Screenwriting
Oleg Dorman's screenwriting laboratory
Head of the laboratory: Oleg Dorman

Oleg Dorman, documentary filmmaker, screenwriter, and translator. Nika Award winner. Teacher at the MSNC since 2012.

Courses and classes

Course duration and tuition fee

2 years (4 semesters)
90,000 rubles per semester
Classes start on September 20, 2019
Application deadline: information will be available in March 2020

Learning Process
1.

The screenwriting course is divided into four units:

  1. Introduction to drama theory and practice, working on assignments that exercise different aspects of the craft

 

  1. Writing a screenplay for a small feature film (forty minutes to an hour long)

 

  1. Writing a feature-film screenplay

 

  1. Graduation project: writing a feature-film screenplay

 

Students of the screenwriting laboratory are supposed to collaborate with students-directors and work on the assignments offered at directing workshops.

Key features of the course
2.

Learning process structure

The educational process consists of three intensive sessions per year as well as group skype sessions.

Intensive courses take place at the end of September, during the New Year break and at the beginning of June, and last for four subsequent days of 6-hour classes. In between the sessions, 3-hour classes are held twice a week via Skype (Skype classes take place at school using the school equipment, and provide a possibility of interaction between the teacher and students).

The laboratory maintains the mandatory amount of school hours required for a major.

Training
  • I semester
  • II semester
  • III semester
  • IV semester
3.

The result of training in the first semester is a pitch for a short film script.

During the first semester  of screenwriting classes, students study the following topics:

  • Drama among other forms of art;
  • Script: its importance and function in filmmaking;
  • Correlation of theory and practice;
  • Script and Production. Introduction to Economics. Movies for screenwriters;
  • The script and its author: work psychology;
  • Image. Filmizing. Expressiveness;
  • Working with Time;
  • The art of storytelling. The relationship between the author and the viewer. Clarity of expression;
  • Tension and Conflict. Suspense;
  • Fascination;
  • Fantasy, Taste, Structure.

Students work on screenwriting exercises and analyze dramatic structure of the films they watch.

The result of training in the second semester is a short film script or an outline for a feature film script.

During the second semester of screenwriting classes, students study the following topics:

 

  • Scene and Episode. Their function and opportunities in a script. Editing an episode;
  • Character: personality and how to describe it;
  • Protagonist and Plot;
  • Sympathy and Empathy;
  • Art of Dialogue, Art of Silence;
  • Art of exciting change;
  • Genre features;
  • Developing an idea;
  • Different types of pitches. Pitch process;
  • Types of script formatting.

 

Students work on writing a script for a short film and analyze dramatic structure of the films they watch.

The result of training in the third semester is a feature film script or a pitch for a graduation feature script.

During the third semester, students write a screenplay for a feature-length film and analyze dramatic structure of the films they watch.

Upon the end of the fourth semester students present their graduation work: a feature film script.

During the fourth semester, students write a screenplay for a feature-length film and analyze dramatic structure of the films they watch.

Publications
4.

List of scripts written by the laboratory graduates published in the «Искусство кино» magazine:

“Very Sunny day”. Galya Lurye.

“A man with no shoes”. Lilit Akopyan.

“Medical record”. Tatyana Kravtsova.

“Vipera Renardi”. Evgenia Nekrasova.

“Modeller”. Daria Wardenburg.