screenwriters Group.

Mission Statement:

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ASG CALENDAR
Regular Meetings - 1st and 3rd Saturdays - 9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.

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ASG NEWS!

• May 2008: The ASG Spring Workshop the weekend of May 31-June 1 was coordinated by First Look Script Analysis (Nancy Smith) and brought in the amazing Dave Trottier. Dave presented his seminar "Four Keys to a Salable Script," gave tips on pitching, listened to members' pitches, and joined us in a wine and cheese party. He also chose the First Annual Hook Contest Winners from our 8 finalist scripts. More information about the events on the Spring Workshop page. Congrats to the winners: 1st place: KITTYHAWK by Julie Kenner. 2nd place: BECOMING QUANAH PARKER by Steve Warren. 3rd place: LIFE WITHOUT FATHER by Anton Diether.
  
  
  Nancy Smith and Dave Trottier
  
• ASG Goods to Buy: Thanks to Helen Cates, the Austin Screenwriters Group now has t-shirts, mugs and more on CafePress you can buy with our ASG logo on it. Wear 'em proudly!
  
  
• February 2008: The ASG Workgroup in conjunction with First Look Script Analysis, announce a screenwriting contest: The Hook Contest. Send the first ten pages of your script -- up to the point when the hook is developed. Deadline is March 31, 2008 for postmark. Cost $5 for ASG members and $10 for non members. Prizes for finalists TBA. The winner(s) will be announced with our Spring Workshop. (see above) More information on the Spring Workshop page.
• October 2007: Members of ASG, got to select one of their scripts and print the first 15 pages to send to producer/manager Colin O'Reilly. Also, members were invited to a reception (beer, wine, bottled water with potluck hors d'hoeuvres) Wednesday before AFF. We also had informal networking and pitching with Colin at the Pecan Street Cafe Saturday on October 12.
  
  
  At Olde Pecan Street Cafe, Mona Lee, Colin O'Reilly (in green) and Will Hagewood with others
  
• August 2007: We have a confirmation for a guest for the Austin Film Festival. Producer Colin O'Reilly with Menlo Park Productions will be coming to Austin, partly to be on the programming for AFF and partly to have some networking and pitch sessions with ASG!
  Colin O'Reilly began working in the film industry as an intern for New Line Cinema. He also worked as an assistant for Adam Schroeder, the well-known producer of such films as Ransom and The Truman Show. In early 2004, Colin embarked on his current profession as a literary manager/producer, working with Smart Entertainment, where he co-produced the comedies Blades of Glory starring Will Ferrell, Jon Heder and Jenna Fischer for Dreamworks, and Tangled Up in Blue with Rosanna Arquette and Robert Downey, Jr. In 2007 he left to start his own management/production company, Menlo Park Productions.
• June 2007: Helen Cates took over as ASG Scheduler for Nancy Smith. Contact Helen at austinsluglines@hotmail.com. Many thanks to Nancy for handling the sometimes complicated job for the past three years!
• June 2007: Member Lauren Peterson worked with local screenwriting teacher and coach Jill Chamberlain to create a special 2.5-hour craft workshop for the ASG during our regularly scheduled meeting time and place on June 16, 2007. More on what Jill offered here. We got a flat fee for the class, and allowed in anyone who was interested. We had a great session, great participation with about 30 people doing the workshop.
• June 2007: A rough patch with our domain www.austinscreenwriters.org being lost due to insanity related to the Registerfly.com debacle is resolved by our Web host, Randy Martin. Ceasar Andreas also acquired the backup site for our group at www.austinscreenwriters.com.
• June 2007: Joan Johnson is now our Treasurer and will be taking membership dues, etc. She has formally been given the keys to the kingdom (i.e., the ASG check book). Many thanks to Bob Carstensen for bring a very businesslike and flexible approach to the role during his years of service. Contact Joan at dogdogcat@aol.com. Watch this Web page for more information on the transferring of the Scheduler duties too.
• May 2007: Ceasar Andreas has volunteered himself to design and maintain a new ASG Web site. More as events transpire.
• March 2007: About 10 of us from the Austin Screenwriters Group had an impromptu dinner with Hollywood screenwriter and teacher, Blake Snyder. He was in Austin about 15 years ago, turns out, filming his Disney movie with Brian Bonsall, BLANK CHECK. We learned a lot about Blake's 16-point structure system from his book, Save the Cat. Very nice guy, and he said he'd love to come back to Austin to workshop with us...
  
  Blake Snyder, on the right, with Austin Screenwriters at Threadgill's.
• Feb 2007: The Workgroup of the Austin Screenwriters Group is the closest thing we have to officers. Any dues-paid member of ASG can come to the Workgroup meetings and have input into the retreats, workshops, Hollywood outreach, and other activities of the group. We have Workgroup meetings infrequently, and we really need to focus more on managing the group activities since we've grown and our treasury is building up funds. What about having these meetings after the Saturday meetings, say at 12:30 p.m. in the same Bookpeople room? What if we have them every other month, or maybe every quarter? Discuss amongst yourselves...
• Jan 2007: The first meeting of the new year was a doozie, with short films by Austin Screenwriters Group members and affiliates shown in the Austin Studios Media Room that ASG rented for the morning. Films included: MENTAL ANGUISH (Nancy Smith and Rich Newman); SLIGHTLY IMPERFECT (Nancy Smith); BUTTERCUP (Rich Newman); ANATOMY OF A FROG (Sarah Dowling); TOTALLY CONNECTED (Randy Liv Brown); TRIPTYCH (Daniel DeLoach); HELLO OFFICER (Angela Lee, Wendy Wheeler); and others, including a documentary Robert Shaver created on the Austin Access Channel soap opera SHADES OF LIGHT. Here's a photo of the screening room:

• Oct 2006: The ASG hosted a Wednesday night reception October 18 with Daryl Friemark of New Line Cinema. Daryl gave us a short talk on what Hollywood expects from screenwriters, then listened to about 25 five-minute pitches. Nancy Smith was the Freimark wrangler and set up the deal with Daryl -- many thanks to her. It was limited to ASG members only. Here's a photo of Daryl listening to someone's pitch:
  
• Oct 2006: The ASG also got to have a dinner with Curtis Burch, long-time Hollywood producer and development director (most recently with James Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment) and now president of his own production company, Latitude Productions. It was limited to ASG members. Curtis gave us great insights into Hollywood development and the money side of things. Here's a photo of the group at the table:
  
  Left to right: Katie Auerbach, Jacque Smith, Wendy Wheeler, Steve Winnicki, Laura Kelso, Bonnie Orr, Steve Lutze, Curtis Burch, Richard Billingsly and Ceasar Andreas.
• Our Meeting Room at Bookpeople. The generous folks at Bookpeople have allowed us to use their 3rd floor meeting room for free for over five years now. Hearty thanks to them! They ask us to respect a few small rules, which I've promised to document on our website. First, clean up when we leave (which we've been great about doing). Second, we can bring food if we clean up well when we leave. And if we want coffee, please get it from the coffee shop on the first floor and don't bring in outside coffee. We've just learned that the coffee shop will sell an urn of coffee with cups, if the person getting the table reading is inspired to treat the folks at the meeting. Just coordinate that ahead of time.

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ASG MONTHLY MEETINGS

• 1st and 3rd Saturdays of (almost) every month
• Starts around 9:30 am, goes until done, but no later than 12:30 pm
• Our generous hosts are the fine folks at the BookPeople at 6th St and Lamar in Austin, 3rd floor (see map below)
• Typical format: Networking and introductions are followed by an out-loud reading of the screenplay to be critiqued that day
• Anyone with an interest in screenwriting is welcome to the meetings! To have a script read and critiqued, however, you must be a member of the ASG and meet a few simple rules, which are covered in the FAQ.

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ASG MAILING LIST

The Austin Screenwriters Group has a mailing list on Yahoo. We highly recommend that you sign yourself up! We share networking, news, upcoming events, etc. Last-minute schedule changes are posted there, and are often the only way you'll know about them. Joining the list is easy, and you don't have to be a dues-paying member for it. Please note you must subscribe first, before you can post emails. The listserver software will bounce back emails that come from unregistered email addresses!

1. Start from within the mailing address you wish to register, and send an email to: austinscreenwriters-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. (The reference line and content aren't important in the message.)
2. You'll get a confirming email from the listserver at YahooGroups. Just follow the instructions (usually, it just asks you to respond to verify), and you should be on the list for the moderator to approve you. (We had to add this step because spammers were joining just to send us off-topic email.)
3. Once you get the message from Yahoo saying the moderator has approved you, you're registered on the listserver software and can then send emails easily to everyone on the ASG list by addressing them to: austinscreenwriters@yahoogroups.com.

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ASG FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) List

The FAQ list is on another page, and contains instructions on signing up for a reading, preparing your script for the reading, conducting the reading, and the feedback session. We suggest you visit the page and print it out. You can also get a copy of the information if you download a copy of the ASG brochure as a Word document, click here for that.

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LINKS TO OTHER USEFUL WEBSITES

We keep a list of helpful writing and screenwriting books on another page.

How to format a script? It's a question at the top of the mind of many beginning writers. Here's a good discussion with samples written by a fan of Austin (he comes regularly to the Heart of Film Conference) Greg Beal, who coodinates the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship.

Writers Guild of America is the group that lobbies and negotiates on behalf of American screenwriters. It's also the place to register your scripts for protection, and if you live in Texas you should use the WGAw (West). The U.S. Patent Office issues copyrights for more-formal protection. Most of the screenwriting contests require that your script submissions be registered, in fact.

MovieBytes is another useful site which also features a listing of the many screenwriting contests each year, along with their open and closing dates, as well as other information.

BookPeople has been hosting our twice monthly meetings since early 2000. They are great people, and generous in their support of Austin arts! Show your appreciation by shopping at the store as often as possible!

Another wonderful host (this time, on the Internet) for the ASG is Randy Martin, who has the Web design and Web hosting company, Chili Design. Check out the awesome portfolio on his website! (And please note he had nothing to do with the dorky design of the ASG website!)

The ASG enjoys a very close relationship with the Heart of Film Conference and Austin Film Festival. What an awesome opportunity for education and networking they provide for local screenwriters! The Heart of Film was the first screenwriter-specific conference (now it has many imitators). It's a can't-miss event that happens in Austin each fall. Many of us submit scripts to the Heart of Film competition. Many of us also volunteer to be HoF readers each year--be looking for announcements on that to come from the HoF folks each spring. And the AFF provides wonderful cinema-related events throughout the year.