WRT-214 SCREENWRITING
Course Description:
This course introduces students to the basics of screenwriting and provides them with the opportunity to develop their storytelling craft. Through attention to the elements of the screenwriting craft and a range of prompts, students learn to harness their abilities as visual storytellers. Students will practice drawing on their memories, experiences, observation and, of course, imagination to create compelling characters and stories for the screen. Selected screenplays and scripts will be read and discussed during the course and the completed productions will be viewed to develop an understanding of how the script and serves as the blueprint for the finished project. Assignments will follow prompts to create, for instance, formatted scenes (both comedic and dramatic, and everything in between), show conflict and connection through dialogue and in the visual language of cinema, and create compelling characters in “real” settings (even if those settings are out of this world). Students work toward creating and revising a full act of an original feature-length screenplay (roughly 25-30 revised pages), as well as articulating the film’s entire arc and major plot points of the second and third acts of the script.
My Course Description
Through the class, students will learn how to write a screenplay. They will make their own screenplay, but not based on any sort of prompt – it is purely open ended. The story can be anything the student wishes, a love story, an old western, a film noir, etc. Through this, the students will be able to freely express themselves, pulling from any form of media to create the story, specifically the imagination. Through peer revisions, students will learn to take and give good criticism to edit their screenplays. The format for a screenplay will challenge to predisposed idea of how to create a story that many students have become accustomed to, and will broaden their visionary horizons in a story telling perspective. By the end of the course, students will have a personalized “Lookbook”, as well as a full first act of their screenplay written in full, with act 2 and 3 having their main plot points laid out to help showcase where their story is going.
Framing:
The Screenplay I create for this class was based on my own interests, specifically with old Westerns like “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.” It tells the tale of a man seeking revenge for the killing of his family by a ruthless gang leader. In order to find him, he begins to round up a strange and rowdy gang of cowboys to hunt him down, all with their own interests in the confrontation. It was the project that we had for most of the semester of this class, and it was put through the semester through revisions and certain amounts of the screenplay being finished at certain dates. I believe it sums up everything you learn in this class pretty well, which is why I chose it. It showcases all the screenwriting techniques you’ve learned, and allowed me to see my inspirations and aspirations when it comes to my creative endeavors. This post also shows all the different versions of my screenplay, allowing me and others to watch as my techniques and ideas changed. I remember when I was working on this, I had reworked the opening several times, and I still have more ideas for how the opening could have gone. When I first started this project, I wasn’t sure that I was going to be able to truly get into it and pour in my all, but as we kept going, I found myself wanting to continue writing it more and more. It’s fun for me to be able to continue seeing this story, and to continue thinking about where it goes and how it develops has had a large impact on how I think about stories. I can see the more visual sides of stories a lot clearer now, even when I read books not meant for the screen. I also catch myself watching movies more critically, understanding the stories and how they were created more and more, and it leaves me wondering how close to the screenplay the movie actually is.
