Professional Screenwriting Seminar
With Corey Mandell
8 meetings on Mondays, April 25 - June 20, 2011
(no class May 30)
7:30-10:30 pm
1001 Colorado Ave. Santa Monica, CA 90401
Cost: $445
***$50 discount extended to all Writers Junction members***
Class size limited -- this will fill up fast!
Open to members & non-members, but discount for members only.
To sign up: please email Lisa Mulcaster at lisa@coreymandell.net.
Why take the class?
To be a better writer.
To turn your weaknesses into strengths.
To develop a valuable set of tools you won't learn about anywhere else.
FROM COREY:
There are two essential skill-sets required for screenwriting success: the ability to write scenes that grab a reader's attention and make them want to keep reading, and the ability to sequence those scenes into the most compelling order (story structure). These skills are not equal.
The first skill is far more important than the second one. Many writers believe they already write sufficiently strong scenes, characters and dialogue, and that if they could only get better at story structure they'd be able to write professional-level scripts. Unfortunately, this is too often not the case.
I met a producer who received 116 script submissions from writers at a pitch fest. He read the first scene or two of each script, but would only continue reading if those scenes were written to professional-level standards. I asked how many scripts he read beyond the first couple of scenes?
He said only two.
Which means he tossed 114 of the 116 scripts after only a few pages.
The single most important skill required for success is the ability to write original, powerful, and compelling scenes. If a writer can't consistently do that, all the story structure in the world won't save them. Without this ability, a writer simply has no shot.
ABOUT THE CLASS:
This intensive eight-week class will analyze highly successful scenes and provide weekly writing assignments and review of participants' work in a supportive, yet challenging environment. By working on emotional context, narrative intensity, high impact pacing, set-up's, build and pay-off's, participants will learn the tools necessary to conceive, write, and edit professional caliber scenes essential for any successful screenplay.
Additionally, this workshop will focus participants on developing the four essential screenwriting skill sets required for long-term success -- writing clear and compelling professional level conflict, strengthening and integrating both the conceptual and intuitive muscles, process, and rewriting.
Once participants demonstrate the ability to write professional level scenes, they will move on to learning structure -- writing sequences which bring overall story structure into play. And since the structural mistakes writers make in sequences are the same they make in screenplays, sequence work will allow participants to move down their learning curves at an accelerated rate.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:
Corey Mandell is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter who has written projects for Ridley Scott, Wolfgang Petersen, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Warner Brothers, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Fox 2000, Fox Family, Working Title, Paramount , Live Planet, Beacon Films, Touchstone, Trilogy, Radiant, and Walt Disney Pictures.
Corey is also a distinguished instructor at UCLA, where he earned his MFA. His students have gone on to sell or option scripts to Warner Brothers, Paramount , Sony Pictures, Disney, Fox, Fox 2000, MGM, Universal , Showtime, USA Network and Lifetime. Others have gained admission to the USC Graduate Screenwriting Program, the AFI Conservatory Screenwriting Program and Sundance Screenwriter's Lab.
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