Sunday 2 October 2011

Portal Entertainment Create £6k Writing Competition for Multiplatform Storytelling‏


PORTAL ENTERTAINMENT AND CIRCALIT ON THE SEARCH FOR THE WRITERS OF TOMORROW
£6K GLOBAL WRITING COMPETITION TO CREATE A STORYWORLD


Portal Entertainment today announced that it has launched a £6k global writing competition to create a storyworld: a story told using different types of media across multiple platforms. The winner of the competition will receive £6k to develop their storyworld with Portal Entertainment. The Top 5 entries will be given professional feedback from BBC Multiplatform Executive Producer Sarah Clay (Becoming Human, Waterloo Reunited, E20).

The competition was launched at the Immersive Writing Lab - a global creative event to help writers learn the tools to tell multiplatform stories. To find out more about the launch event and the to watch videos from the event go to www.immersivewritinglab.com.

‘Coming up with a storyworld is not easy and we know that,’ said Julian McCrea, Founder of Portal Entertainment. ‘We have designed the competition, to help develop the writer's storyworld over three months, across five different stages: world, characters, story, audience, and medium. We will be giving feedback at each stage of the competition.’

The competition is hosted at Circalit, a platform that enables writers to showcase their work to industry professionals online. To enter the competition or for more information please visit www.circalit.com/projects/competitions/immersive.

Raoul Tawadey, CEO and Founder of Circalit commented, 'It's clear after attending the Immersive Writing conference that digital convergence hasn't simply affected the business end of media, it's affected our notion of narrative storytelling itself. We're extremely happy to be hosting a competition to explore what the stories of the future will look, feel and sound like, and on what devices we will experience them.'

The Immersive Writing Lab event is being supported by Stellar Network, Circalit, Imaginox and Varytale.

4 comments:

Adaddinsane said...

I hate to be a nay-sayer but I personally wouldn't recommend this one.

According to my reading of the rules: If you win you get the £6000 to develop the world (i.e. do more work) and then Portal keep all the rights.

So if they think they can make money out of it you'll win - but you won't be making the money, not even a tiny percentage.

And today's verification word is "tonist" - a devotee of Antony.

Yehudah Jez Freedman said...

Thanks very much for posting that Steve. To be fair I should've put - like I usually do but forgot - that everyone should do their own checking. Whatever the opportunity, I don't think any bloggers neccessarily endorse all or even some of the schemes that they are notified about and pass on.

And certainly, if your reading is correct, that sounds completely ridiculous. So if anyone is thinking of entering this please take note of Steve comments and seek clarification from the competition organisers.

Phil Gladwin said...

I'm puzzled. In what way are their rules any different from a normal development deal? Are you chaps reading something I'm not?

Yehudah Jez Freedman said...

I've just had a quick read of it myself (I hadn't before as I wasn't going to enter and was just putting it out there for others)

I'm not sure Phil. Steve, if you see this maybe you can come back to us on that?

It looks okay to me. The £6000 is the 'prize' to develop the project further. Not a bad fee at all. I guess it depends on what else is in the Writers Agreement which from my quick look I couldn't see any more info about. If it's 6K and that's it, that could be problematic if the project becomes succesful. However, I'm going to assume (and anyone entering probably shouldn't assume!) that this won't be the case and the Writers Agreement will specify further payments based on what happens with the project.