Writing the short film: Concept and process

This paper will present some aspects of my pedagogical practice for short film concept development and the writing process. It is a practice developed over seven years of teaching screen-writing at level 6 and 7 of the Moving Image Major but the fundamentals of the approach have been successfully trialled with younger secondary school age groups. My approach is to engage as much as possible with New Zealand content in terms of film and screenplay models. I also place an importance on the language of speech in the immediate surrounds of the students' culture. This enables some theoretical discussion of Saussure's distinction between langue and parole and the notion of realism in film dialogue. I will outline my approach to story concept and the development of ideas from story sources in the culture. From there I discuss character and character arc, the importance of change and identification with an audience, story structure and conflict, setting and genre, and approaches to writing dialogue involving research techniques and rehearsal workshops. This is a pedagogy of the short film as a valid and expressive art form, and is aimed at engaging students with varying degrees of experience in creative writing