BEST SCENE SCREENPLAY READINGS

BEST SCENE SCREENPLAY READINGS

The "best scene" take from features and TV pilots of winning screenplays.

BEST SCENE SCREENPLAY READINGS
  • BEST Scene Reading: ETERNAL LIFE, by Jaaered Brown

    Waking in a future with floating cities topping thousands of stories, run by radioactive intelligence, where imagination blends with machine, an amnesiac finds her destiny.

    CAST LIST:
    Narrator: Sean Ballantyne
    Anne-Marie: Val Cole
    Alis: Elizabeth Rose Morriss

  • LGBTQ+ Best Scene: FOULED OUT, by Rodrigo Varandas

    Ricardo's dad is a big shot basketballer who only wants the best for him. However, what his dad wants and what Ricardo wants are totally different. With his mother passed on, Ricardo and his dad Jorge are trying to spend more time together. But a surprise visit leaves Ricardo's hidden life expose...

  • LGBTQ+ Festival Scene: GOLD, MYRRH, FRANKINCENSE & MURDER, by Hary S. Mudaliar

    Ben-Hur meets To Wong Fu in this whirlwind adventure when a time traveling priest, devoted to the blood cult of Cybele threatens the life of Jesus both past and future unless the Three Magi, with a propensity for being tardy, can stop him. The fact that the Magi are gay adds an inclusive spin on ...

  • FANTASY/SCI-FI Festival Best Scene: Lifeboat, by Mason Mendoza & Bill Baber

    LIFEBOAT IS A SCI-FI DRAMA - FEATURE FILM - BASED ON THE ACCLAIMED GRAPHIC NOVEL.

    Three souls cheat death when they escape the destruction of their spaceship. Now their tiny “lifeboat” is adrift at the end of the universe. Their days are numbered. Every minute is precious. If you know the end, h...

  • THRILLER/SUSPENSE Best Scene: The Bait, by Bernardo Barreto

    The Bait is a visceral survival thriller based on a true story. It follows João, a disillusioned real estate executive suffocating under the weight of his domineering family’s expectations. When his carefree friend Patrick invites him on a windsurfing trip to Búzios, João seizes the chance to rec...

  • WILDsound Best Scene Reading: The Confessor, by Melissa Birks

    In 1935 New York, an ambitious psychiatrist faces jeopardizes his career, marriage, and his own mental health when he fights to spare the life of confessed child killer Albert Fish. Inspired by true events.

    CAST LIST:
    Narrator: Val Cole
    The Confessor: Sean Ballantyne
    Dr. Gregory: Shawn Devlin

  • LGBTQ+ Festival SHORT Script Reading: THE GREAT BIG LESBIAN YANKEE SWAP

    Aging lesbian couple Debbie and Jean are hosting their annual gay Christmas party in the gayborhood of Boston -- but when their messy adult son Corey (30) shows up in need of a place to live, he threatens to disrupt their retirement plans.

    CAST LIST:

    Narration: Sean Ballantyne
    Mary Ellen/Barb/D...

  • BEST Scene Script Reading: MRS. O'LEARY, by Melissa Birks

    Inspired by the Great Fire of Chicago 1871 following the investigation of Mrs O'Leary, a woman the newspapers blamed for starting the fire that spread all the way to Lincoln Park.

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Sean Ballantyne
    Patrick O'Leary: Shawn Devlin
    Mrs. O'Leary: Val Cole

    Get to know the writer:...

  • FEMALE Festival Best Scene Reading: MANIPULATIVE WAYS, by Cheryl Smith

    Susan Passaretti embodies the stereotypical millennial – entitled and a little delusional. By day, she works as a waitress in a greasy spoon diner, and by night, she is a stripper. Fate introduces an extraordinary turn of events when she meets Jonathan, a habitual lottery player who finally belie...

  • FEEDBACK Festival HORROR Best Scene: Saturday Night Slaughter, by Michael Hansen

    Saturday Night Slaughter follows a group of friends who reunite at the local spooky festival, decades after a disco era massacre committed by the mysterious killer known as Dr. Funkenstein. As the music and memories return, so does the bloodshed.

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Sean Ballantyne
    Bob: Shawn...

  • COMEDY Festival Best Scene: Tequila Express, by Thomas J Kearns

    A sequence of events leads a bunch of friends on a fun musical journey in time. One where they may not come back from.

    CAST LIST:
    Narrator: Val Cole
    Bailey: Elizabeth Rose Morriss
    Maria: Hannah Ehman
    Slimy Guy: Shawn Devlin

  • WILDsound CRIME/THRILLER Best Scene: The Devil's Right Hand, by Algis Danaitis

    Lee is hired to bring the seducer of a young woman to daddy for his particular vengeance. Daddy is an Arizona drug baron. The seducer works for daddy’s Mexican partner. Then too many people with guns and the wrong ideas intrude. And the job just got complicated.

    CAST LIST:
    Narrator: Val Cole
    Le...

  • ACTION/ADVENTURE Best Scene Reading: To Lie Among The Sugarcane, by Trey Randle

    Omar & a group of boys manage to escape the Sudan Civil War & make it to America after experiencing the most horrific fight for their lives.

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Val Cole
    Omari: Shawn Devlin
    Michael: Sean Ballantyne

  • FEMALE Festival 1st Scene: CRYSTAL MAGICIAN OF ATZLAN, by Mui Rah

    A hot-shot Crystal Magician puts domestic life on pause to strike back against the big business that ordered a mercenary “hit” on her Animist Kijutsu Temple...and, really, to send a message to all the Atzlan “haves”: nature and Ancient wisdom are more powerful than any human law.

    https://www.f1c...

  • THRILLER/SUSPENSE Fest: AWAKEN THE MEDIUM, by Lee Bice-Matheson, Kevin Matheson

    Awaken the Medium is a feature-length script that follows the story of Maggie Samson, whose latest near-death experience thrusts her into discovering her gifts and powers. Maggie is a librarian in her forties. Married to Chris, a professor, with whom she has a son, Justus Samson, now eleven years...

  • TV Best Scene: The Victorian Ladies' Detective Collective, by Patricia Milton

    Two eccentric sisters and a fan-fighting American actress thwart a serial killer in Victorian London, defying society’s expectations to become private detectives. A 50-minute TV pilot.

    http://patricia-milton.com/

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Val Cole
    Loveday: Hannah Ehman
    Katie: Elizabeth Rose Morriss

  • SCI-FI Festival Best Scene: CE-V (The Fifth Kind), by Deb Havens & Brad Havens

    It’s Halloween night in the late 1980s. Three kids return from trick or treating with their mom and their dog, hang out in their tree house to sample their loot. That night, on a botanical survey of planet Earth, an alien space craft collecting samples mistakenly uproots the highly unusual “famil...

  • HORROR Best Scene Reading: 666 Challenge, by Gary B. Haley

    When a haunted house draws spectators across generations with a supernatural challenge, the investigators get more than they bargained for. 

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Val Cole
    Monty: Sean Ballantyne
    Male Student: Geoff Mays

  • CRIME/MYSTERY Festival 1st Scene: MURDER ON MARS, by Patrick McKinley

    In 2058, A murder investigation leads two police detectives down a dangerous path during the early days of the colonization of Mars.

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Hannah Ehman
    Daryl: Shawn Devlin
    Matt: Sean Ballantyne

  • FEMALE Fest TV Pilot 1st Scene: PRIORITY ONE, by Hannah Augenstine (interview)

    Three interconnected teams - firefighters, police officers, and 911 dispatchers - face relentless emergenies in Indianapolis, balancing personal struggles with the split-second decisions that determine life or death.

    CAST LIST:
    Narrator: Julie Sheppard
    Ross: Sean Ballantyne
    Taylor: Shawn Devlin...

  • WILDsound Festival Script: Polite to the Death (Nanny Kills), by Pippa Blackmore

    Nanny Ivy, an English nanny, is hired to help an American family with their troublesome children but when she arrives, it becomes clear that the adults and other people in the children's life are the problem so she enlists her charges to kill them all. They return to England to start a new life a...

  • LA LGBTQ+ Best Scene Reading: SHRINK, by Teddy Andrews (interview)

    A young man attends the final session of his compensated work therapy program. The therapist remains ever oblivious as his lies begins to swallow the room whole.

    CAST LIST:

    Narrator: Shawn Devlin
    Ashton: Sean Ballantyne
    Therapist: Hannah Ehman

    Get to know the screenwriter;

    1. What is your sc...

  • CRIME/MYSTERY Festival Scene: STREET KNOWLEDGE, by Greg Sawicki, Brian Miller

    Haunted by both a past transgression and the unsolved murder of his hero-cop father, a biracial Philadelphia detective with a reputation for losing his cool sets out on a quest to take down a criminal kingpin, but as the investigation unfolds, he realizes he might not be prepared for what he unco...