Screenwriting

1 Course Unit

Students in Screenwriting will explore key strategies for writing affecting scenes, urgent stories, and powerful visual experiences for feature films, short films, or television. In addition to learning the vernacular of visual storytelling and how to format scripts, students will explore complex narrative elements such as character, tension/conflict in scenes, urgency/escalation of story, structure, and more. Students will examine successful film and television examples to better understand the complexity of a filmed scene and will write their own individual micro- scenes. The course will culminate with each student writing a three- page scene in script format that will receive prescriptive feedback in the form of group “workshops” where students will collaboratively outline and/or write the next 2-3 pages of each scene that students present in their groups, thereby replicating the highly collaborative and cooperative environment in the screenwriting industry. 1 Course Unit