2022.01.12

Mastering Genre Workshop Series Toronto

Description

Write a screenplay that stands above the rest

Who should attend the Mastering Genre Master Class Series?

Screenwriters, directors, producers, performers, filmmakers, cinephiles – anyone who wants to understand genre-focused screenwriting and storytelling

What will you achieve?

Completing the Mastering Genre Master Classes and/or Series, you will walk away with multiple tools to help your write your own genre-focused screenplay, whether feature-length, short or series.

About this series

Each evening class is available separately or as part of the Mastering Genre workshop series.

Week 1: DIGGING INTO HORROR

Horror has consistently been one of the most profitable and successful movie genres of all time, and many emerging filmmakers feel it’s a good genre to cut their teeth on — especially as a genre to write for micro-budget. But what makes horror screenplays work? And how do you create the next great horror hit?

This one-evening course — part of the Mastering Genre series — provides an overview of horror, its structure and style. Understanding the basic conventions and tropes of horror will give you a starting point for your own screenplay, letting you bend them in ways that will make your story unlike any other. You’ll be introduced to tools you need to bring your ghoulish and monstrous fantasies to life.

You can take this evening class on it’s own. Book Online Here

Week 2: TAKING A STAB AT THE THRILLER

Everyone loves a thriller. The unbearable tension that something unnatural is around every corner and in every shadow, waiting to pounce. The snap of a twig or the creak of a door warning of a muffled gunshot or knife blade to come. Tapping into our primal fears, thrillers have long found success even with modest budgets and launched careers.

This one-evening course — part of the Mastering Genre series — provides an overview of the thriller, its structure and style. We’ll explore what drives the popularity of thrillers and look at examples of its many flavours. And we will learn how to translate those dark corners onto the white screenplay pages without missing a spine-tingling moment.

You can take this evening class on it’s own. Book Online Here

Week 3: SCIENCING THE $%#* OUT OF SCI-FI

From the earliest days of filmmaking, sci-fi has been a popular genre, and for a screenwriter, it presents limitless opportunities for storytelling, allowing you to recount futures yet to be, explore worlds that might have been or re-examine where we are today. Sci-fi lets us ask the questions that are too scary for real life.

This one-evening course — part of the Mastering Genre series — provides an overview of sci-fi, its structure and style. From universe-spanning blockbusters to contained mind-benders, we’ll look at the endless approaches to storytelling & myriad ways to warp reality that sci-fi offers screenwriters, examining classics new and old.

You can take this evening class on it’s own. Book Online Here

Week 4: TICKLING THE DIVINE COMEDY

Dying is easy, comedy is hard… but it doesn’t have to be. From Keystone Kops insanity to the dark satire of Wag the Dog, comedy is less about being funny than it is about being honest, which means anyone can write comedy. It is that truth that keeps comedy accessible and popular to cinephiles of all stripes and cultures. Comedy is universal.

This one-evening course — part of the Mastering Genre series — provides an overview of comedy, its structure and style. We’ll examine how the comic hero is different from the dramatic one and why that makes him or her more like us. And we’ll start from the classic comedic characters—the archetypes of anarchy—and help you transcend the expected in your screenplay.

You can take this evening class on it’s own. Book Online Here

About the instructor, Randall C Willis

Ask a question about the Mastering Genre Workshop Series