Northern Script was held for the second time in 2018. The program was launched with an open call for script competition in April 2018. The theme for year 2018 was ”Me First”, a reference to the ”Me too”– a topical human rights campaign that year.
The competition was organised in collaboration with the Oulu International Children and Youth Film Festival, the Nordic Youth Film Festival NUFF in Tromsø and the Malmö Children and Youth Film Festival BUFF. Euphoria Borealis, the association responsible for the original idea behind the competition, was also invited to participate, but this year the association was not involved in the practical implementation of the competition.
Fifteen scripts were submitted to the competition, one from Sweden and one from Norway, the rest from Finland. Of the Finnish entries, the pre-selection jury chose the best four to go forward. The pre-selection jury consisted of writers, text designers and literary podcast hosts Essi Pulkkinen and Jukka Ahola, and the winner of the 2017 competition, Mikko Peltotupa, who was studying scriptwriting at Aalto University at the time. All submitted participants received written feedback on their texts from the pre-selection jury.
The competition finalists were Isak Dizdarevic from Sweden, Julie Kristine Woie from Norway and Juuso Kuusisto, Sanni Mättö, Laura Mannila and Jutta Nummela from Finland. Woie was unable to attend the final event due to her schedule.
The final event took place in Oulu on 15–17 November 2018 as part of the Oulu International Children and Youth Film Festival. The international jury of the competition was composed of Anna Asplund, the festival’s artistic director, and Lisa Elofsson, a BUFF representative and finalist in the 2017 Northern Script competition.
In Oulu, the finalists participated in a joint media education workshop with Metka and WIFT Finland, where they watched the short story film Rå. The discussion was led by Silja Kukka and Aino Isojärvi, researchers from the University of Oulu. The second workshop was a script workshop organised by Antti Haaranen of Valve Film School, with mentoring by writer-director Aleksi Puranen. The festival offered guest passes to the participants and invited them to the traditional night out at Pehkolanlampi and a closing night dinner. The finalists also met the pre-selection jury Pulkkinen and Ahola, who recorded an episode of the competition for their podcast called ”The Voice of the Narrator”.
The winner of the competition was announced at the festival’s awards gala. The jury chose Juuso Kuusisto’s script ”Race for Life” as the winner and the honourable mention went to Isak Dizdarevic for his screenplay ”Amman”. The winner was rewarded with a free ten-day film workshop at the NUFF festival in Tromsø in June 2019. All participants also received a book prize.
Finalists:
Norway:
Julie Kristine Woie – Albertine
Sweden:
Isak Dizdarevic – Amman
Finland:
Juuso Kuusisto – Race of life
Sanni Mättö – Rosa
Laura Mannila – Ladies first
Jutta Nummela – Me first
The jury of the Northern Script competition 2018:
Anna Asplund
Artistic Director at the Oulu International Children’s and Youth Film Festival
Lisa Elofsson
Finalist of the Northern Script competition 2017, Youth member of the jury
Pre selection jury:
Jukka Ahola
Essi Pulkkinen
Mikko Peltotupa
FILM & MEDIA WORKSHOP
Thursday 15 November 2018
Workshop in co-operation with WIFT Finland, Metka and the Oulu International Children and Youth Film Festival
Researchers Aino Isojärvi and Silja Kukka and Silva Rikala from WIFT Finland
Movie: Rå
Evening entertainment at Pehkola 17.30pm
Friday 16 November 2018
Workshop on working on scripts by teachers Antti Haaranen (media teacher at Valve movie school) and Aleksi Puranen (writer and producer; Heavy Trip (2018), Wheels of Freedom (2018)).
Winner of the 2017 Northern Script, Mikko Peltotupa: The experience of a screenwriting competition
I have never liked my own texts. I like competing even less, and least of all competing with my own texts. I write a lot, but I usually discard every single piece of work sadly onto my hard drive – a mass grave of forgotten text files. In the depths of my computer, a gigantic number of writings are lying around, never to be seen by anyone. But I have recently been picking at the bark of my self-criticism, and in August I entered my manuscript in the Northern Script -competition organised by the Media Education Metka.
Northern Script is a scriptwriting competition for 18–25 year olds, with Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian writers. The task was to write a short film scrpit of a maximum of ten pages on the theme “Stanger”. I spent some time philosophising on the subject over a cup of coffee. What makes us strangers to each other? I thought it was due to a lack of communication. I weighed up the various universal ways of communicating and came up with a scene from the shadow play. Silhouettes are practically the same for everyone, and shadows don’t look at nationality. I also wanted to cut out all possible dialogue from my short film. The language of the short film is universal, so it synced well with the given theme. I quickly wrote the first draft and emailed it to the jury. Immediately after sending it, I felt a sense of shame and self-criticism. But was my work worthy enough to be read by the jury? But someone on the jury read it and liked it enough to invite me to Oulu for the three-day final. During the three days, I would be working on my script under the guidance of mentors and competing with other Nordic writers.
The first day of the finals was programmatically short, but to get there I had to numb my ass in a VR carriage for 11.5 hours. In Oulu, I was introduced to the event organisers, mentors and, most importantly, my fellow competitors. Besides me, Finland was represented by Janne, Veera, Juuso and Maija. Lisa came from Sweden, and Norway was confirmed by Grettir. Although the short panel discussion by the mentors was an excellent introduction to the work of a screenwriter, the most instructive discussions of the day were with the co-competitors. Never underestimate how much you can learn from your peers. At first, I was shy about my language skills, but as the evening waned, our accommodation at the Turunen’s Saha, was filled with”rally” English (English with a strong Finnish accent). Among other things, I learned how to sell short stories to domestic festivals, how Swedish film production differs from Finnish, and how to swear in Norwegian.
On the second day of the final, it was time for the script autopsy. Each text was chopped into pieces and we operated pedantically on feedback from mentors and peers to extract the full potential of the story. Among the professionals, Ilja gave constructive criticism on the structure, Aino guided us through the characters, and Jerker examined the events of the film, reflecting on the emotional and rational level of each.
After scribbling down a dozen pages of notes, I felt I should rewrite the whole script. I had been blinded to my own writing at the draft stage, but outsiders saw it as full of amateurish errors and illogicalities. However, I was grateful for the criticism. After several people pointed out my repeated blunders, I swore to myself that I would never make the same blunders again. I was absolutely euphoric about the teaching we had been given, but I did grumble about one element of the arragements. We had not been given time to edit our texts. I was personally mortified to know that the panel of judges who would select the winner would judge the winner on the basis of the first draft. I had spent all day fueled up with suggestions for improvement and I would have liked to edit my manuscript as soon as the suggestions for improvement were fresh in my mind. Of course, there was little time for editing, as the City of Oulu had organised a reception for us. We were offered a sauna in the best sauna in the world (ranking based on an empirical study by the Kauppalehti-newspaper) and the best salmon soup in the world (appreciation is based on the author’s own opinion). The reception was also a great opportunity to meet other guests.
On the last morning we had to pitch our manuscript to the board, Saara Cantell and Hanna Bergholm. We had one minute for our presentations, but I was nervous about the presentation for hours before the d-time. My worst fear is performing for people. The experience is nightmarish enough in my native language, and now I had to stammer out the content of my film in English. After a sweaty pitch, the jury retreated to the backstage area to consider the prize-winners. I no longer cared about the result. The whole trip to Oulu had been superbly educational, and I had already beaten myself many times over. To my surprise, my script was declared as the winner. As my prize, I could choose between a trip to the Tromsø International Film Festival, or participation in the Kino Kabaret workshops in Helsinki. To be honest, I still haven’t decided. Finally, we said goodbye to the Turunen’s Saha, and even before the train left, we got free entry to the Oulu International Children and Youth Film Festival.
To my surprise, I won, but I would have left Oulu happy as a “loser”. “Loser” is a poor choice of words, because the value of the experience is immeasurable. Metka provided the travel, accommodation and first-class tuition to turn the script into a diamond. I am seven friends and an experience richer. I encourage everyone to participate in next year’s Northern Script experience (I avoided the word “contest” because that’s not the purpose of the trip). The most important thing is to grow and refine yourself and your own output. For this purpose, Northern Script has been the best possible ground during my short (but hopefully long into the future) writing career.