Feature Film Script Analysis
Course Number: H98.1002
Price: $2,268
For most of the last century, movies have been the most widespread means by which writers tell stories that help us to understand who we are. Films may leave us excited, moved, thrilled, saddened or elated – but in every case, the writer’s goal is to make us look at how the human race copes with the pressures of the modern world.
Film Script Analysis will use six motion pictures to examine the techniques writers use to create the stories that light up the movie screen. How does the writer create the Dramatic Question – the foundation on which the story is built? How does he or she use obstacles to heighten the tension and keep us riveted until the end of the story? How does he or she create characters with depth and dimension, whose struggles will illuminate our lives – and how are the inner lives of those characters revealed so that we can see into the deepest parts of their souls?
Each week will feature the screening of a film intended to address one or more of these questions; this screening will be followed by a discussion led by the instructor.
Movies are intended to make you see your life differently; this course will give you some of the tools needed so that you can see movies in a new light.
The films will include The Train, Rashomon, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Day for Night, Lone Star, and The Man Who Would be King.
