Learning Outcomes

At the end of the module, students will be able to:

• Identify the formal qualities that define television, film and adaptation;
• Develop and refine a creative idea for screen;
• Reflect on their own creative practice;
• Interpret and incorporate feedback on their drafts;
• Understand and interrogate current industry practice;
• Identify routes into professional writing.
• Identify promising film ideas, and to discriminate between these and others best addressed in prose, poetry, on stage or for radio.
• Demonstrate proficiency in devising, researching, storyboarding, pitching, developing a short film project.
• Demonstrate the capacity to work creatively in a visually dominant medium, both in isolation, and collaboratively.
• Have a sense of how to meet the challenges involved in translating a script into effective on-screen action.
• Work to bring their characters to life on screen in the fullest way possible.
• Show that they have developed the necessary skills to develop empathetic protagonists.
• Show the ability to adapt to the practical constraints of filming (schedule, casting, technical and financial issues).
• Be able to manage the organisational tasks (proposal, treatment, planning and budgeting) required in any production.

Stage 1
Weeks 1 - 3
1. The concept. Students should bring several initial ideas for their screenplay to the table. The strengths and weaknesses of each will be evaluated and discussed with experienced staff members and peers.
2. Feedback from students/practitioners on the relative merits of each project. Discussion of whether the idea makes best use of the camera as leading “character”, its originality and practicability within a very tight time-frame.
3. Selection of the final film project from among the various contenders. How does it display screenwriting/production prowess? Is it written with an awareness of the market for future projects, industry demands, and possible career paths? Review of potential platforms: internet, tv and film.
Weeks 4 - 8
4. Tightening the screenplay. Students write a draft which encapsulates or approximates their chosen idea. This will be rigorously tested, honed and edited over the coming weeks in intensive one-on-one sessions with an experienced industry professional, bearing in mind that “writing is re-writing”. The focus will be on the following key elements.
5. Is it visually bold, original? In what way, and how can this be highlighted? The weeding out of derivative or predictable ideas. Is the screenplay one that only this person could have written? Does it showcase a distinctive “voice”, given the power of metaphor and symbolism in the cinematic narrative. What might it suggest about the writer’s unique “take” or abilities? Re-write.
6. Empathy and audience “identification”. Do we care about the character(s) depicted, and their situation? This applies to comedy, experimental work and darker material equally. The viewer must be “co-situated” with the protagonist, or at the very least, with the “eye” of the camera. Re-write.
7. Dynamism. Scrutiny of the screenplay with primary focus on its unfolding over time. As audience do we want and need to see what will happen next? Is there some element of suspense? Does the screenplay make best use of its limited span to surprise and wrong-foot the audience? Does the initial concept contain an implied question which demands an answer in the playing-out of plot? Or is it too static, contemplative? Re-write.
8. Re-writing / redrafting.
Weeks 9-12
The student should now be able to develop the beginnings of a tight, workable screenplay/ pilot which has been considered from multiple angles. They will work with an industry professional (director/producer) in the final month to bring the project to a level of professional competence.

Not applicable to this module.

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

Feedback during drafting process and after examination.