By the end of the module students will have:
● Mastered ideation techniques through self-reflection, improvisation and collaborative work;
● Developed their own methods for integrating the formal qualities of screen media within their own writing;
● Engaged with diverse theoretical and critical writing regarding the process of writing for screen;
● Surveyed opportunities in the current Irish and global markets for writers;
● Generated professional standard script, pre-production documents and pitch for future development.

HOW WE MEET
Teaching will take place in two-hour sessions each week in person. Please note, sometimes we will meet in different rooms. Room numbers are given for each week in the Schedule of Work below.
Some of our work will be drawn, some of our work will be written, some of our work will be recorded on video. Any video recordings will be stored securely in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation.
Before each session, you will be expected to have read and taken notes on any set texts and to have completed exercises set in the previous week. All sessions are compulsory (including evening screenings) and absences must be requested in advance via email.
Every week, please bring along a sketchpad (A5 or bigger) and a pen or pencil. It doesn’t matter if you think you can’t draw – even the act of scribbling can unlock our ability to think visually.
Every week, please bring along your preferred writing implements: pen and paper or a laptop. Keep everything that you write.
Every week, we meet as equals with kindness, enthusiasm and openness.
Part of our work together is to be able to watch an image in a sustained way, as if it were alive and capable of change. Part of our work together is to take time, to wait like any birdwatcher, to hold still and be taken in.
Lynda Barry, Making Comics (Drawn and Quarterly, 2019)

Week 1: Pictures
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading
Lynda Barry, Making Comics (Drawn and Quarterly, 2019), pp. 1-25.
John Berger, Ways of Seeing (Pelican, 1972), pp. 7-34.

Introductory session. NP begins by outlining module structure and philosophy of work.
Move onto group introductions, talking about our ambitions for the module, previous experience etc.
First class exercise: onscreen analysis of pictorial storytelling and narrative economy through analysis of Peanuts newspaper strips by Charles M Schultz.
Second class exercise: NP presents class with short scenario from the Laurel and Hardy silent Big Business (1929). Each student must storyboard the sequence, we then talk through decisions around camera placement, framing, distance, aspect ratio… conclude by looking at the actual film sequence and seeing how it compares to our classwork.
Conclude with NP mini-lecture on poetics of the image.

Evening screening: The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956, 35mins)

Week 2: Ideas
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading
Patricia Highsmith, Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction, pp. XX
Ian W. Macdonald, Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 62-80.

How do you make your idea work for the screen?
First class exercise: students will be required to come up with two proposals anonymously which will be subject to general scrutiny and debate. In this way, indispensable screenwriting elements will emerge, and principles enabling the writer to critique future ideas - both others’ and their own.
Mini-lecture on the role of ‘the treatment’, conceptualising ‘the screen idea’ using various screenwriting guides.
Second class exercise: following the anonymous critiques from our first exercise, students are challenged to convert their ideas into treatments, based on the critiques they have received. These treatments will then be workshopped in Weeks 4 and 5.

Week 3: Markets, genres, audiences
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading
Paul Ashton, The Calling Card Script, (A and C Black, 2011), pp. 45-71.
Screen Skills Ireland, Skills Needs Analysis Report for the Screen Sector in Ireland, pp. 22-33.

Open with NP mini-lecture on current writing markets: domestic and international. Account of NP experience working with indie production companies and the BBC: successes, challenges and lessons learned.
First class exercise: students will have been asked to bring evidence of any screen adaptation of Sherlock Holmes in silent film, global television, animation, Hollywood cinema, streaming… (the more outré the better) and as a class we will explore how specific industry contexts determined the writing decisions.
Second class exercise: As a class, a small narrative scenario is generated. In twos, the scenario is reconfigured to suit an assigned genre. Once shared with class, we discuss potential and pitfalls.

Evening screening: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (Universal, 1943, 68mins)

Week 4: Character building / documenting character
Venue: Studio

Required reading
Constantin Stanislavski, Building a Character (Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 1-39.
Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life tbc

This week we move into the studio space, as a way of lifting our ideas from the page into the material world. How can movement generate character and story? We will begin by ‘visualising’ our characters through drawing.
First class exercise: The drawing exercise will bring out the specificity of our characters, how they act, present, react. From each drawing, the group will elaborate further character detail, including a discussion of desire vs need and plot antagonism.
Second class exercise: using Stanislavski’s principles, we will use speech and movement to embody our characters. Improvisation exercises will test the robustness of characterisation.
Why this character, in this particular setting? How does their personality illuminate the themes of your film?

Week 5: World building / documenting worlds
Venue: Studio

Required reading:
Kelly Anderson and Martin Lucas, Documentary Vision & Voice (Focal Press, 2016), pp. 83-106.
Jason Jacobs, Deadwood (BFI Film Classics, 2012), pp. 65-83

We continue our studio work, this time introducing cameras to experiment with the limits of the frame and the creation of screen worlds.
First class exercise: Using our treatments, we will shoot a variety of scenes in a variety of ways, determining how best the script is served.
Second class exercise: using a variety of props and staging techniques, Np will lead experiments with mise-en-scène and ways of telling story through environment.
End with class discussion on submission of treatments next week.

Evening screening: Deadwood: Pilot (HBO, 2004, 62mins)

Week 6: Writing short films
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading:
Scripts for Follies of Youth (2015) and Interception (2016) by Aisling Corristine
John Boorman and Walter Donahue, eds. ‘Conversation with Walter Murch and Michael Ondaatje,’ Projections 8 (Faber and Faber, 1998), pp. 311-326.

This week award-winning writer Aisling Corristine will join our class to share insights into her writing process and experience of the industry. As well as discussing her script-to-screen process in detail, we will test out our findings from previous weeks, receiving a valuable real-world account of market and genre, advice on showcasing work at workshops/screenings/training and industry get-togethers, and ‘the politics of the pitch’.

*SCRIPT TREATMENTS SUBMITTED IN WEEK 6 AND NP PROVIDES WRITTEN FEEDBACK IN READING WEEK*

– READING WEEK –

Week 7: Pitching short films
Venue: Seminar room

No required reading this week!

We welcome Gráinne Humphreys from Dublin International Film Festival who will listen to your pitches and provide information on how scripts turn into films, with particular attention to Irish film’s international contexts.

Evening screening: a selection of films [tbc] mentioned in Gráinne’s talk

Week 8: The shot and the cut
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading:
David Mamet, On Directing Film (Penguin, 1991)

This week will be an intensive session on plotting our scripts. Individually and as a group, we will develop our work. By the end of this session, everyone will have their plot locked down.

Week 9: Dialogue and narration
Venue: Studio

Required reading:
Patsy Rodenburg, The Actor Speaks: Voice and the Performer (Methuen Drama, 2020), pp. 151-220
Sarah Kozloff, Overhearing Film Dialogue (University of California Press, 2000), pp. 33-63

This week we return to the studio for an intensive session on dialogue. Students will bring prepared scenes for us to road-test through performance. Attention to what works and what doesn’t will guide us towards the process of rewriting.
Evening screening: Moonlighting: The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice (ABC, 1985, 50mins)

Week 10: Storyboarding
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading:
Will Eisner, Comics and Sequential Art (W. W. Norton, 1990), pp. 39-102.

This week we return to the storyboarding techniques used in Week 1, now developing our own scripts via sequential panels. While this is not a traditional role for the writer, we will explore the ways in which storyboarding helps us to conceptualise shot composition, shot length and the expressive potential of the cut.

Week 11: Sound and music
Venue: Seminar room

Required reading:
Thom, R., 2011. Screenwriting for sound. The New Soundtrack, 1(2), pp.103-112.

In this session, we consider the relationship between writing and what are traditionally considered post-production processes (editing, scoring, etc.). In the previous week, we began to build ‘cuts’ into our writing process. This week we consider the rhythm of editing.
First class exercise: An in-class screening of 14e Arrondissement (Alexander Payne, 2006, 7mins) will prompt class discussion on how music and sound contribute to storytelling.
Mini-lecture: NP on expressive soundscapes on screen.
Second class exercise: Produce a graphic score for your film.

Evening screening: Night Mail (Harry Watt and Basil Wright, 1936, 24mins); The Elephant Will Never Forget (John Krish, 1953, 11mins); Ten Bob in Winter (Lloyd Reckord, 1963, 12mins)

Week 12: Reflections
Venue: Seminar room

No required reading this week!

One of the most important aspects of writing is reflecting and learning. In this session, we will talk through what worked and what didn’t. Students will have the opportunity to talk through the challenges and breakthroughs in their writing process.

Not applicable to this module.

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment
• Feedback individually to students, post-assessment

Ongoing feedback on work-in-progress and feedback on assessments after grading