Workshop: Screenwriting For Teens
Dates: April 26, May 3 and 17
Time: 12:30 - 2:30pm
Cost: $25 for individual workshops. $60 for all three: April 26, May 3, and May 17.
Registration: Advanced registration recommended. Call: or stop by DIVA 110 W Broadway, Eugene.
This series of screenwriting workshops has been designed to help students conceptualize an idea for a short film, turn it into a rough outline from which a screenplay is written and prepared ready for shooting. There are three sessions. An individual may take one, two, or all three workshops.
There are three broad goals for these workshops:
- Students make friends (collaborators!)
- Students make concrete plans.
- Students make movies.
Saturday, April 26 - Screenwriting Workshop for Teens Part 1: "From Seed to Scene."
Time: 12:30 - 2:30pm
Cost: $25 for individual workshops. $60 for all three: April 26, May 3, and May 17.
Learn to work with the tools you have, to make fun movies that your friends will want to see. All you need is a camera and some good storytelling ideas to get started making movies.
Basically, we get real and take inventory. We take look at the available equipment, our sets, our cast, and our possibilities. Given what we have to work with, we collectively brainstorm, what we can do with what we have.
You will learn to outline a story idea and develop it into a series of shoot-able scenes using the tools and places to which you have access. This outline will serve as the skeleton of a script to be explored in Workshop 2.
Saturday, May 3 - Screenwriting Workshop for Teens: Part 2: "The Next Step" Writing a Screenplay
Time: 12:30 - 2:30pm
Cost: $25. Advanced registration recommended. Call:
This is a nuts and bolts class focusing on the mechanics of a screenplay.
On the one hand, if you're making your own movie, standards don't really matter. On the other hand, bad habits will get your script canned immediately by the big guys. So we'll focus on script standards and have time to write the first scene in the proper format. You've broken your story into shoot-able scenes in Workshop 1. Let's get serious and write the scenes.
Bring a laptop, if you have one, or bring a USB flash drive to store your first draft. You're going to write the first scene of your short film today.
Saturday, May 17- Screenwriting Workshop for Teens: Part 3: Screenplay Feedback and Revision
Time: 12:30 - 2:30pm
Cost: $25. Advanced registration recommended. Call:
In the past two weeks you've written a screenplay (3-5 pages for a 3-5 minute film). You bring it, we workshop it. This session will give you the opportunity to view your screenplay through the eyes of other filmmakers before you start shooting
We'll work in small groups. Students will explain their vision and we'll read the scripts as if we're actors in the film.
We'll give feedback, not so much on the spelling, but on how 'real' is your dialogue? What is the feel of the words? How effective are the scenes? Are you getting your point across? How might it look as a film? Do you need more? Less? Can you make your screenplay work as a movie?
This last workshop is meant for us to help each other make it happen.
Why bother writing a script you don't intend to shoot? This isn't screenwriting for Hollywood. This is screenwriting with the intention of making the film yourself.
Local video educator Jon Labrousse provides instruction and support for this workshop series. Jon has been a Language Arts instructor with the 4J School district and is a published poet, a veteran of the Eugene Poetry Slam and a National Poetry Slam competitor. He's published two poetry chapbooks, Making Waves, and, Kiss Your Mother with that Mouth. He has also taught a "Performing Poetry" clinic for teens. Jon has worked with teens engaged in writing and producing short films.
