Global Arc

This class will familiarize students with the complex use of metaphorical, emotional, and visual threads in long form screenplay writing. Analyzing examples of international, independent, and classical structures, students will be exposed to the rhythms and demands of the process of conceiving and writing a long form narrative film. Prerequisite: Introduction to Screenwriting and by application.

This advanced screenwriting workshop will introduce students to the fundamental elements of developing and writing a TV series in the current "golden age of television." Students will watch television pilots, read pilot episodes, and engage in in-depth discussion about story, series engine, character, structure, tone and season arcs. Each student will formulate and pitch an original series idea, including season arcs, and complete most or all of the pilot episode by end of semester.

Introduction to screenwriting adaptation techniques, focusing primarily on the challenges of adapting "true stories" pulled from various non-fiction sources. The class will address the ethics of adaptation, questions and techniques surrounding the need to fictionalize truth for dramatic purposes, as well as touch on the differences between fictional and nonfictional original materials. Students will be exposed to various contemporary non-fiction adaptations, and will write a short film and one longer project. By application.

An advanced course in screenwriting. Students will explore the possibilities of transposing their understanding of the contemporary Athens as a physical and metaphorical space, into the fabric of short film/screenplay. This class will build upon the techniques introduced in Screenwriting I and II - and will examine other films that have used cities as a source of narrative and structural inspiration in order to direct students towards their own script interpretations of Athens-specific, or Athens-inspired, stories.

Can the emotional fabric of a world, a space, or a country be adapted into a work for the screen? Using Greece and Greek culture as a source of inspiration, students will explore their own approach of transposing a physical and metaphorical space into the fabric of a short film/screenplay. Traditional screen adaptations of memoirs, novels, and plays taking place in Greece will be used as filmic study-texts. An intermediate course in screenwriting, also open to beginners. Prerequisite: by application.