Screenwriters' Summer Camp June 29 - July 5, 2008
| Develop skills and tools to rely on for the rest of your career. |
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Finally. A unique immersion experience for screenwriters that allows you a safe, quiet place to escape and explore your craft with nurturing Hollywood film & television professionals. Itıs a rare opportunity to work in an intimate and vigorously intensive one-on-one and small group setting, with a close-knit, focused band of industry writers and producers who guide you in depth through your own projects, as well as help you explore and develop your screen story ideas for real world industry presentation. Over the course of the week, you are not building just contacts, but relationships. We heartily recommend attending both sessions in order to best take advantage of this complete investment toward your career in screenwriting, although each session may be taken separately. NOTE: This camp is designed for committed advanced writers and serious novices who have completed at least two screenplays and wish to discover their own best and most realistic pathways to the professional level. See website for 2007 participant testimonials.
For more information visit: IdyllwildArts Summer Program |
Session I: Script Craft
June 29 - July 2 (4-days)
(Limited to 16 participants)
Writers at Café Aroma
Building Your Fire
This session offers the rare opportunity to work intensely on an on-going project in order to prepare and spark your next draft and take you a step - or leap - forward; or, an outline of a new script to be molded into an effective plan for a powerful first draft. Crafting Your Scripts activities will include:
- A submission of one work-in-progress, as well as a summary biographical and writing experience and projects before camp begins for mentors to read
- Small groups (3-4 persons) workshopping each morning with peer as well as mentor diagnosis
- Unparalleled mentor commentary on your own individual use of structure, character, plot, flow, and tone as you show new work each day
- Large-group meetings for orientation, feedback, and story-telling
- One-on-one meetings with your mentor and other scheduled discussions with the other professionals
- An individualized outline of prospective revisions ready to work on upon return home
Benefits for Participants:
- A raising of the level of your skills in writing effective screenplays
- Honing the ability to personalize your scripts, including discovering your own voice and the heart of your work
- A hands-on tackling of all issues for writing your projects, including multiple approaches to solving craft and structural problems
- Personal relationship-building time with both the mentors and fellow writers
Session II: Your Next Big Idea
July 3 - July 5 (3-days)
(Limited to 20 participants)
Informal room with Lisa Callamaro
Plotting Youn Next Trek
The power of story is front and center in Session II. As George Lucas says, "A movie is a success or failure from the minute you solidify the concept."
This session is designed to help you rediscover the best possible script idea for you-and only you-to write next, a script that can catapult you to the next level in your career. Whether your goal is to win contests, get representation, attract producers, directors and actors, find financing or have the big next spec sale-a powerful idea is what will get you there.
This course provides day-long, hands-on, real world experiences, creating professional meeting settings so you can develop true meeting expertise and learn to work together and productively with producers. You'll develop ideas, structure them, learn how to pitch and get the chance to pitch your ideas to working industry pros. It also offers the extraordinary opportunity to receive invaluable feedback on your pitch, redevelop it with guidance and then RE-PITCH your idea to the pros-a once in a lifetime experience not found elsewhere. Your confidence level, presentation powers and industry understanding will raise exponentially each day you are here.
In addition, you'll be able to evaluate a current project from this new perspective with three involved and entrenched independent producers, receive feedback and discover where to focus your time, energy and talent for maximum impact in your career.
Your Next Big Idea activities will include:
- Gaining insight into your strengths and skills as a writer
- Developing your own set of screenwriting skills and tools that will help you navigate the film business
- Target an idea based on the marketplace, as well as your strengths and passions as a writer
- Finding your own heart and strengths as a writer
- Finding the heart and strength of the story, develop its three act structure, and work it with the pros in legitimate industry settings
- Walk away with a fully envisioned project that can take you to the next level in your career, as well as a new focus for the scripts you wish to further develop for market
Benefits for Participants:
- New and industry-realistic ways for writers to evaluate their own craft and projects, and determining what stories and ideas on which to focus your energies
- Finding the heart of the story as you practice/pitch it
- An understanding of the industry viewpoint of your project's quality and the work needed to create financing/producing/representation interest
- Clarification of your steps on both individual projects and general strategies in the next weeks, months, years
- Valuable information from practicing professionals in the film/TV industries
General Information
Participants in Session I: Orientation dinner, Saturday, June 28, 5 p.m. Film clips, mentors introduced. Transition/culmination dinner, Wednesday, July 2, 5 p.m.
Participants in Session II: Orientation dinner and reception, Wednesday, July 2, 5 p.m. (combined with Session I culmination). Final dinner and screening/event, Saturday, July 5, 4 p.m.
Tuition
Session I $750
Session II $600
Both Sessions $1195
Lab Fee: $20 per session
Info & Registration:
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Summer Camp in association with Idyllwild Arts. For more information on this and other summer arts workshops for children, teens, and adults, visit www.idyllwildarts.org Summer Adult Arts Courses: Screenwriting Camp |
