BEGINNING, INTERMEDIATE, and TEEN CLASSES

Saturday, Sunday, and Monday
May 26, 27, and 28, 2001

All classes: The conference offers thirteen classes (Academy, Intermediate, Beginning, and Teen), all occurring simultaneously from nine a.m. until noon each day. You may choose one Mentor for nine hours of in-depth instruction on the art and craft of screenwriting. You will also have numerous opportunities to meet all the other Mentors at the workshops, panel discussions, and social activities.

BEGINNING SCREENWRITING
is nine intense hours of how to develop a craft that is different from any other writing form. You may have never written or seen a filmscript, or you may have completed a screenplay. Whatever your experience, these classes can validate your strengths and give you the tools to improve your weaknesses. Learn the rules before you break them. Plus learn:

Scene structure
Formatting
How characters function within the story
How to write visually
The dynamics of dialogue
And a whole lot more

In short, when you finish an SFeSC Beginning Screenwriting class you’ll be ready to write the screenplay you’ve dreamed of writing.

Wendy Jane Henson
Wendy is an award winning screenwriter, author, and screenwriting teacher. She has authored two college text books - Screenwriting: The First Six Steps; and Screenwriting: The Next Six Steps. She is also a frequent contributor to "Hollywood Scriptwriter." Wendy currently has three screenplays under option and two in development.

Screenwriting: The First Six Steps. The experts say, “Begin with a theme!” But what is a theme? Where do you get one? And how do you develop it? They say, “You need a strong central conflict!” But what is a central conflict? Where do you get one? And how do you develop it? In this class you will learn a clear, simple, step-by-step basic training for writing dramatic material so you can develop your idea into a script: Step 1 - Format; Step 2 - Character; Step 3 - Theme; Step 4 - Action; Step 5 - Structure; and Step 6 - Rewrite.

Rick Reichman
Rick's students have sold to Fox, Warner's, HBO, Showtime, PBS, TBS, The Learning Channel, The Family Channel, Roseanne, Home Improvement, and Zena-Warrior Princess, to name a few. His book, Formatting Your Screenplay, has sold nearly 13,000 copies and is a Writer's Digest Book Club alternate. Rick has personally won America's Best and Wisconsin Forum screenwriting contests and was chosen for the prestigious Warner Brothers' Sitcom Workshop. He is an active screenwriter and is co-Executive director of the Santa Fe Screenplay Conference.

Rick titles his class, Hollywood Story Structure--19 Things you Must Know to Write a Great Screenplay. There is a Hollywood Story Structure, and anyone who writes English can learn it. In a concrete, step-by-step method, Rick will teach the 19 things that make up this story structure and how using the structure will help make your script exciting, salable, and ultimately successful.

INTERMEDIATE CLASSES

Ian Abrams
Ian worked in Hollywood for twenty years, ten of them writing and producing film and TV projects. He doesn't like to talk about the other ten. He wrote the 1993 MGM film Undercover Blues, starring Kathleen Turner, Dennis Quaid and Stanley Tucci, and was co-creator of the long-running CBS show Early Edition. Since 1998 Ian has been the director of the Dramatic Writing Program at Drexel University in Philadelphia. In November 2000 Ian's spec thriller script "Dead Wrong" was purchased by USA Networks for production as a TV film. About this script Ian says, "It's one of the few non-comedies I've written, very gleefully gruesome - we start with eleven characters and end up with two. It's wildly different from anything else I do, insanely politically incorrect, and, I think, a hell of a lot of fun." He goes on to say, "My advanced writing students are going to be looking over my shoulder during the rewrite process."

Ian will focus on what he sees as the most basic (and most fun) aspect of the screenwriters' art: How To Write For A Primarily Visual Medium. His three sessions will be "Talking Through Your Eyes" (using the visual/visceral aspects of movies to help you tell your story); "Building the World" (every film creates its own reality -- how do you efficiently and effectively put your reader/audience into that reality?), and "Making People" (creating vibrant, complex characters through behavior, so that what they do tells us who they are). Ian uses a lot of in-class exercises to spur on-the-spot creative thinking, and encourage thinking in terms of nuts and bolts and problem-solving.

Karen McCullah Lutz & Kiwi Smith -- or “The Girls,” as they’re known in the industry -- got their start by selling 10 Things I Hate About You as a spec. A year later it was being filmed by Disney! Currently shooting is their law school comedy Legally Blonde, an MGM production which stars Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson and Raquel Welch. They’ve also written “Girl in the Curl,” a dramedy about a girl surfer, with Jennifer Love Hewitt attached to star, the FOX 2000 romantic comedy “Public Displays of Affection,” and the college romantic comedy “Like A Virgin” for Paramount. In terms of their television work they’ve had a development deal at Twentieth Century Fox Television where they wrote for a year on the sitcom Getting Personal and wrote a pilot for the WB. They are currently working on “The Miranda Obsession” a dark comedy for Robert De Niro’s production company which De Niro is to direct. Every now and then they stop, have a beer, and wonder how the hell they got where they are.

Karen and Kiwi’s class will include:
The Scene's The Thing --What makes a memorable scene and how to write one; our favorites and your favorites up for analysis.
Writing Strong Characters -- How to write women with balls, men these women want to sleep with, and why every movie needs a “Nazi.”
“We will also discuss writing the romantic comedy, pitching, book adaptations, the business in general, how we got in, secrets we’ve learned, surprises we’ve had and how we’ve survived it all.”

 

William C. Martell
Master of the action genre, Bill has had seventeen of his screenplays produced for cable and video. His scripts have been made into films for HBO, Showtime, USA Network, and CineMax. The Washington Post calls him "the Robert Towne of made-for-cable movies." He also writes for Scr(i)pt Magazine and the Hollywood Scriptwriter. His book, "The Secrets of Action Screenwriting," can be ordered from his http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/wcmartell/ website.

Bill titles his class Action & Thriller Scripts. This technique-based class is based on Bill’s dynamic book, "The Secrets Of Action Screenwriting." In this class you will earn how to write an effective plot twist, create unbearable suspense, design an exciting action sequence, create a high concept villain’s plan, use diversion & anticipation to make your script unpredictable, and create great heroes and villains. If you are writing the next DOUBLE JEOPARDY, ALONG CAME A SPIDER, THE MATRIX, THE FUGITIVE, or FACE/OFF, this class is for you! You’ll learn dozens of techniques that can be used in any genre.
DAY ONE: Fifteen Places To Find High Concept Ideas; What Is A Story?; The Villain’s Plan; Two Types Of Heroes; Structure & Pacing.
DAY TWO: Ten Ways To Create New Action & Suspense Scenes; Reversals & Rugpulls; Emotion Pictures; Plot Twists.
DAY THREE: Four Kinds Of Suspense; Secrets & Lies; Subgenres; Selling Your Script.

 

Intermediate Classes Continued. . .

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