Screenwriting Story Studio: The Horror! The Horror!
Course Description
Summary
This introductory screenwriting course will focus its attention on, well, maybe you've guessed it, the horror script. We'll be reading feature-length horror screenplays, discussing the various ways to make someone shudder or scream or white-knuckle the arms of their theater seat (or loved one), and in the process we will spend time learning the various structural and formal ins and outs of writing a narrative outline and feature-length script of your very own. We'll be diving into a variety of horror forms from down and dirty slashers to monster and disaster flicks to psychological thrillers to that most dreaded horror genre of all—the 'elevated' horror!
Not for the feint of hearted. Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here, etc, etc. There will be blood (ha! word play! we won't be reading There Will Be Blood) and gore and religious iconography and final girls and slow-builds and fast-paced thrills and people's guts probably spilled out of their bodies? So. Come prepared.
Learning Outcomes
- An understanding and proficiency with screenwriting forms and structures, including the treatment, the scene, and the three-act structure, as well as those formal structures that grow out from or push back against the three-act structure.
- A proficiency creating realistic characters through visual details, physicality and gesture, and dialogue.
- A deeper understanding of basic elements of visual storytelling and how to manipulate almost any narrative into a visual story.
- An understanding of plot-development through causality and the ways in which screenplays do or do not adhere to plot.
- An understanding of how the written document of a screenplay provides a blueprint for a finished movie, the gaps between what is visualized and can be achieved on the page versus what can be achieved behind a camera, saddled with a budget, and reconciling with the input and needs and interpretations of other artists.