William M. Akers
|
|
The fabulous courses I teach for the fabulous Vanderbilt University... Emphasis on storytelling, use of camera to help tell the story, and editing. Three person teams. Theatre 277 - Advanced Filmmaking Prerequisite: Theatre 170. Emphasis on camera placement, editing, advanced storytelling, lectures from industry professionals. This semester, we had a documentarian, producer, editor, and production designer come to the class. Project 1 Exercise in camera placement and movement. Teams recreate a one minute sequence from DARK CITY. Project 2 Editing. Teams get the three hours of dailies and nine pages of script from one scene in AS GOOD AS IT GETS. They edit the footage to create the scene. In class we critique their work and study the scene from the feature film. Theatre 227W - Screenwriting Students read a screenplay each week, then watch the film in class. Each week they have writing assignments geared to the final assignment -- 40 pages of a feature screenplay and a detailed outline for the rest of their movie. Lectures build on the screenings / readings and revolve around character construction, screenplay structure and format, dialogue, rewriting, etc. In addition to lectures, we speak to screenwriters, producers, directors in Los Angeles. Theatre 275W - Advanced Screenwriting Prerequiste: Screenwriting. Lecture and more conversations with industry professionals. Theatre 278 - Advanced Production Workshop Students will crew on a twenty minute narrative video, to be completed in one semester. All aspects of film production will be covered: script development, pre-production, shooting, editing, location & post sound, score, and color correction. Nashville based industry professionals will serve as on-set heads-of-department mentors to the students. The highest level of production offered at Vanderbilt. To go to my PERSONAL website (warning! not affiliated in any way with the fabulous Vanderbilt University) click here... willakers.com To journey to the website for YOUR SCREENPLAY SUCKS!, my extremely useful book on screenwriting (warning! not affiliated in any way with the fabulous Vanderbilt University!) click here... yourscreenplaysucks.com |