Writing Independent Features
Date & Time
Location
Description
Writing independent feature films is no easy task. Balancing character, pacing, plot, and audience expectations with the real-world struggles of making independent films is a challenge. Adding to all of this are questions of how to navigate the industry while staying true to your original voice.
With a focus on helping students strengthen their own skills in the art and craft of independent feature film screenwriting, this workshop-based course gives students the opportunity to write and refine an original feature-length screenplay with independent production in mind.
From tools to avoid common pitfalls to breaking into the industry, students will learn real-world tools to help bring their screenwriting to the next level of sophistication no matter the subject, genre, or budget. At the end of the course, each student will have completed an original feature-length film script.
The course with cover:
- Writing for independent productions
- Genre expectations
- World building
- Writing three-dimensional characters and conflicts
- Plotting and pacing
- Using act structures to your advantage
- Treatments
- 9 beat, 12 beat, and other outlining techniques
- Understanding and subverting audience expectations
- Edits, drafts, and notes
- Professional standards for formatting
- Adaptations and intellectual property
- Independent vs. studio screenwriting approaches
- Competitions, representation, and breaking into the industry
By the end of the course, students will have a fully realized feature script ready for submissions or filming.
An introductory screenwriting course such as FilmNorth’s Elements of Screenwriting or equivalent experience is recommended to take this course.
Tuition
Instructor
Jake Yuzna
Hailing from a family of genre filmmakers, Jake Yuzna is a Minneapolis-based writer, director, and genre curator. Their films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, London Film Festival, New Museum of Contemporary Art (NYC), and the British Film Institute, among others.
Yuzna is the first American feature director to win the Teddy Jury Prize at the Berlin Film Festival and has received additional awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital Foundation, Frameline Foundation, McKnight Foundation, IFP, and FilmNorth, as well as a Richard P. Rogers Spirit of Excellence Award from the American Film Institute.
Yuzna founded the cinema program at the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC where they curated the first American retrospectives on Italian Zombie Films, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Dario Argento, Sion Sono, and the medium of VHS. In addition, Yuzna has curated retrospectives on Andrei Tarkovsky, Crispin Glover, H.R. Giger, and Science Fiction cinema of the 1990s. Their curatorial work on genre filmmaking has been collected by the libraries at Yale University and NYU.
Class Registration Guidelines & Cancellation Policy
- Space is assigned on a first-come basis. Registrations must include payment in full. Registrations are accepted after registration deadlines if space is available.
- If minimum enrollment has not been reached by 7 days prior to the start date of a class, FilmNorth may cancel it, in which case registrants will immediately be notified and receive a full refund within 2 business days. A check will be issued for registrations that were paid in cash. In lieu of a refund, students have the option of applying their tuition to another class scheduled in the same calendar year.
- For those needing to cancel a registration at least 7 days prior to the first class session, 100% of the tuition will be refunded minus a $25 administrative fee. For registration cancellations received less than 7 days prior to the first class session, 50% of the tuition will be refunded minus a $25 administrative fee. As of 5:00 pm the day prior to the first class session, no refunds or credits/exchanges will be given (Friday at 5:00 pm for Sunday classes).
- Tuition is not prorated for missed class sessions.
- By registering for this class you are agreeing to our Community Values Statement.
Questions
If you have any questions regarding this class, please send us an email or call (651) 644-1912 ext. 2.