Description:
This event happens every Wednesday at BDA from noon to 1:30pm!  You can pre-register or just show up with exact change!

Work out your screenwriting muscles at the "Script Workout" series! Bring a brown bag lunch and plan to get usable information about how and why to write screenplays. Whether you just want to understand how they've carried you away on the silver screen, or you have the next great blockbuster floating around in your head, this class is for you. Each week we'll examine a piece of the screenwriting puzzle, adding knowledge and tools to your repertoire.

It is within normal expectations to spend three months developing the story of your script by working on

• Your concept or premise,
• Character arcs and conceits,
• Your treatment and outline

To that end we'll begin at the beginning, even while you're encouraged to develop the adventurous middle and know how the story ends. You'll learn also to write with an eye towards the entertaining, commercial and exciting script product with clues about what producers might be looking for based on several time-honed questions.

In an hour and a half, you'll get a lesson on one necessary structural section of a screenplay, a tool to work with in exploring that section, and an exercise to practice. Practical application of these screenplay rules will help you build a viable product over time. We'll pick apart movies you love, and you'll discover how much knowledge you already have in hand as a movie lover.

As the series progresses each week, we'll develop your sense of pacing, and deepen your understanding of why you're compelled to answer a burning question in every successful screenplay. We'll learn about formatting, scene structure and dialogue. We'll break through blocks and find solutions to the gnarliest screenwriting problems (the middle, the middle, the middle).

Finally as the year draws to a close we'll examine the rewriting process, and the challenge of refining your work to its best, ready to face the serious competition for script development dollars in Hollywood. We'll explore the business of screenwriting, along with the multiple avenues for successfully marketing your script. Storytelling is a craft to be learned, and as with all crafts...practice makes perfect.

If you don't pre-register and plan on attending as a drop-in, please bring exact change.

Presented as a Lecture-Style Workshop:
Affordable workshops designed to introduce a subject quickly and efficiently. Students can take notes from the instructor's projected computer screen, and/or bring their own computer to follow along.

Instructor:
After 11 years working in Hollywood, Amanda brings her valuable experience working in literary agencies, production companies and major motion picture studios to bear on this introductory class. Anecdotal experience will instruct the class on what Hollywood expects of its writers. Basic understanding of agencies, production companies and studios will be shared. Get past the starving artist mentality and create a plan of action that will insure your productivity and salability to the Entertainment Industry. Learn about resources available to you as a writer, and how to make your work stand out and gain credibility in the eyes of script purchasers.


Amanda Morris Conti has been teaching screenwriting successfully for three years. She was instrumental in founding the short filmmaking festival in Boulder called The Shoot Out: Boulder. Hired over the years to write screenplays for feature length films and even for live action and animated computer games, her real-life experience is tapped in this class to give you an idea of what it may be like to be working writing in the entertainment industry

BDA Member Cost: $10.00
Non Member Cost: $15.00
Become a member to save $5.00