Deadline: 3 October 2024
The Early Career Writers Program is a collaboration between Endemol Shine Australia and Screen Australia to provide early to mid-career Australian writers who have the potential for a strong career trajectory in scripted episodic storytelling, with high-level training in a global calibre Script Department.
Up to 4 early to mid-career writers will be selected to participate in a Script Department Program full time over 8 weeks. The Early Career Writers Program will be on-site in Sydney, NSW starting on Monday, 25 November 2024 and concluding on Friday, 31 January 2025. This is a paid opportunity and, where required, support is available toward the relocation to Sydney for the duration of the program.
The program is funded by Screen Australia and delivered by Endemol Shine Australia, and supported by the Australian Writers’ Guild.
Benefits
- Successful applicants will be paired with experienced mentors who will guide them through the process and directly contribute to their learning and professional development. In addition to this, they will be immersed in all facets of script development and rotate through all the roles that make up a successful and well-functioning script department. This will include, but is not limited to:
- Experience as a writer’s assistant.
- Observing and contributing (where appropriate) to ideation and plotting sessions.
- Professional notetaking in writers’ rooms and script meetings.
- Training in skills pertaining to script coordinating, script producing and script editing, where they will work closely with professional script producers to gain practical skills and knowledge.
- Note collation and distribution (including from Executive Producers, Script Producers and Network, where/when appropriate).
- Script assessment and written critique.
- Story researching.
- Formatting scene breakdowns, draft scripts and revisions in established house style.
Funding Information
- Successful applicants will be paid at a rate of AUD $1,700 / week, plus on-costs like superannuation and holiday pay, for the duration of the program and their engagement in it. In addition, support will be afforded for relocation costs, ground transport and domestic economy flight costs, where applicable.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible for this program, applicants must:
- Be Australian citizens or residents and meet Screen Australia’s Terms of Trade
- Have a minimum of 20 cumulative minutes of scripted screenwriting credits as a sole or lead writer. The credits may be for any scripted platform and in any scripted genre including:
- Online
- Episodic TV
- Feature Film
- Short Films
- A sole writer credit is one for which you are the only writer credited as “Writer”, “Written by” or equivalent.
For more information, visit Screen Australia.
