Drama Writing Workshops in Quebec, April 3 and 5

The Writers Guild of Canada (WGC) and CBC proudly invite Quebec-based screenwriters to participate in In The Writers’ Room, a Drama workshop series, presented in partnership with the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Concordia University). This two-part pilot initiative will take place on April 3 and 5, 2009 in Montreal.

In The Writers’ Room kicks off on April 3 at CBC with the Drama Clinic: Analysing Heartland, led by series writers Leila Basen and David Preston. This 3-hour session will offer a screening of an episode of the hit CBC TV series Heartland, followed by an in-depth look at the creative process behind its success. This free event is open to all students, emerging and seasoned writers.

Drama Clinic: Analysing Heartland with Leila Basen and David Preston
Friday, April 3, 2009 at 6:00 pm
CBC (La Maison Radio-Canada), 1400 René-Lévesque Blvd East
RSVP : Anne-Marie Perrotta

For the second part of In the Writers’ Room, the WGC and CBC invites writers across Quebec to submit their projects for a chance to attend an exclusive Drama Writing Master Class on April 5 lead by award-winning screenwriters Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik (Durham County) and Bruce M. Smith (Prairie Giant: The Tommy Douglas Story, The Sleep Room). This call for submissions is open to up-and-coming screenwriters who have created and are working on one-hour TV drama series. This one-day intensive workshop will help selected participants develop their skills in drama series analysis. Master Class members will receive in-depth critiquing of their projects, bringing them one step closer to being pitch ready for producers and broadcasters. Interested candidates are asked to fill out the submission form and attach all requested documents. The Drama Writing Master Class will be held at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University and is free of charge.
Drama Writing Master Class with Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik and Bruce M. Smith

Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 10:00 am
Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema (Concordia University),1250 Guy Street, Room FB449
For more on eligibility details, proposal requirements, and submission form, please visit www.wgc.ca.
Only selected participants will be contacted by or before March 23, 2009.

This is a real opportunity for writers at any level, but if you're an aspiring writer, you really shouldn't miss these seminars.

Sitcom Room

Ken Levin is hosting another Sitcom Room in mid-November. This is an opportunity to be "in the room" with one of the most experienced sitcom writers / showrunners / creators in the biz.

Most of these seminars are hooey, because they're run by people who couldn't hack it as writers. Ken Levine has written on M*A*S*H, CHEERS, FRASIER, BECKER, and many other top sitcoms.

If I were in LA, I would so totally be there.

MFA Programs Are...

Kristen Havens posts MFA Programs Are Bull****, and asks, "If you've been rejected from an MFA program for writing, ask yourself, "What would that degree have bought me, really." She hastens to specify that this applies to poetry and fiction programs, not screenwriting programs.

I think it's a good question, though. In fiction and poetry, what an MFA gets you is the ability to teach professionally at institutions that require an MFA for their professors. Other than that, you get teachers' advice on your writing, and admission to the official Poetry Writing Mafia. You may need those if you plan a poetry "career" where you get published in small presses and occasionally win grants and (because poetry doesn't pay) teach.

If you actually plan to be a poet, you don't need a poetry program. You need to write poetry that people who are not themselves poets want to read.

If you actually plan to write fiction, then write fiction. If it's good, someone will publish it. I can't imagine that racking up $40,000 in tuition debt helps you find the time to write. If you need someone breathing down your neck to get anything finished, get married.

I'm not that big on screenwriting programs, either. I think you can learn far more by going to work at a literary agency; and they will pay you for it. They pay bupkis, but at least you don't have to pay them. You'll get a sense of how the industry works, and what it wants, and what it doesn't want. Then you can write at home, and you'll have people to show your work to. My biggest problem with most screenwriting professors is they teach how to write a "good" screenplay, when what you actually need to write is a screenplay that someone wants to pay money for. Those are not the same things, as you know from the first chapter of my first book.

I'm not even that big on MFA filmmaking programs. These do more for you than screenwriting programs, because to make films, you need equipment, and you need friends who are willing to work for free, who love movies, and who know what an f-stop is. Filmmaking is a collaborative medium. While you can shoot your own videos at home, and edit on a Mac, it is much easier to get a crew in film school, and to work on other people's crews, than it is in Fargo.

On the other hand I think most people go to film school too soon, before they know anything. So they make the wrong calling card film (I did) and don't have anyone to show it to once it's made. I think it's better to spend a few years in LA working, and then go to film school. (Also, you'll be more likely to get in, and you'll be eligible for in-state tuition rates at UCLA, rather than the huge out-of-state rates.) My years at film school qualified me to get an assistant job working for a producer; years later, they helped me shoot a pretty good comedy short film. I think I could probably have got an assistant job anyway, you know?

So before you fork out tens of thousands of bucks for an MFA program, ask yourself if you really need to. What are you getting the credential for? No one in the arts cares about your degrees, unless you want to teach. What are you going to learn that you can't learn on your own?

That way, you'll most likely save a whack of dough; and even if you do decide to go to an MFA program, you will know to spend your time in the program focusing on learning those things that you cannot learn outside of one.

Teaching in Charlottetown, PEI in June

As part of the PEI Screenwriters Bootcamp, I'm teaching a four day seminar on TV writing in Prince Edward Island June 2-5, courtesy Telefilm and the Island Media Arts Cooperative. You must be a Canadian in the Maritimes to participate. The deadline is tomorrow but if you're interested, please email Louise Lalonde at youthinkyoucanwrite@yahoo.ca and let her know I sent ya. The website says the deadline is the 21st, but it's been extended to today, and if you can get your app in by Monday, I'm sure it'll be okay.

$400 Filmmaking Course on DVD

Q. Should I buy this $400 set of DVD's about filmmaking?

No. I don't think so.

First of all, there are umpteen books on how to make short films, and you can get many of them from your library. Without sitting through the DVDs I can't be sure, but I don't feel confident that DVD's are going to teach you more than books.

But more importantly, neither books nor DVDs are going to teach you how to make short films. Not really.

What teaches you to make short films is making short films.

Here's my filmmaking course: read one (and no more than one) book on short film making. Then shoot a short film. Then read another. And shoot another. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I learned shockingly little about making films from my classes in film school. I learned a great deal more from working in the industry. I've learned a great deal more than that from making my own short films (whether at university or film school or recently privately) and working on other people's films.

$400 buys you a cheap video camera. You can edit on your computer (e.g. using Final Cut on a Mac).

Don't worry about fancy lighting until you've seen what ordinary lighting does for you. Then read a book that has a chapter on film lighting.

Don't worry about fancy editing until you've tried to edit by instinct. Then read a book that has a chapter on basic editing. Hey, they're probably the same book.

I feel that there are WAY too many courses and books and seminars and schools and chat rooms out there. It is wonderful that there are so many ways to learn how to be a better filmmaker. But after the first book, reading becomes an obstacle to actually going out and doing it.

How many books would you want to read about horse riding before you got on a horse? What would those books mean to you until you actually got on a horse?

There are many, many details that you can and must learn about filmmaking. But it is very hard to absorb them -- and even harder to know which you need to absorb and which you don't -- until you've actually got up on the horse.

(By the same token, if you can get someone who's made a short to coach you through making your short, that's an entirely different story. I wouldn't recommend you get up on a horse without a riding instructor. But then, it's harder to fall off of a short film, and it hurts less, too.)

Don't worry about making a bad short film. Tell yourself that your first ten short films are training exercises, not meant to be shown to anyone except the people working on them with you. Go out and make five video shorts under ten minutes.

You can step up to a $2000 prosumer video camera whenever you feel that the cheapie consumer video camera is limiting you, but honestly, it's not about how good your film looks. It's about learning to tell stories with moving pictures. I made three terribly amateurish video shorts before I went to film school. I wish I'd made six. By the time you're in film school, you're already thinking about getting an agent, which tends to limit how many risks you take with your filmmaking. Experiment when the stakes are still low.

Reading books can teach you more about filmmaking than reading books can teach you about screenwriting, but not much. There is no substitute for actually doing it.

Q. But this course will show me how a film production works, what the production manager does, etc. Won't that help me be a better writer?

I don't think so. Not really. I don't think being a p.a. on the set helped me with my writing at all, and I was actually seeing films being produced.

Acting training helps. Writing lots helps lots. Directing and editing a short film helps. Seeing your material directed, or directing it yourself, helps a lot.

Knowing the details of how you get things on the screen on a professional production -- mneh. That teaches you how to be a producer.

UPDATE: Elver writes in the comments

But if sight and sound is the medium you want to learn in, then buy the collector's edition / director's cut versions of your ten all-time favorite films. Watch all the "making of" features and listen to all the commentaries.

Or get them at Netflix or Zip. Much DVD commentary is purely anecdotal but some directors give up a bit of craft here and there. Joss Whedon's commentary on his TV shows is full of insight, too. You really shouldn't have to spend $400.

On the Podium

I spent the day teaching. That was fun.

I ran a small workshop as part of Telefilm's "Feature It!" program, where writers sent in pitches for a 1.2M thriller to be shot in Quebec. The jury picked five projects (one writing team, so six writers). Today I yammered on for a bit about the Hook, and the Elements of Story, and Pitching Your Story. Then I had everyone pitch their story. Then we critiqued it and offered solutions.

That's fun. It's like a writing room, but for features. And we had an audience of 15-20 other people.

I like working on other people's stories. I like coming up with fixes. On one project, we all agreed that it might be stronger to change the movie from the crazy hero's story to his girlfriend's story. Sometimes a simple change like that makes everything better. On another, I proposed merging antagonists. On another, we proposed a slew of different endings. On some, we just identified places where we weren't buying the story.

I like teaching, but I find I run out of things to teach after about a day. I don't know how you keep talking about stuff, honestly. I can tell you the three most important things I know about storytelling in half an hour. After that, it's just a matter of doing it. I can critique an indidivual story till the cows come home, and even draw morals from it; but if I had to rely on imparting information one-way, I think I could plow through my whole book in a day. It's all about applying the process after that.

I guess that's because story telling is a live beast, and if you start micromanaging it, it dies.

Tomorrow we're headed down to New York, and Friday I'll see whether they'll let me borrow one of their picket signs.

What Would You Want to Do? What Would You Want to Know?

I'm teaching a workshop for TV beginners out on Prince Edward Island in mid June. If you were attending a workshop I was teaching, what would you want to come away with? What would you want to do in the workshop? What can I give my participants that they can't get from my book CRAFTY TV WRITING?

Workshop

I believe there's still time to sign up for the Screenwriter's Bootcamp at which I'm teaching the TV writing portion, on Prince Edward Island, in late June. If you're interested, please check out the Island Media website.

Do You Need a Teacher Who's a Pro

Craig at Artful Writer answers a viewer's question about whether his screenwriting teacher knows what he's talking about. The teacher, see, doesn't have produced credits. Or have an agent. He claims to know lots of important people in showbiz, though.

Uh huh.

But Craig's post brought up the question: does your screenwriting teacher need to be a produced writer? Obviously there are very few successful screenwriters who teach writing classes. One half hour free lance script probably pays about what it pays to teach a class all semester long. And teaching a class means having to read a lot of very bad scripts. You do get to work with young hopeful people, and give back some of what you've learned. But what if you get a call asking you to staff a show? Or dive into a crash rewrite? You'd have to dump the class.

But I have had some veteran screenwriters as teachers. I took a class with Sterling Silliphant, who won an Oscar for In the Heat of the Night. (Along with some big schlock like Shaft, The Poseidon Adventure, The Swarm, etc.) And Lew Hunter has a shelf full of Emmies for his TV movies.

Does your teacher have to be a veteran?

On one hand, if they're not, how do they know what they're talking about? Screenwriting isn't theoretical. It's a process. If you haven't been part of the process, how can you help your students? When I wrote my first book, there were a slew of screenwriting books out there by people without produced credits. Most of them told you how to write a "good" screenplay. What they didn't tell you was how to write a screenplay that would actually get made into a movie, which is not the same that at all. I suspect that most non-pro teachers are good at telling you how to write a "good" screenplay and not so good at telling you how to write a screenplay that Hollywood will give you money for and then turn into a movie.

On the other hand this does not have to be the case. A great acting coach does not have to be a great actor. My acting teacher, Joanne Baron, was brilliantly insightful in the classroom. She hasn't had much of an acting career. A great editor can't necessarily write. I know development people who can tell you exactly what's wrong with your script -- okay, not many of them, but a few -- even though they're not writers. So, theoretically, you could have a teacher who's great as a teacher, but just can't write.

And, moreover, good writers can make lousy teachers. A great writer may not be aware of all his writing processes. I doubt Faulkner could have told anyone how to write a novel. I don't know if Robert Towne could tell you how to fix your script, though William Goldman probably could.

The key question is: can your teacher identify the causes of the problems in your script? Or just the symptoms? Usually the causes are the failure of one of the elements of a story. We don't care about the character. Or, not a strong enough opportunity / problem / goal. Or, the obstacles / antagonist are not awesome enough. Or, the stakes or the jeopardy are weak.

If you're not getting structural notes like that, do you really need a screenwriting teacher? Wouldn't a writing group teach you just as much? What you really need is feedback. And if you really concentrate on listening to people's feedback, and extracting the truth from it, anyone who loves movies can probably tell you what the symptoms are, and from the symptoms, you can deduce the causes.

And if you're taking a class for the community and the weekly kick in the pants, then it doesn't really matter who your teacher is, does it?

Most of what I've learned about screenwriting, I've learned from writing screenplays. I can't remember getting any craft advice in particular from the late Mr. Silliphant. (Though he did have good career advice. "Don't get divorced," he told us. "The alimony will kill you, and you'll never write another spec script again.") I'm a better screenwriter because I've listened to feedback and worked hard on the weak aspects of my writing. Five years ago I was good on plot but weak on characters. I've written a bunch of character-driven stuff since, and now my characters are stronger.

What do you guys think? Are your teachers pros or professional teachers? Have you learned crucial things from them? Or was the classroom just a place to go to talk about screenplays -- a writing group with a paid leader? Can you learn from a non-pro? Can you learn from a class at all?

UPDATE: Hotspur points out

The other thing to consider is that most people taking screenwriting classes have much, much more to learn than they think they do. Even if William Goldman has more to teach you than Joe No-Credits, a student should ask himself if he's really in a position where he knows everything Joe No-Credits does.

To be fair, when I started writing screenplays, I had already been writing stories and studying novels (English major) and structure (Computer Science major; yes, both; no, I'm not sure why) for a while. So while the format was new to me, I had been working on how to tell a story (and turn a phrase) for the better part of a decade.

Workshop

I'm facilitating a two day TV workshop in Prince Edward Island this June:

As a first initiative in PEI, the Island Media Arts Coop in partnership with Telefilm Canada, Technology PEI, and CBC is hosting a competition for emerging screenwriters from the Atlantic Region, the PEI Screenwriter’s Bootcamp 2007.

In keeping with the popularity of reality TV shows, Bootcamp hopefuls will be voted in by a jury of industry professionals, based on the quality of writing and appeal of an original idea. Up to twelve submissions will be selected to be developed during a five-day retreat style workshop in Mount Stewart, PEI this coming June. There will also be pitching sessions and networking opportunities with producers, providing an exceptional forum for pitching ideas for both writers and producers.

Tom Shoebridge, founder of the Canadian Screen Training Centre in Ottawa will be mentoring the group along with Alex Epstein, screenwriter and author of two books on writing for film and television. Mr. Epstein was also one of the co-writers on Canada’s recent box office smash, “Bon Cop Bad Cop.”

The Bootcamp is a pilot project for an annual event for emerging writers who will learn the basics of screenwriting and pitching to the industry. So, if you have a flare for writing and an original idea or two for a film or a television series, this is your chance to learning how to get your work produced. Visit www.theislandmedia.pe.ca to enter.

The Awkwardly Named Totally Television

The (Canadian) National Screen Institute is renewing its Totally Television program:

... taking applications from writer/producer teams looking to develop a series through its Totally Television, a 10-month program aimed at fine-tuning scripted series.

"We're, like, totally looking for awesome writers and producers who are way poised to create hits for the scripted television industry in Canada and around the world," said program manager Kit "Big Kahuna" Redmond (From the Ground Up with Debbie Travis) in a release.

(I may have altered the release slightly to conform to its title.)

The NSI deadline is May 15. See www.nsi-canada.ca for details.

Screenwriter's Boot Camp?

Does anyone know anything about the Screenwriter's Boot Camp in PEI this June? (Not the Writer's Boot Camp.)