At its inaugural event in Palm Springs, Memorial Day Weekend, 2004, the Southern California Writers' Conference debuted its stand alone track for screenwriters. A condensed version of the Indie Filmmaker's Bootcamp, the new Script-to-Screen, Writing for Production track enables participants to develop, write, cast and shoot a short film over the course of three days in order to improve objective-oriented screenwriting skills and bolster an overall understanding of the actual filmmaking process, at both the indie and studio level.

A dozen conferees participated, working with accomplished filmmakers from the IFB program to make the short, Going Down. Developed Friday and Saturday, the film was shot on location on Sunday. The first rough cut of the film was completed at 3 a.m. Monday morning.

The filmmakers conducting the Script-to-Screen track at SCWC*PS 1 were:

• Nicholas Berry, gaffer
• Stan Foster, executive producer
• Michael Steven Gregory, writer-director
• Ross Kallen, producer
• Aaron Mendelsohn, writer-director
• Jim Orr, director of photography
• Stephanie Palmer, MGM executive
• John Rosenberg, editor

To see what a team of resourceful, creative filmmakers can do in a day, check out the rough cut now then return in February to see the finished version — complete with a snazzy title sequence, proper sound effects, music, color correction, and all things magically movieful — of Going Down!

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[ WATCH ROUGH CUT ]. . . . . . [ VIEW ALBUM ]..