Actors, write a short you can actually make in 8 weeks.

This course is the first part in a series, aimed at giving actors the tools to develop, write, and make their own projects. It is rooted in the belief that actors should stop waiting for someone to give them their dream role and create it themselves. While this DIY (do it yourself) approach is as old as cinema, from Chaplin to Cassavetes to Brit Marling, the market’s hunger for new and niche stories and the technology has never been better suited for actors to seize the means of production, and just make it.  

 

This class will be a writing workshop where each student will develop and complete their own screenplay for a short film that could realistically be produced. Students will assess their own interests, talents, resources and limitations, and reverse engineer their stories from them. The goal is not just to write a screenplay that you could make, but one that only you could make. 

 

No prior writing experience is required. We will cover some basics of story structure while also celebrating a more punk rock ethos of doing it your own way. While primarily a workshop,  we’ll throw in some film history, looking back on earlier DIY pioneers, and offer some group therapy, working together through the obstacles that all writers, new and seasoned, face. We’ll inspire each other and have fun. 

 

I’m committed to you making your film and will offer future classes and private mentoring towards that goal, continuing our DIY approach to preproduction, production and post, and/or towards developing your short into a feature or pilot project.  

 

Actors. While you audition, while you try to make the most out of a lesser role, take more control of your career, seize of the means of production, and create a project with your dream role. Do it yourself, but not alone. 

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LIMITED TO 12 ACTORS PER CLASS

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BRETT SIMON BIO:

I began making short films at Berkeley where I was a grad student and later taught. These shorts were DIY, punk rock productions with no proper “film school” training. One of these videos, made on a photocopy machine played in festivals and museums around the world and sparked a career directing music videos. After making videos for every pop punk band under the sun, as well as The Killers and Queens of Stone Age, I wrote and directed a short, and directed my first movie “Assassination of High school President” with Bruce Willis both of which premiered at Sundance. I’ve adapted several novels into screenplays since then, wrote another novel based on an original screenplay of mine, directed a feature with Jeremy Irons, and TV pilot with Paul Scheer that also played at Sundance. 

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