Students spend the first week of the three week workshop learning about screenwriting and writing their own Screenplay.

Students are introduced to screenwriting fundamentals including: Story structure, three-act structure, the inciting incident, plot points, script styles and script elements.

Students will work in small groups and write a short 2-5 page scripts. Each student will write a script. Some students will adapt a short story they have written in another class. Other students write original screenplays. Many students struggle with the blank page.

Students that struggle with the blank page are encouraged to write a very simple story with just two or three characters. Build the characters and the conflict into the story. Give it a beginning, resolve that conflict and then give it an end.

Sometimes it’s easier for students to write a narrative story and than adapt the screenplay – adding the action and dialog.

After the students have written their first draft – they are encouraged to workshop the script.

The workshop process allows the students to assign parts to be read aloud from their script. After the reading, students give reactions, feedback, and ideas for improvement.

After the students have written and work-shopped their scripts – they will work in groups of 3-5 to select a script to shoot!

Before they shoot we’ll bring each class together to work on an In-class Production – The Zombie Movie.

For two days students will work together to learn some basic production techniques that they can apply when then start shooting their film.