This course will address the difficult business of starting to write screenplays.

John Boorman once said, “Film is the easiest language to understand, and the hardest to speak.”  But it’s a language which can be learned.

The course will concentrate on the fundamental grammar of film, as well the instinctive impulse towards self-expression.

Movies tell stories, so before you can begin to understand the craft of screenwriting, you need to understand the structure and the goals of story-telling. So an essential part of the course will concentrate on how a story works and where the ideas for stories come from – and to demonstrate that it is only through working at writing that the stories will begin to flow.

The second part of the course will concentrate on how to employ the techniques of screenwriting to tell the stories you want to tell in your own particular way.

The course will consist of lectures and written exercises.

There will also be a guest appearance by a professional film-maker.

About the tutor

Walter Donohue was an editor in the Film on Four strand in the early years of Channel Four, when the films included Neil Jordan’s debut film, Angel. Subsequently he has worked as a script-editor for John Boorman and Wim Wenders, and worked on Paris, Texas, Orlando, 28 Days Later and State of Play among other films.