Class sessions are devoted to the review of student work and issues related to premise development, outline, draft, and revision of a script. Along the way structure, character, and form are emphasized.

Registration is on-going with new participants encouraged to join at the beginning of the month. Class size is limited to ensure adequate feedback from the instructor and fellow writers. As additional students join, new sections may be created.

The workshop is taught by retired Hollywood television director Thomas Blank.

About The Instructor:

Thomas Blank was an Equity actor in Chicago in 1961 before going into the Navy for six years.  His last job in the service was as a public affairs officer in the Hollywood office where he provided Navy cooperation to film and television projects with Navy backgrounds. He was in that office from the premiere of "In Harm's Way" until the preliminary scouting for "Tora, Tora, Tora."  His favorite duty was teaching Elvis Presley to salute on "Easy Come, Easy Go." 

Leaving the Navy, he stayed in Hollywood and worked as a story analyst for Columbia Pictures, before entering the Directors Guild-Producer Training Plan, and eventual Directors Guild membership.

Blank worked on various projects at Warner Brothers and Universal as an assistant director (working occasionally but briefly with Dick Donner, George Seaton, Robert Wise, Elia Kazan, and Alfred Hitchcock) until he started to receive directing assignments of his own. He directed second units for "Switch" and "Quincy" before getting his first show on the air on "Bionic Woman."  

He remained on a seven-year contract with Universal studios and directed several "Airwolf" episodes and TV series, like "Harris and Company" and "The American Girls" as well as an ABC After School Special.  

His directing after that was for Alan Landsburg Productions on syndicated, half-hour dramas for "True Confessions." 

Thomas Blank's television production resume goes back to "The FBI" with Efrem Zimbalist Jr., and includes: "The Name of the Game"; "The Sixth Sense"; "The Bold Ones"; "The Hulk"; "The Misfits of Science"; and several movies of the week, as well as the aforementioned "Bionic Woman"; "Ironside"; "and "Switch."  

Feature films include: "One More Train to Rob"; "Showdown"; "The Don is Dead"; "The Phynx" (never released); "The Stepfather III", and "High Roller." 

As a member of the Directors Guild, Blank headed the committees on runaway production and age discrimination.  

While in semi-retirement (working on a cable series called "Resurrection Boulevard") he went back to graduate school and got a Masters Degree in screenwriting from California State University in Los Angeles.  

Thomas Blank, now retired and living in Eugene, currently is the instructor for the DIVA Film Director Seminar Series and teaches screen writing at the series. He is on the boards of directors for the Boys and Girls Club of Emerald Valley and is a Media Arts Committee liaison with the DIVA Board.