Penn’s Cinema & Media Studies held its annual script contest and received thirty-seven entries! Each script was read by several experienced Hollywood readers, and after a long and competitive process, the winners are listed below. All of the winners will receive cash prizes and opportunities to pitch their stories to Hollywood studios and production companies. We thank everyone for participating and look forward to reading your scripts next year!
WINNERS | Screenplay
1st Place | RIVER RAT by Walker Carnathan | $1,000
Walker Carnathan is a sophomore from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania studying English and CIMS. His three favorite things about Penn CIMS are the faculty, the vast swathe of different types of cinema it offers courses in, and the department’s encouragement of its students to not just study, but participate in the world of cinema and filmmaking.
Commendation... TBA
2nd Place | GOOD GRIEF by Crystal Marshall | $500
Crystal Marshall is a senior from Miami, Florida majoring in Communications and minoring in Cinema and Media Studies. She caught the screenwriting bug in Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve's introductory screenwriting class in the fall of 2023 and has been writing ever since. Her debut feature-length screenplay, "Good Grief," won second place in the Red and Blue Script Contest and first in the Judy Lee Award for Dramatic Writing. Her three favorite things about the CIMS department are: the people (professors and students!), the Penn-in-Cannes program, and the intimacy of having a small community of people who share a love of film. Following graduation from Penn, she will be pursuing her MA in Film Programming and Curating in the UK as a Thouron Scholar.
Commendation... TBA
WINNERS | Pilot
1st Place | THE VANISHING ACT by Alexa Lieberman | $1,000
Alexa “Lexi” Lieberman is originally from New Jersey and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in English, a concentration in Creative Writing, and minors in Cinema & Media Studies and Spanish. Her three favorite things about Penn CIMS are the faculty (specifically her former professors Kathy DeMarco Van Cleve and Scott Burkhardt), the courses (particularly Writing for Television and Advanced Screenwriting), and the alumni network. Lexi currently resides in Los Angeles and works as the Showrunner’s Assistant on Outlander and the prequel show Outlander: Blood of My Blood.
Commendation...TBA
2nd Place | HALFWAY by Katherine Cocherl | $500
Originally from Neenah, Wisconsin, Katharine was a 2020 graduate, who majored in Bioengineering and Cinema & Media Studies. Halfway through her engineering undergrad, she expressed interest in the Penn CIMS program, and the faculty not only made the double major possible but gave her hands-on tools to understand what post-graduation options looked like. In fact, Halfway came out of her engineering thesis on portrayals of opioid addiction and the CIMS department inspired its expansion into a pilot. The Penn in Cannes program gave her her first exposure to what the business looked like in action, and since then, she has moved to Los Angeles, most recently working as the Writers' Assistant on Twisted Metal.
Commendation...TBA