Summer Screenwriting Camps
SOCAPA offers two and three week summer intensives in Screenwriting for precollege high school teens who are interested in writing for Film & TV. Students will have the option to develop two short screenplays (4-8 pages each), one longer screenplay (10-12 pages), or the first act of a feature-length screenplay. The course is designed to serve as a precursor to our filmmaking workshops with the idea that students will go on to produce and direct the screenplays that they write in this course during a SOCAPA filmmaking session later in the summer or the following year.
The two week screenwriting intensive provides students with the time, structure, feedback, and theory to hone their writing skills with a particular focus on story and character development. Students spend time workshopping and critiquing their own and each others’ work, as well as analyzing films to discover what works and what doesn’t. In addition, students create a project as a group which they produce as a learning experience to understand what happens to a script when it is taken into the hands of directors and actors.
In the three week intensive, students are able to work on polishing more than one short piece, or to strongly develop the first act of a longer story idea. Students will also have the opportunity to work on story pitches, learning how to summarize and present their ideas to a group or individual.
