1ST SCENE SCREENPLAY READINGS
Winning screenplays. First scenes readings from features, and television specs.
-
LA Festival BEST Scene Reading: Kubricks Waterloo, by Mike Mann (interview)
in 1969 Stanley Kubrick attempts to make his dream film, an epic about Napoleon Bonaparte. If Napoleon doesn’t unmake him first…
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Steve Rizzo
Kubrick: Sean Ballantyne
Christiane: Val ColeGet to know the screenwriter:
1. What is your screenplay about?
Kubrick's Waterl...
-
FEMALE Festival 1st Scene Reading: BETTER ANGELS, by Helen Orme Darvall
A teenage girl is forced to volunteer at an animal shelter after getting busted with the wrong people.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Steve Rizzo
Crystal: Hannah Ehman
Olivia: Kyana Teresa -
FEMALE Festival. 1st Scene: The Road to Sorrowful, by Andrea Lawson (interview)
In the afterlife, a murdered man meets a grieving mother who died during the Great Depression and has been ferrying souls through purgatory ever since for the chance to rescue her daughter's soul from damnation.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Steve Rizzo
Deacon: Geoff Mays
Sadie: Hannah EhmanGet to kn...
-
FEMALE Festival 1st Scene: BY DARK, by Sabrina Barton (writer interview)
When her older sister is brutally murdered, a Black teen girl and her white best friend must overcome police apathy, racial prejudice, and extreme peril to bring a serial killer to justice. Inspired by true events in late nineteenth-century Austin, Texas.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Sean Ballanty...
-
LA Festival 1st Scene: BLOOD MONEY, by Dominic Flanagan (writer interview)
Howard Swan, a doctor with a severe drinking problem, loses his medical license, his wife, his house, and is on the verge of losing his daughter as well. In a desperate act, he enlists the help of Caspar, his drug dealer brother, to make some easy money. After a deal goes wrong, Howard uses his m...
-
TV Festival 1st Scene Reading: The Murderbot Diaries, by Keith A. LaCabe
On a distant alien planet, a security “construct” (half human, half robot) must decide between saving its clients from certain death or hiding out in safety watching its entertainment feed and an uncertain rescue.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Hannah Ehman
Murderbot: Geoff Mays
Dr. Mensah: Kyana Teresa -
DRAMA Festival 1st Scene: STILL PERFECT, by Michael Fitzer, Karin Partin Wells
When a young single mother’s baby is murdered by a close friend, she and her family struggle with each other and regret about the past before they find peace through the sound of a beating heart.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Geoff Mays
Bethan: Kyana Teresa
Siri/Mair: Hannah Ehman
Owen: Andy Camp -
THRILLER Festival 1st Scene: AS SCARED AS YOU, by Jesse Dorian (interview)
A twenty-something male “drifter” antihero, and a young blind woman become caged prisoners at a bed and breakfast in small-town northern California, where the drifter’s violent, malignant actions prior, push a group of malicious locals-- along with their two animalistic, basement-held zombified r...
-
SCI-FI Festival 1st Scene Reading: The Agreement, by Jared Stuart
Young US Air Force wife and mother realizes that she is a part of an alien hybridization program through an abduction and hypnosis, and that her son along with her husband and his family may not be who she thinks they are.
Cast List:
Narration: Hannah Ehman
Eve: Kyana Teresa
Jeremy: Geoff May -
SCI-FI Fest 1st Scene Reading: Department of Disinformation, by Justin McLachlan
When a manipulative intelligence agent is abducted by aliens, he turns to his hapless brother — a once well-regarded journalist who now hosts a conspiracy-laden, low-rated cable TV show — to help him expose a coming alien invasion.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Val Cole
Charlie: Geoff Mays
Jason: St... -
ENVIRONMENTAL Festival 1st Scene; WATCHLIST, by Alex Vickery-Howe (interview)
Logline: A young man falls in love with an ecoterrorist only to discover their pasts are entwined.
Synopsis: Basil Pepper is not ‘the man’, he’s not a doer, or a fighter…or even much of a thinker. World events pass him by, ideology makes him sleepy, and the Prime Minister’s name eludes him. Deli...
-
ENVIRONMENTAL Festival 1st Scene; TIME TOURISTS, by Josh Miller (interview)
A dysfunctional time-traveling family must evade the authorities and find a way to return to the future or they'll unintentionally trigger a "much bigger bang."
CAST LIST:
Narration: Hannah Ehman
Valtero: Sean Ballantyne
Tomo: Geoff Mays
Computer Voice/Courier: Kyana TeresaGet to know ...
-
LGBTQ+ Festival 1st Scene Reading: AZALEA, by Nate Raven (interview)
A gay couple struggles with the challenges of adoption, while a single woman who runs her own business navigates the complexities of an accidental pregnancy.
CAST LIST:
Narration: Geoff Mays
Claudia: Kyana Teresa
Shari: Hannah Ehmanhttps://www.instagram.com/nateraven1/
Get to know the sc...
-
Fantasy/Sci-Fi Festival 1st Scene Reading: The Egg, by Suzie Spring Bohannon
Stricken with grief after the loss of her best friend, a middle aged British woman finds new purpose in reuniting a lost alien egg with its mothership.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Kyana Teresa
Mavis: Elizabeth Rose Morris
Effie: Julie Sheppard -
Fantasy/Sci-Fi Festival 1st Scene: An Inconsequential Choice, by Ricardo Bravo
An easily obsessed scientists will put his life and relationship at risk to advance his research of parallel universes. Will he make the right choice?
www.thecommutingwriter.com
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Kyana Teresa
Andrew: Geoff Mays
Soha: Elizabeth Rose MorrisGet to know the writer:
1. ...
-
HORROR Festival 1st Scene Reading: Obsession, by Jason Andrew White
A bored librarian takes an unhealthy interest in her new neighbors and begins to blend the lines between fantasy and reality.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Kyana Teresa
Crystal: Elizabeth Rose Morris
Bethany: Julie Sheppard -
Environmental Festival 1st Scene: HIGH WINDS, by Chris Crowley
An aging rancher faces death with wry humor and a basic belief in humankind that is sorely tested by conflicts between the way of life he loves, conservation and climate change as he decides his legacy.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Elizabeth Rose Morris
David: Geoff Mays
Connie: Julie Sheppard -
1st Scene Script Reading: The Cherry Luna, by Julia M. Sauder
Jan is going through a lot of changes this holiday season. She may or may not be a werewolf, and she is definitely discovering her sexuality, whether she likes it or not.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Val Cole
Little Old Lady/Mrs. Zimmerman: Hannah Ehman
Jan: Kyana Teresa
Marshall/Lucas: Steve Rizzo - -
1st Scene Script Reading: Smoking Mirrors, by Jonah McKenzie Howell
In 1880s Texas, Pinkerton agents John and Henry are tasked with apprehending members of an Aztec cult. But when they become stranded in the desert with the cult's leader, the three men embark on a spiritual journey that forces them to question who their allegiances really lie with.
CAST LIST:
...
-
ROMANCE Festival reading: Nora and George, by Katherine Saviana (interview)
A woman attempts to balance her life as a struggling mother and wife with a burning need to tell her Oma's epic war-time love story, but the balancing act proves elusive and has life-altering consequences.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Val Cole
Lucy: Hannah Ehman
Hannah: Kyana Teresa
Jack: Steve Riz... -
LGBTQ+ Festival 1st Scene Reading: Lost in the Snow, by Larry Gene Fortin
Spiraling down, Mona Lisa, aka Marvin, is drowning in a world of drugs and drag.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Hannah Ehman
Elkie Hall: Steve Rizzo
Mona Lisa : Kyana Teresa -
LGBTQ+ Festival 1st Scene Reading: Hungry Hearts, by Ryan O’Leary
In the early 90’s, two men, a disgruntled Cop and a self-loathing Crook, play the city’s criminal underground and corrupt police department against each other in the pursuit of justice, money and, most dangerously, their budding love.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Kyana Teresa
Spud: Steve Rizzo
Stra... -
LA Festival 1st Scene Script: Suspend Your Disbelief, by Conor Hanney
A group of neurodiverse teens learns empathy through improv from the worst person in school.
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Val Cole
Mia: Kyana Teresa
Mr. Early: Steve Rizzo
Girl #1/2: Hannah Ehman -
TV Festival 1st Scene Reading: NEW OLYMPUS, by Matthew Nicholson
"The reluctant modern-day descendant of Pandora vows to trap all of the Original Evils back inside her ancestor's cursed box once and for all. Can she claim her destiny as the new owner of Pandora's box before her hometown is overrun by evil?"
CAST LIST:
Narrator: Val Cole
Young Liz/Liz: Kyan...