HOLLYWOOD, Ca. (EYT) — An Oil City native’s script has been selected as a semi-finalist for the Hollywood Casting and Film Screenplay competition.

Matt Croyle’s pilot episode script for the series “Circle, Michigan” has been selected as a semi-finalist of the newly minted Hollywood Talent Summit.

Hollywood Casting and Film (HCF) created the new Hollywood Talent Summit to not only provide filmmakers with resources that assist them in bringing their projects from script to screen, but also to serve as a bridge between filmmakers, talent, and executives.

The Screenplay Competition, in particular, is designed to help bridge the gap between the many quality scripts that are produced on a regular basis and the far smaller number of scripts that get the all-important green-light for production.

The event itself may be new, but the mind behind it is far from new to the film festival scene. Executive Director Jon Fitzgerald co-founded Slamdance Film Festival, which has been going strong for 25 years and has also directed other renowned film festivals, including AFI Fest, the American Film Institute’s annual event.

Oil City native Matt Croyle, known locally for his work founding the Oil Valley Film Festival, entered the pilot episode script for “Circle, Michigan” after discovering the HCF Hollywood Talent Summit through FilmFreeway.com, a well-known hub for film festival and creative competition entry.

Croyle said since founding the Oil Valley Film Festival, he tends to peruse FilmFreeway on a regular basis, to keep up with what is going on in the world of film festivals and creative competitions.

“I really just happened to stumble across it,” Croyle said.

Croyle originally began shooting “Circle, Michigan” in 2013 but had to put the project aside after running into some shortfalls in casting and funding.

“People have changes in their lives and things sometimes go on a back burner,” Croyle noted.

According to Croyle, he had been thinking about pulling the project back off the shelf and trying to work on it again and had even spoken to a friend in North Hollywood about casting in LA, when the HCF event suddenly came to his attention.

Selection to the finals of the competition would make Croyle’s project eligible for monetary and equipment prizes, and it would also mean being featured in the final Talen Summit in Hollywood in March of 2019. Croyle would have the opportunity to present a three- to a five-minute scene from the script in front of a live audience and industry executives.

“An opportunity like this can really help get things off the ground,” explained Croyle.

While Croyle and the other semi-finalists wait to hear who makes the final cut, Croyle is continuing to focus on giving “Circle, Michigan” another chance at life, either way.

“I’m really proud of this project. I feel like it’s my most mature writing to date. It seems like sometimes people give up too easily on things that are important to them and I just don’t want to do that with this project.”

“I’d really like to tell people to just stick with stuff. It might be something you wrote ten years ago or something you just wrote, but what really matters is sharing your creativity with the world.”