Feature Film I

About this course:

The first in a four-part sequence designed to take you through the full process of writing a feature film screenplay, this course grounds you in the key craft elements of story structure, plot, scene development, character, theme, genre, and dialogue and shows you how they work together to grip an audience's emotions. You learn how to create and evaluate story ideas, explore how characters' inner wants and immediate goals shape and drive a screenplay's action, see what constitutes compelling plots and subplots, and learn how to construct a scene. Throughout the course, you complete a series of exercises which serves as the basis for your script outline—a prose description of your screenplay. The course goal is to learn how to write effective, compelling scenes and to create a four-to-five-page outline that clearly delineates your script's beginning, middle, and end. The ability to write an effective outline is a critical skill for the professional screenwriter, serves as the basis for most pitches, and is required for admission into SCRIPT X 410.2 Feature Film II.