Screenwriting for Television and Film - Retreat (MA) (April start)

• In the fast-changing world of digital drama, new media and new film markets, you will become skilled in producing strong and original fiction writing.
• The course director and lecturer in film is Sue Clayton, a practising screenwriter/director who has projects in development with a number of producers including Donald Ranvaud, producer of City of God and Executive Producer of The Constant Gardener. She has written and directed a number of fiction films including The Disappearance of Finbar with Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, and the BAFTA-nominated Heart Songs.
• Teaching television is screenwriting lecturer Adam Ganz, whose TV credits include Pillow Talk and Murder Without Motive; and guest lecturing in television are Gillian Gordon, Susan Rogers and Jonathan Powell.
• Despite the first students only graduating in 2008, we have already had a host of successes with many of our students finding success in the industry.
• You will meet and work with industry and independent producers, directors, agents, writers and actors to provide a production context. We have recently had guests from Working Title, Channel Four, the BBC, Script Factory, Blake Friedmann Agency and many others.

• The MA Screenwriting for Television and Film Retreat course (MASTFiR) only began graduating students in 2008 but already we have had a host of successes - Janice Hallett's feature screenplay Retreat is now being shot in Canada with a star cast; Olivia Wakeford has a writing credit on the feature film Baseline (2009) and several writers have gained agents and development commissions. Kay Stonham has work commissioned by the BBC and two of our younger writers are working on a C5 youth drama series. Adam Rolston has had a highly successful musical on Doris Day's life performed at a variety of London venues. Many students have won festival awards for their short films.

You will study four core course units.

Core course units:

Script Craft
This unit will focus on the acquisition of basic writing skills, and is a gateway to the ‘Story and Theme’ unit. You will explore the specifics of scene and dialogue construction, formatting and issues around research and around adaptation from source materials – e.g. plays, novels and news stories.

Story and Theme
This unit teaches the essential components of story and structure, the specific language of film storytelling and genre. It will include lectures, screenings of films and extracts, and individual and group analysis of films. You will produce ideas, formal outlines and a feature-length screenplay or TV series bibles and episode.

Development Lab
This is a discussion forum to which you bring the work above, where it is critiqued and debated from a number of points of view including aesthetic, generic, marketing, audience and budget. Development Lab is interactive and is at the core of the course; it replicates many of the development processes you will face in the film and television industry.

Contexts: Current British Film and TV Practice.
This unit covers current aesthetic and generic trends in British film and television. There will also be lectures and seminars on budget, schedule, commissioning, finance, contracts, casting and marketing, and you will explore the production and marketing implications of your own screenplay projects. 
 

On completion of the course graduates will have:

• the ability to discriminate between project ideas, present ideas and drafts to others effectively, and both give and receive constructive criticism
• the understanding of the aesthetic and economic conditions of the marketplace, how their work may be viewed in terms of budget and audience, and the stages a screenplay will go through in development and production
• a broad and detailed understanding of the nature of the film and television screenplay- how it signifies, how it communicates meaning to the film producer, director, actor and to the audience
• advanced understanding of the processes of writing a screenplay, from initial concept to final draft
• advanced understanding of the various stages of script development and how each is documented- outlines, treatments, pitch documents and so on
• critical knowledge of the current genres and trends in film and television and how they have evolved in recent years, particularly in the context of economic and market developments in these industries
• an understanding of the UK film and television industries, including their structure, institutions and working practices
• a broad understanding of the group nature of writing and development, and how the roles played by the various parties- producer, script editor, director and so on- shape and influence the screenplay.

Print the full course specification for students first registered prior to September 2011 for the MA Screenwriting for Television and Film - Retreat|.

Print the full course specification for students first registered in September 2011 for the MA Screenwriting for Television and Film - Retreat|.

Assessment is carried out by a variety of methods including script outlines and scenes, a completed feature film screenplay and/or TV series episode and ‘bible’, and marketing and pitch documents.

 

On graduating, you will be well prepared for careers in television and feature film screenwriting and script development. 

Our recent graduate successes include: 

Janice Hallett's feature screenplay Retreat is now being shot in Canada with a star cast; Olivia Wakeford has a writing credit on the feature film Baseline (2009) and several writers have gained agents and development commissions. Kay Stonham has work commissioned by the BBC and two of our younger writers are working on a C5 youth drama series. Adam Rolston has had a highly successful musical on Doris Day's life performed at a variety of London venues.  Many students have won festival awards for their short films.