Global Arc

This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques. Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences. Final portfolio will include one short exercise and two short screenplays. By application.

How can screenwriters prepare for the evolving challenges of our global media world? What types of content, as well as form, will emerging technologies make possible? Do fields like neuroscience help us understand the universal principles behind screenwriting and do tech advances that alter the distance between audience and creator, man and machine, also influence the content of our stories? This class will use fairytales, films, games and new media to illustrate universal script principles while creating a rich interdisciplinary lens to explore the innovative intersection of narrative screenwriting, science and technology.

A reading-based advanced fiction workshop designed to introduce students to the practice of imitation as a point of creative departure. Reading the works of a series of twentieth-century Italian masters--Ginzburg, Lampedusa, Levi, Morante, among others--we will analyze a range of techniques and styles and focus our discussion on themes of linguistic crossing and hybrid identity. All readings will be in translation from the recently published Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri. Italian concentrators and certificate students will read the stories and produce all written work in Italian.

Tutorials in the original composition of fiction, poetry, or translations, open to those who have demonstrated unusual commitment and talent through four terms of creative writing or who provide equivalent evidence of their capacity for advanced work. Open also to qualified graduate students. Individual conferences to be arranged.

Tutorials in the original composition of fiction, poetry, or translations, open to those who have demonstrated unusual commitment and talent through four terms of creative writing or who provide equivalent evidence of their capacity for advanced work. Open also to qualified graduate students. Individual conferences to be arranged.

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.