Spring Only
Program Overview
What is it like to be a writer with time to construct a full-length screenplay, sitcom, or television series?
Writers, like you, know after 14 weeks in a classroom with Roy Kendall, an award-winning writer based in London with credits from the BBC and HBO.
Your classes meet 3 times a week at the University of London’s Senate House. The first half of the semester examines the principles of creating unique scripts for film and television. Toward the end of the semester, you participate in readings, workshops and appraise the work you and your classmates create.
What will you complete at the end of the semester? The first draft of a full-length screenplay for film or television or a pilot episode of a new sitcom.
At the end of the semester, just as for the playwrights in the fall semester, there is a rehearsed reading of a section of your screenplay. You cast the actors from the RADA program having had the chance to watch them at work in one of their Shakespeare play projects. It’s exciting to see the actors fresh from their Shakespeare training presenting brand new contemporary work by new screenwriters. The audience is made up of all the students on the London Program together with some faculty members and guests. This is a crucial part of the London program when everyone comes together at the end of the semester to celebrate the work that has been achieved.
Writers need inspiration, and you’re likely to find that in other classes you take, including British Cinema: London on Film, The Arts in London, Studies in Shakespeare, or Theatre in London. Your inspiration may also come from living with other NYU students in housing that is provided in central London. Or it may be from your encounters with local residents, a tour of one of London’s historic sites, or it may come from simply living in another country.
Program Curriculum
Your semester abroad consists of your core program curriculum and two
additional companion courses, completing a full-time, 16-unit semester:
Advanced Screenwriting
IDWPG-UT 1057
8 units | Roy Kendall, instructor
Prerequisite: Developing the Screenplay or equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
This advanced course provides a stimulating and challenging examination of the principles and processes of writing for the large or small screen, drawing on the expertise of leading screenwriters and/or other practitioners currently contributing to the enormous success of British cinema and television. Topics include developing memorable concepts, unforgettable characters, and variations on conventional structures. Students are encouraged to write in collaboration and rethink the writing process itself. By the end of the semester, participants are expected to have completed first drafts of a feature length screenplay for the large or small screen or a pilot for a sitcom (by agreement with the course director) for a full-length adaptation for film or television.
