Story By: Skye Anderson
MONTEVALLO, Ala. — When mass communication major Jude Copeland sat down to work on an assignment for his screenwriting class last November, he knew it had to be about something that brought him passion — but he had no idea what that night of hunkering down would yield for him just under a year later.
“I started with this film noir idea,” he said. “But as I kept trying to write it and I was getting closer to the deadline, I just wasn’t feeling it and I knew it wasn’t going to be something I was happy with.”
So, the night before the script was due, he changed courses.
When watching YouTube videos about mysteries in the Appalachians, he could feel the visuals coming together for a different idea. From this burst of inspiration came an intense night of listening to Kylie Minogue’s cover of “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” on repeat — and crafting the mountaintop thriller that would be awarded Best Alabama Short Screenplay at the 2026 Sidewalk Film Festival.
As Copeland kept up with Sidewalk’s winner announcements, he couldn’t remember whether he’d submitted to this category. Until he got the notification he’d won.
“It’s a crazy feeling where you’re going, maybe I read it wrong. Maybe this isn’t real. But it was,” he said.
“Any Wrong Step” follows the story of Jane and Allen, a young couple on a hiking trip. “As they get lost… the unsettled nature of the hike starts to unsettle some things within their relationship,” Copeland said. “It sort of just turns into this nightmare.”
And Copeland got to watch the nightmare come to life: on the weekend of the film festival, Sidewalk held a table read for the scripts that won, with local actors portraying the characters.
This was the first time a script of Copeland’s had a table read.
“It’s cool,” he said. “Especially when there’s choices where you think, ‘oh, that’s not how I originally imagined the character, but I actually love that they made that choice and now that is how I see the character.’”
At the table read Q&A, an audience member asked the winners what advice they would give other aspiring writers; Copeland encouraged them to follow their gut passions. “If I’d gone ahead and just tried to write that little noir that I didn’t feel very strongly about, I probably wouldn’t have even submitted to Sidewrite,” he said. “But this was a story that I knew I loved, and I knew I would be able to put my best foot forward.”
Copeland often finds his writing process intertwines with music: “I love to listen to a song over and over that’ll give me different images,” he said. “I think about what a trailer set to the song might look like. Then I take those visuals and go: Okay, how do I connect this to an actual story?”
It was these strong visual connections that had first brought Copeland — originally a prose writer — to the medium of film.
“[Screenwriting] started in high school, because I was really into creative writing, but it was mostly just short stories or book ideas,” Copeland said. “But I started to notice that when I was writing, I pictured it like a movie. So I started to think, maybe this is what I’m really interested in.”
When writing “Any Wrong Step,” a story intrinsic to the feeling of unease, Copeland had to face his characters’ discomfort head-on.
“A lot of [the writing process] was just going: Well, okay, I know I want to see this. How do I get there? How do I make this as uncomfortable as possible?”
I started to notice that when I was writing, I pictured it like a movie. So I started to think, maybe this is what I’m really interested in.
Jude Copeland, 2026 Sidewrite Award winner
UM mass communication professor Kaley Martin, Copeland’s academic advisor, was a juror for Sidewalk’s student film category this year. But she didn’t find out about her own student’s win until shortly before the festival weekend.
“I was sitting in our [emerging media] class that I teach, and had no idea that Jude had won this award,” Martin said. “One of our students, Erin Sides, came up, and was like, ‘Dr. Martin, we’re going to tell you this news because Jude won’t brag on himself.’ I was tickled, just so excited for them.”
Martin emphasized the gravity of winning this award at the undergraduate level. “At an international film festival, that puts you in the running for other big film festivals,” she said. “That is a huge, huge deal. One that, as a professor, I’m very proud of.”
But Copeland made it clear this wasn’t something he achieved alone. During the film festival, he credited his professors and peers at UM for his creative growth and ambition.
“I’m lucky enough to have gotten a bit of a community through classes at my college, the University of Montevallo,” Copeland said during the table read. And when accepting his award: “These classes have given me a lot of confidence in my writing that I didn’t quite have before.”
Copeland is the president of the university’s chapter of the Broadcast Education Association, a club centered on broadcast and filmmaking projects.
“[BEA is] a space where all students passionate about media production can get together and make different works of art, whether that’s a film, a social media campaign or broadcast journalism,” Copeland said. “People can get together and make different projects to fill their portfolio and gain general experience with things like set etiquette.”
“Jude wants to make these open entry points for students in film more and more accessible,” said Martin, who is also the club’s faculty advisor.
In addition to working on BEA projects, Copeland said he plans to submit to Sidewrite again and potentially try to crowdfund production for “Any Wrong Step.”
