12 DAYS OF CLASSES | Intro to Screenwriting
INTRO TO SCREENWRITING
“To make a great film you need three things: the script, the script, and the script.”
- Alfred Hitchcock
We could get into all kinds of metaphors about the importance of starting with a good script, like it’s the backbone to the whole project or whatever, but we’ve heard it a million times. The real issue is actually writing a good script. If you don’t have a road map, you may find yourself taking a great idea, struggling through formatting, attempting to figure out what you’re hoping to say as you go and at the end of the day having something only somewhat resembling what you were hoping for on the page. You can lose hours of your life revisiting it draft after draft.
OR…
You could take a class with an instructor for a few hours a week over the course of a couple months and take that idea you have floating around in your head and tackle it in a methodical way.
At the end of your class - you have your script.
Bonus: you will walk away with screenwriting skills and organizational writing process that you can replicate on future ideas you need to get on the page.
AND…this is exactly what Austin School of Film offers in our 8-week Intro to Screenwriting course with lead instructor & screenwriter Edward Santigo.
THE CLASS
What writers usually won’t tell you, is that there are many pitfalls you can so easily fall into throughout the process. Sure, they’ll tell you of the bout of writer’s block they are dealing with, but maybe they won’t tell you the story of the many times they finished a script without fully developing a character or drifted too far from their outline and ended up rambling for pages in an attempt to get back on track. They also likely won’t tell you what broke them out of that writer’s block and how they found their inspiration again.
With a supportive collaborative classroom environment where you are constantly workshopping your story and receiving feedback you are granted a good deal of accountability as you work through your screenplay. You get the chance to meet other people having the same struggles (and continue a collaboration or partnership long after the class), and you’ll be challenged and encouraged by other points of views.
Edward, the lead instructor is an industry professional with award-winning international (and bilingual) scripts who has a knowledge base, years of professional writing experience, and an MFA within his respective field.
While coming out of the class with a polished script may seem like enough, you’ll leave the course with so much more than that. Collaborators, co-writers, someone else to talk through an idea with over coffee, and more defined way to put words on a page.
Don’t just take it from us, check out one of our Student Highlight’s from earlier this year with a past student Lisa Jacobs, who went from learning screenwriting with Austin School of Film to applying those skills & being nominated at her first festival.
“Without the class, my short would likely just be a faint idea, rather than a script in an international film festival! “ - Lisa Jacobs
✨ 12 DAYS OF CLASSES ✨ Austin School of Film will release a different class every day for the next 12 days at 25% off accompanied with a blog post on why we curated each this year for our list. Posts will be released every day at 5pm & be on sale for 24 hours ~ no code needed! #comecreatewithus