Challenge Submissions

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Clarendon in the Summertime (My So-Called Family)

Ken

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Everything You Can

Julie Sharbutt

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Liz-at-Law

Douglas Stark

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Say Grace

Nia Ashley

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Home

Adrienne Thorne

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A Little Queer

Jay Floyd

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A Good Family

Damon Colquhoun

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The Blend

Edgar Ribon

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Eden

Angie

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Laundry Service

Catee

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Roomates Wanted: Alive and Other

Pamela Winfrey

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The Barker's

Brendan Hayworth

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Home

Nancy Ma

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Standing In Water

Kathleen M Caprario-Ulrich

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Opposites Attract

Alison Wroblewski

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Mom's Parents

Andrew Ritter

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KNITTING LESSONS

Roz

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SWEAT

XLNB

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CONFESSION

Nikki Palumbo

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The Storytellers

RadhaPyari

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FAMILY LORE

Tania Ferrier

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OUTDATED MODEL

Grigory Bolotnikov

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S.O.S.

chrisma

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ZX48k

Stathis

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Country Dad, City Uncle

DardyFinger

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Cheese Curd Dynasty

Heidi Weitzer

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WFLO (Welcome to My Family of Men)

Lee Kitchen

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family

John Cale

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The Hancocks

Pedro Lisbao

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SAVED NOT DEAD

Sandra Faye Jefferson

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YouTube Orphans

David Chai

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Achiever

Michelle Krusiec

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Hot Tortillas

Nicolas Jara

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Missing Persons

Sandra Hughes

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Hair & Beyond

Paul Acampora

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The Zehnders

Matt Zehnder

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Ties that Blind

Jennifer "Jane" Lee

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UNSETTLED

Anami Tara Shucart

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Toxic

Montee

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Playing With My Family

Vijay Nazareth

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Our House

Shelley Freeborn

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Can't Get There From Here

Charles Griffin Gibson

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A Kid Called Death

Kate Murdoch

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Second-Generation Heroes

Lucien Flores

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The Line

Ed

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La Familia Lopez

Aurora Aguero

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Babaventures

Ala' Khan

Challenge is closed
Winner

A Good Family

Damon Colquhoun

Writer-Director

A half hour Dramedy

After a struggling working-class couple enrolls their gifted 5-year-old son in an elite Upper East Side private school, they seize the opportunity to network their way to their own success with a lie that forces them to fake it till they make it or risk their son’s golden ticket.

My wife and I come from working-class backgrounds. We’ve since worked our way up to somewhere between the Middle Class and the Upper Middle Class. The final push into the upper classes has proven to be a bit of a mystery for people like us. After enrolling our 5-year-old son into one of New York City’s elite Ivy League private schools, I discovered that the school was a wonderful place for an ambitious parent to network and climb, but it’s a tricky course to navigate. The exploration of that journey led to this story.

The opening scene(s) of any TV pilot (the first episode of a new show) are crucial in hooking an audience. Using your own family experience as inspiration, write the first 5-10 pages of your pilot script. This is your opportunity to establish the tone, introduce the primary character(s), the essential problem, the ongoing story, and give a sense of the world. Write this scene/sequence as a comedy, drama, or dramedy in a genre of your choice and have fun! 



CHALLENGE RULES

Our monthly challenges are open to everyone in the Sundance Co//ab community. One entry per person, per challenge. All submissions will be viewable to the community. Each person who participates will receive a completed feedback form on the work they submit by one of our Sundance judges. All submissions will be given equal consideration and the final winner will be determined by the consensus of the designated Sundance judges.  


Only those submissions that meet the criteria outlined in the submission guidelines will be able to be selected as the winner. 


PRIZE

The winner will receive a Sundance Co//ab subscription for one year, a one-on-one mentoring session with a Sundance Advisor, a free master class, and will be featured prominently on the site.

Submission Guidelines

One entry per person, per challenge. While you are free to submit work of any length, this site is focused on work in progress, and you will find that you will get more feedback with more targeted, shorter, selected work.

It will help the person giving feedback to know where you are in your process: is this a first draft or cut, a revision, a nearly final version of your work?

If you have specific questions about your work, please be sure to add those so that you can get the most targeted feedback possible.

Technical Details

Videos: Accepted Video File Formats: AVI , FLV, MOV, MP4 or MPEG-2. Note: If you choose to upload a .MOV file make sure that it is not using the Apple ProRes compression. We do not support reading Apple ProRes files or raw camera formats like ARRI and RED at this time. 


Scripts: PDF format only, please


Podcasts: Accepted Audio File Formats: AIFF, ACC, FLAC, MP3, MP4, OGA, OGG, and WAV


Other: If your file format fits outside of the video, pdf, audio file category, please Contact us and we will see if we can accommodate it.


(Please do not use copyrighted material without permission as part of this Challenge.)

Meet Our Jury
John Lopez
A Los Angeles native, John Lopez has covered film and the arts for Grantland, Vanity Fair online and Bloomberg Business Week. His short Plan B, starring Randall Park and Rosa Salazar, was a finalist in the NBC Short Cuts Film festival. more...
Christi
Writer
Los Angeles, California, United States
In 2015, Hedtke was selected for the Sundance Institute’s Episodic Story Lab. In 2017, she was named a fellow of the Warner Brothers Television Writers Workshop. She’s been a contributor to Filmmaker Magazine, MovieMaker Magazine, and wrote on Nick Jr.’s animated series "Sunny Day". She is currently writing on "Chilling Adventures of Sabrina" for Netflix. more...
Marlena Rodriguez
Writer
Los Angeles, California, United States
Marlena Rodriguez has written for Netflix's UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT, and ALL ABOUT THE WASHINGTONS, TBS's CLOSE ENOUGH, George Lopez's LOPEZ, and The Second City Chicago. more...
Cami Delavigne
Writer
Los Angeles, California, United States
Cami Delavigne co-wrote "Blue Valentine" and has written on TV shows for AMC, ABC, Amazon and NBC. She’s currently working on a project for Hyperobjects Industries as well as a feature adaptation for Killer Films. She likes to juggle between film and television. Together, with choreographer Melissa Schade, Cami teaches Screendancing. more...
Matt Young
Writer
Los Angeles, California, United States
Matt Young is an alum of both the Sundance Episodic Story Lab and the Warner Bros. Television Writers Workshop. He most recently worked on Seasons 3, 4, and 5 of BLINDSPOT on NBC, writing six episodes of the series and producing two. Matt has written feature scripts for Netflix, MarVista Entertainment and the German-based Rat Pack Filmproduktion. Prior to that, he was a guest writer on Season Two of the Alan Tudyk/Nathan Fillion-produced SyFy comedy show CON MAN. Matt is a father and husband; the son of a small-town Chief of Police; a banjo-picker; an improv comedian at Second City Hollywood; a college writing instructor; and a super nerdy Dungeon Master. more...

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