How to make the leap from short films to series

Since her short film for her Final Project Degree at ESCAC ‘Neboa’ got a candidature for the Goya for Best Fiction Shortfilm; Claudia Costafreda hasn’t stopped working as a screenwriter and director, becoming one of the new voices coming out of Spain in the last years. After her second short film ‘Benidorm 2017,’ Claudia Costafreda jumped into the TV series world as co-screenwriter of ‘Veneno’ and co-creator of ‘Cardo’ with Ana Rujas, the brilliant winner of the Feroz prize for Best Dramatic Series.

Additionally, Claudia has accepted being part of the Jury of our International TV Pilot Screenwriting Contest in Spanish. If you have a series script, we invite you to submit it before the 24th of March. There is a prize pool of 5.000€ to be distributed and several opportunities to show your scripts to producer companies (The selected in Spain will show it to Corte y Confección de Películas, Diagonal TV, Veranda TV, and Cattleya Producciones; and the LATAM selected will show it to Cattleya, CMO Producciones, Caponeto y The Lift)

For this reason, we wanted to meet Claudia to talk about her career, what she expects from the submitted scripts to the International TV Pilot Screenwriting Contest, and, of course, ask her for some tips for beginners. If you missed this Filmarket Talks, you can read here some of the highlights:

What did you do to get a Goya’s candidature for your first short film? What advice would you give to students working on their first short film?

It was pretty heavy because it was my Final Degree Project. I didn’t expect my first professional job to go this far. Indeed, it was not a ‘festival’ short film. Still, its selections were significant, like in Festival de Málaga or in Festival de Huesca, where we got the candidature for the Goya award.

I recommend the students follow their intuition. Don’t go along with the tendency, be true to your own, and allow yourself to make mistakes. It is also essential to keep close the people you trust. For example, in ‘Cardo, a big part of the team was made for my friends of ESCAC. That was essential to bring what I had in my head to the screen.

How did you jump from short films into the series world?

It has been a series of work that went well. After the excellent reception of “Néboa,” I got the funding to shoot a second short film, “Benidorm 2017”. Los Javis (Javi Calvo y Javi Ambrossi) watched it, and they loved it. They were preparing the series “Veneno,” and at that moment and invited me to join the screenplay team. It was a total match to work with them, and with such a good experience, they relied on me to develop “Cardo.”

What is the origin of ‘Cardo’?

‘Cardo’ is an extraordinary case regarding what we understand as a series development. It all started when Los Javis went to see Ana Rujas at the theatre with the play ‘La mujer más fea del mundo’ (‘The ugliest woman in the world’). They came out so shocked that they asked Ana to present an idea to work together. That’s the origin of ‘Cardo,’ the story of a thirtyish who is lost and has to deal with some problems. Los Javis asked me to meet Ana to develop a series, and when we met each other, we began this co-creation project in which we wrote down a lot from ourselves.

Cardo is indeed a very natural series that seems to contain a lot of truth. Have you used personal anecdotes or from close friends to get inspired?

It’s not a self-fiction, but there are many things about ourselves, though. There are some fictional situations, but there are also real ones that I’m not going to confess (laugh). There are also several situations that our friends or we have gone through, and we have modified them to fit them into the story. It’s been funny because using specific moments from real life is what makes this fiction so special.

Do you want to know how the screenwriting process in the writers’ room of ‘Veneno’ was? And discover if your script would fit the standards of Claudia Costafreda as a Jury of the International TV Pilot Screenwriting Contest? Discover here the full Filmarket Talk:

You’re still on time to submit your script to our UK Online Pitchbox — a two-day virtual pitch event dedicated to British feature films and scripted series in development.

For the fifth consecutive year, this online initiative aims to discover high quality unproduced projects and match them with leading companies in the industry. Executives from Baby Cow Productions, Bankside, BBC, FilmNation, Independent, Kudos, Lionsgate, NBCUniversal, Number9, Red Arrow, See-Saw Films, Sky Originals, Universal Pictures and Vertigo Films are already confirmed to attend.