The Screenwriter and the Industry 2022
Starts:
Finishes:
Venue:
Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street
THE SCREENWRITER AND THE INDUSTRY - 2022
Fri July 8th – Mon July 11th
Birkbeck Screenwriting hosts all sessions free and live in Bloomsbury.
All sessions are open on the day to guests, and groups, as well as Birkbeck students and alumni. Sessions take place in Birkbeck College, Malet Street. Masks are mandatory. Booking per session is not required, but we ask that you indicate your attendance at any of the sessions by booking a place on the event. Please check at reception in case of a room change.
Sunday is open to guests as audience but has limited pitching and storytelling slots which are offered to MA Screenwriting students first. Session topics and speakers may be changed.
FRI 8th JULY - WORKING IN THE WORLD
Room B20, Malet Street
Speakers - Tanya Nash, Anna Maguire.
11am - 1pm Adaptation & True Life Stories
Topics include: Finding Your Story, Copyright, Agreements, Novels, Research, Finding Structure, Pitfalls.
1pm Audience Questions
1.30 pm – 2.30pm - Lunch
2.30pm - 5.30pm Writing from Life
A series of three short talks with writing exercises to follow to let you uncover the thinking of the creative screenwriter:
2.30 pm Research, interviewing, and dialogue
3.30 pm Visual logic, observation, time and scene sequencing
4.30 pm The Inner person , choices, decisions, emotions, psychological changes
SAT 9th JULY - WORKING IN THE INDUSTRY
Room B20, Malet Street
Speakers - Barbara Cox, Mark Norfolk, Ken Williams.
11am - 12.30pm The Working Write
Topics include: Organizing your time, and your money. Collecting Stories. Writing for other media. High and Low concept ideas. What to write, and what the industry is looking. Copyright. Synopses. Readings. Getting feedback. Commissions and contracts. Rewriting.
12.30pm – 2pm - Lunch
2pm - 3.30pm Working with Others…
TV and film markets, games, internet, co-writing. Approaching and working with TV and film companies – CV’s, covering letters and emails, pitching, spec scripts, meetings and contracts. Working in TV and Film – with production companies, directors, actors, script editors, producers. Agents, fees and payments, lawyers, managers.
3.30pm Audience Questions
4pm - Break
4.30pm – 5.30pm Pandemic and Pathways - Where to Now?
Developing Your Career. Where to go and what to do next ? We answer your questions.
SUN 10th JULY - SELLING YOUR PROJECT
Room B20, Malet Street
Speakers - Paul Gallagher, Tanya Nash, Ken Williams.
Where, When and How to pitch? Two workshop sessions where the principles and practice of storytelling and pitching are explained. Then participants can try out a practice session in a friendly environment and pitch their projects, receiving constructive feedback from the panel. Pitches and storytelling have limited slots, offered to MA students first.
11am - 1pm Storytelling
How to tell a story - with a storytelling practice workshop
1pm – 2pm - Lunch
2pm – 4pm Pitching
How to pitch – with an elevator pitching practice workshop
4pm - Break
4.30pm - FRAZER LEE on WRITING NOVELS AND SCRIPTWRITING
A short talk followed by a Q+A session.
MON 11th JULY - SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT FOR FILM AND TV
Room B20, Malet Sreet
Speakers - Paul Gallagher, Tanya Nash, Mark Norfolk.
6pm - 7.30pm - The Principles and Practice of Rewriting for film and TV
Developing your Project for Film and TV
What is the concept? Is it film or TV or...? Genres, Audiences and Themes. Writing Stories in Prose and Script. Co-writing.
Finding the Drama. Outlines, treatments, premise, beat sheets, story graphs. Rewriting. Reading scripts, different kinds of reader? Pitching and Storytelling.
Script Development in Film and TV
Contracts. Working with feedback in the industry. Script Reports. Script Editing. Different drafts of scripts in film and TV.
How do you make a good script great?
8pm - 9pm - Anything you ever wanted to ask about Screenwriting!
Your Questions answered.
Contact name:
Rebecca Strong
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Mr Frazer Lee
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Frazer’s screenwriting credits include the acclaimed horror/thriller feature film Panic Button (Movie Mogul Films) and award-winning short horror movies On Edge & Red Lines (which he also directed) and Simone (386 Films). His numerous screenplay and script doctor commissions include works for producers including Marloo Media Films, Cylinder Production and Vanquish Alliance Entertainment. He is also the author of several published novels, including The Lamplighters,which was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. He teaches Screenwriting to BA and MA level at Brunel University in addition to his work at Birkbeck.
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Mr Ken Williams
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Ken is a freelance screenwriter. His first film, Life & Lyrics, funded by BBC Films and the UK Film Council, premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh film Festival and distributed by Universal. He is currently at work on an original feature, Remembrance, commissioned by Scottish Screen Cacti Films and Fiesta Productions. Remembrance will be directed by Kenny Glenaan (Gas Attack, Yasmin, Summer) and is due to start shooting soon.. Ken is working on a number of other projects in development including a political thriller, Garrisons, animation series City Limits, multiplatform youth drama series, Our Life and a police procedural for TV, Stolen. . Ken is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck.
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Mr Mark Norfolk Vidol
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Mark studied drama before working as a sports journalist and researcher in television production. He then went on to study Independent Film Production and avant-garde Film Studies at Cardiff University and has won a number of awards at home and abroad for his films. As well as writing for the screen, Mark also writes for the stage and radio and has recently been collaborating on international film and theatre projects, most notably in the Balkans.
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Mr Paul Gallagher
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Paul Gallagher is a company Director of Twelve Chairs Films Ltd . He was a script consultant on feature films: The Birdcatcher 2019. Starred Up 2013, and Desiree 2014. He was founder and CEO of Euroscript as an EU MEDIA programme [96-02] developing feature scripts with writers and EU production companies, including: Little Ashes 2008.. He was the Editor of Screenwriter magazine and a columnist for magazines: Savvy, Screenwriter, and Filmwaves. He has had numerous articles, short stories and poems published, and a book Dancing in the Waves [Mer, 2009]. He has run international workshops and delivered talks at International Festivals in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Belfast, London, and Lisbon, as well as sitting on International Film Festival juries and funding panels in Portugal and UK.. Paul is the Programme Director for MA Screenwriting at Birkbeck.
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Ms Anna Maguire
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Anna is British/Canadian writer, director and actress. Her directorial work has screened at festivals including TIFF, Palm Springs, PÖFF Black Nights and the BFI London Film Festival where she was nominated for Best Short Film with Your Mother and I in 2016. She has won awards at Rhode Island International Film Festival, The London Short Film Festival, Thessaloniki International Film Festival and Underwire Film Festival among others, was long listed for a BAFTA, and nominated for Best Short Film at the London Critics’ Circle Awards in 2018. Her penultimate short Constellations has screened internationally and It’s Nothing, her latest short film premiered at TIFF in 2019. She is currently writing her first feature supported by BFI Network. Anna has taught filmmaking and film theory at institutions including TIFF and the BFI and has been a tutor on the BFI Future Film. Anna is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck.
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Ms Barbara Cox
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Barbara has extensive experience as a professional scriptwriter and script editor and has worked on numerous TV drama series for both adults and children, including The Bill, Wycliffe, 99-1, Love Hurts, Cardiac Arrest, Bootleg, I Was a Rat! and the multi-award-winning Pig Heart Boy. She won a BAFTA Best Adapted Script award in 2005 for her children’s drama Wipe Out. Barbara combines teaching at Birkbeck with continuing her writing and editing career and has recently been commissioned to write a TV series proposal and pilot script and a non-fiction children’s book The Encyclopaedia of Scary Things, as well as developing several feature film projects. Barbara oversees the BA courses in Screenwriting at Birkbeck.
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Ms Tanya Nash
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Tanya spent 15 years with the BBC working in Drama she freelances in script and story development. - Script edited award winning short film, Hannah Cohen’s Holy Communion (winner of Pears Short Film Fund 2012) and screened at London Jewish Film Festival and Dublin Film Festival 2013. - Script editor and Producer Holby City (BBC 1), Eastenders (BBC 1) - Producer, Radio Drama for 10 years working in Wales, Northern Ireland and Birmingham. (She produced a variety of genres, singles and returning series for BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4). Writers she has worked with on radio include Emma Donoghue, Dominique Moloney, Juliet Ace, Peter Sheridan, Lin Coghlan, Annie McCartney, Mavis Cheek, Peter Tinniswood and Tanika Gupta. Tanya is an associate lecturer at Birkbeck.