Session Four: Film as Document and Expression

The importance of locations and settings in films and how to use them effectively in your own film script. Exploring the use of location and landscape as a character in itself. How settings can document a time and place or express a character’s situation or inner life. Using familiar locations as settings in your screenplay.

Learning outcomes:

Students will explore the importance of settings and will understand how settings can be used to document real and fictional places, as well as can express how a character feels or the experience a character is going through. Fun and powerful written exercises empower the students to discover the importance of the locations and places in their own lives, and how these can provide a fascinating backdrop for their stories.

By the end of the session, the students will feel encouraged that their unique, local perspective on the world is much-needed and wanted in the Cinema. Again, from experience of delivering this workshop in online and University settings, I have found that the exercises in this workshop spark unique and often brilliant story ideas that the students have then gone on to develop and write.

Course outline: This 10-month course is aimed at anyone new to Screenwriting and takes participants back to the humble beginnings of Cinema to explore the very essence of what Film is and what it can do. Experienced writer and Screenwriting lecturer, Lucy Kaufman examines some of the most important concepts in writing for the screen, encouraging aspiring screenwriters to delve into their own human resources in order to create visual stories, scenes, plots and characters that will work well on screen, and will have a powerful emotional impact on a cinema audience.

Introducing basic film language and how to format a screenplay on the page, the two-hour workshops combine analysis of film clips and scripted screenplays with practical written exercises and discussion. The course concludes with looking ahead to the opportunity of writing TV series for tradition television and online streaming platforms.

Lucy Kaufman is an award-winning, professional playwright and writer with years of experience in teaching Playwriting and Screenwriting to people of all backgrounds and ages. Lucy is an adaptable storyteller and script consultant with a passion for nurturing writers and their work.

Please note there is a supporting Google Classroom for this course and the direct link to join can be found in confirmation email under the Additional information section.

If you have any accessibility requirements, please directly get in touch with us at pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk

If you are not sure if this class is for you or would like more information, please contact us to discuss. Ask the organiser or email: pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk

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NB: To make the most of the Screenwriting Classes with Lucy Kaufman, please ensure that you book your place and that you are prepared to attend all the available sessions, there are 10 monthly sessions in total.

Tickets will be released in three-month blocks for the following dates:

• 20 September 2023
• 11 October 2023
• 22 November 2023
• 20 December 2023
• 24 January 2024
• 21 February 2024
• 20 March 2024
• 24 April 2024
• 22 May 2024
• 12 June 2024

• NB: Content includes viewing films for illustration purposes which may feature content that some people may find upsetting, uses language or depicts scenes reflecting attitudes to race and sex that are no longer seen as acceptable

• Booking is essential. Pen to Print and our partners reserve the right to remove participants who are found not to have booked a place for a session

• Pen to Print and our partners reserve the right to unenroll a participant from a course and explore an alternative approach to supporting them on their writing journey, if we feel that a class is unsuitable for that participant

• Pen to Print reserves the right to cancel, delay or postpone the event for any reason, including adverse weather conditions, an emergency situation or unforeseen or unavoidable circumstances out of its reasonable control. In such cases, the event organiser will endeavour to inform participants as quickly as is possible