Jackson man wins award for screenplay

Fred Jones is not looking forward to the awards presentation.

He is grateful that he received the Broadcast Education Association's Best of Festival screenwriting award, but not for the attention it will focus on him.

Jones, 35, is a video production professor at Southeast Missouri State University.

He is also an aspiring movie maker and has been writing scripts since he attended film school at the University of Utah.

For the past three years, Jones has entered a script in the BEA's Best of Festival of Media Arts competition. BEA is a nationwide organization for professors, students and professionals involved with broadcast education.

The Festival of Media Arts has separate competitions for students and faculty in the categories of audio, interactive multimedia, news, video and screenwriting.

In 2002 and 2003, Jones received second-place finishes, but his 2004 entry, "Hope is a Three-legged Dog," brought him first place.

Every year the competition has a different theme the admitted scripts must base their work around. This year the theme was hope.

Jones' 30-page script tells the story of a writer who works for a magazine that runs stories about hope. The stories are all made up, and the writer who has to produce them is without any hope himself.

Things change, however, once he hears from a woman who tells him that her three-legged dog who has been missing for several years is actually going around the country, doing heroic deeds. There is a glimmer of hope that what this woman is saying is true and that, in turn, brings the protagonist some hope.

Jones grew up in Jackson and currently resides there with his wife and two children. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Southeast Missouri State University before moving to Salt Lake City to attend film school.

It was at film school that Jones discovered he wanted to write screenplays, although, he said, "the first scripts I wrote were terrible."

After living in Salt Lake City for several years, Jones moved back to Southeast Missouri when he heard about an opening in the university's communications department.

Now, with classes and two children, Jones said he does not have much time for his screenplays and usually waits until summer or Christmas break to work on them.

All of "Hope is a Three-legged Dog" was written two weeks before the competition deadline.

"I didn't really think this one would do anything," Jones said. "I just try to write something I'd want to read."

His script was obviously something the judges wanted to read as well.

On April 19, Jones will attend the annual BEA convention in Las Vegas to receive recognition for winning the Best of Festival screenwriting award. Not that he is looking forward to his moment in the spotlight.

"I just want someone to send me an e-mail and tell me I won," he said.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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