[Ed Vela]

Okay, I could’ve sworn I DID this already, but I don’t see my reply on here, so here I go again.

My name is Ed Vela.

I started my writing life as a playwright in the late 90’s after a long and uneventful career on stage as ham actor in non-professional theatre and a short turn in stand up comedy.

I’ve been trying to make the bridge into screenwriting since 2008 and to date have written 2 feature screenplays, about 6 TV Pilots, and a BUNCH of short scripts.

I’ve entered and WON a LOT of minor, regional film festivals (via FilmFreeway), by the way that does very little good in trying to make an inroad to the industry (unless you win Nichols), it does stroke your ego though to have a myriad of Best Screenplay Certificates framed and hanging on your wall.

I wrote, produced, and directed for several years a web series I created on You Tube that never went viral, never got popular, I just did it to have something creative to do (to keep my limited sanity).

I also W/P/D some of my own ultra-low budget shorts, some of which have also been screened at these lesser film fests, and won awards there.

I am here to FINALLY learn HOW to MAYBE get my Award Winning Dramedy into the hands of SOMEBODY that might recognize its potential, but we’ll see if I can keep up with the class AT AT ALL as I try to balance these classes and a full time rent job, and trying to produce a new short script.

[Ed Vela]

I watched “Come Play”

Concept: Lonely, non-verbal, autistic boy is stalked by creature of loneliness that he conjures up by viewing an on-line story. Larry can only be seen thru camera of phone or other electronic devices.

Terrorize characters: Lights flicker and explode to indicate creatures presence in our world as he struggles to gain physical access from his world to ours.

Isolation: Boy knows what is going on, but can’t communicate it to parents or friends.

Death: Mother sacrifices herself at end allowing monster to take her to nether world instead of boy.

Monster/Villain: Larry is a huge, thin, dark creature with glowing red eyes and hunchback.

High Tension: Larry gets closer and closer to taking the boy the further the boy reads into the story. He tries to avoid the story, but it keeps popping up on every screen around him.

Departure from reality: Larry eventually makes into our world pursuing the boy anywhere there is a screen around for him to gain access.

Moral Statement: Lonely kids, plugged into their devices and making no friends in the real world are easy targets for problematic intrusion.

[Ed Vela]

Unique: Three terminal patients on a last hurrah road trip across the country

Great Title: The Mortality Game

True: N/A

Timely: A dramedy about death and the appreciation of life is ALWAYS timely.

It’s a First: N/A

Ultimate: On the road trip our trio play a game where they do dangerous things to come as close to death as possible without actually dying or suffering serious injury.

Wide Audience Appeal: My three headed lead include a middle-aged curmudgeon, a young collegiate, and a kid involved in this trip, so it certainly has the chief demographics covered.

Adapted From A Popular Book: N/A

Similar to Box-Office Successes: The Bucket List Budget 45 million, Gross 175.4 million.

Great Roles For Bankable Actors:

Schubert – Hard drinking, chain smoking, middle-aged throwback to the tell it like it is generation.

Halada – Good natured, resourceful, with a huge brain tumor which causes him hallucinations, and memory loss and makes him our rather unreliable narrator of the story.

Tugger – Pre-teen hell-spawn, a tough, gritty, plucky, foster kid that DOESN’T want to go through chemo again.

Dragenfeld – Tough yet tender police detective, who listens to Halada’s story thru the lens of a loss of her own.

[Ed Vela]

Dramedy / The Mortality Game / The Bucket List meets Thelma & Louise with a dash of Little Miss Sunshine thrown in.

My story is a sardonic look at life while facing death, in the format of a road movie.

Targeting Actor’s Production Companies, because it’s hard to get a film funded without an A-List (or at least B-List) actor attached to the project, and since my piece is dialogue and character driven, one of the lead characters in it will be a middle-aged actor’s wet dream.

What I learned today is… I never thought that as a writer, or creative of ANY kind, I’d have be learned in business or marketing, let alone BOTH!

Ed Vela

The Mortality Game

Actor’s Production Companies

[Ed Vela]

Ed Vela

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