Screenwriting
The centre of screenwriting education on the MA Filmmaking programme is the opportunity to develop scripts to the shooting stage and to see them realised in the film excercises - up to sixty films per term.
The school does not impose an institutional regime on screenwriting. Students can choose from a whole range of approaches to developing scripts, and from a range of tutors with different interests and approaches.
The final choice of the contents of the film is the students’. But all scripts are subject to a continuing process of discussion and criticism. We involve visiting lecturers and the whole school in an ongoing debate about scripts being conceived and developed. We treat the script as a blueprint for a film work rather than as a kind of literature.
There are a number of lectures which deal with script conception, development and realisation from the producer’s point of view. We also seek out scripts from writers on dedicated screenwriting courses including the MA Screenwriting programme at LFS: not every LFS project is a writer-director work.
Every student who is part of a writing workshop group: if it suits them, and it often does, they stay in that group through their whole career at the school, developing and refining working relationships along with the scripts. Every script that goes into production in Terms Three, Four and Five goes through rigorous discussion at a guest script panel at the end of the previous term. The panel's advice can be fed into further development and into the script choices of the term.
The LFS offers a seperate MA degree course in Screenwriting. read more
Head of Screenwriting is Brian Dunnigan.
Born in Edinburgh, Brian studied Sociology and worked as a writer and journalist in radio before going to the National Film & Television School. He is an award winning writer and short film director and has worked on feature scripts commissioned by the BBC, the BFI, Working Title and Scottish Screen amongst others. He designed and is Course Leader of the MA Screenwriting programme at LFS and continues to write and run workshops on an international basis.
Recent contributors to script workshops, panels and assessments include: Margaret Glover, John Milne, Roger Hyams, Ellis Freeman, Amanda Schiff, Erin Cramer, Karen Street , John Furse, Alexandra Walsh, Philip Palmer, Steve Brookes, Eliza Mellor, Britt Harrison and Laurence Coriat.
