The TITAN Screenplay Contest is judged by working, professional script readers.
Our early round script consultants take rigorous tests to become readers for our contest, and after more than a decade as one of the best script coverage companies around…we know how to spot a brilliant reader!
Our paid readers assess and analyse the early rounds of our contests, and their comments and scores feed in to the decisions IS staff ultimately make in terms of promoting projects to the next round of the competition, or not.
Like virtually all the major contests, we do not reveal the name or identities of our contest consultants. There are multiple reasons behind this policy, including but not limited to:
- Reader Protection: we have a duty of care toward our contest assessors - they sign up to analyse material for us, not to be pursued (and in certain cases harassed) over the internet
- Reader Bias: to intercept any possibility of judges being independently approached, or influenced, it's clearly a popular policy among major screenwriting contests to protect the identity of their contest assessors.
- Market Competition: for obvious reasons, preserving the anonymity of readers is important in a competitive marketplace like this one, where the best readers are in considerable demand.
It's worth stressing that simply because a contest does not reveal this information, this absolutely does not auto-qualify said contest as "suspect".
If it did, then every major contest from The Nicholl Fellowship to the PAGE Awards to Script Pipeline would need to be classified in this way.
All our readers get paid for their work assessing and analysing entries.
We NEVER use free readers or unpaid interns and volunteers.
And we never will.
Does this practise go on at other contests, particularly minor ones? We could not comment with any real authority, but it's possible.
However, we would be staggered if any of the major contests employ this tactic.