SCREENWRITING I FILM-M213-002 ENGL-A313-002 Course Term: FALL 2020 Course Location: ONLINE Class hours: TU/TH, 3:30-4:45 pm Instructor: Miles Doleac, PhD Office Location: CM Building 412 Phone: (Office) 504-865-3430, (Cell) 601-329-1630 Email:
[email protected] Office hours: By appointment “A screenplay is a story told with pictures, in dialogue and description, and placed within the context of dramatic structure.” -Syd Field REQUIRED TEXTS: Field, Syd. Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, rev. ed. New York: Bantam Dell, 2005. McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Rogan, Michael. Screenplay Format Made (Stupidly) Easy. Scriptbully, 2018. COURSE AIM: This course is intended to introduce students to the craft of screenwriting, and, in broader terms, the art of storytelling. In doing so, our focus will be the following: 1) Hollywood paradigms and brilliant scripts that defied them 2) classical dramaturgy, mythology and universal forms: how age-old tropes have been assimilated and appropriated by Hollywood 3) Movie writing as a “combination of art and science” (to borrow Field’s phrase): techniques, tricks and the search for a subject 4) what makes compelling characters and dialogue 5) formal or “traditional” screenwriting structure. NOTE: I place “for- mal screenwriting structure” last in my litany of focus points, because, although important to always keep in mind, the “rules” of screenwriting are often and often quite effectively violated. YOUR CHARGE: By the end of this semester, you will have written 15 or so pages of a NEW screenplay, a self-contained short film.