FEATURE FILM LAB FALL 2005/SPRING 2006

FALL 2005

• 8 screenwriters from the Department of Radio-TV-Film, the Department of Advertising, and the James A. Michener Center for Writers were invited to participate.

• They embarked on focused rewrites of their previously completed scripts to improve both story and structure while working with budget constraints and Austin locations. The projects included:

• Anorexic Girls with Guns, by Natasha Rosow
• Finish the Job, by Mike Dolan
• Five Time Champion, by Berndt Mader
• Kid B, by Linden Dalecki
• Night Terrors, by Alison Eakle
• Smoke and Mirrors, by Alyssa Beatty
• Texas Bright, by Kimberley Jones
• Third Story Window, by Karem Sanga

• The semester culminated in a series of readings performed for the UT and Austin film communities, drawing from the resources and talent of UTFI, Radio-TV-Film, Theater & Dance, Music, and the Austin community.

• Upon hearing these readings, interested directors, producers, cinematographers, costume designers, production designers and composers pitched themselves as talent to attach to these screenplays.

• 4 projects were selected to move on to the second semester of the workshop.

• Anorexic Girls with Guns, a dark comedy
• Finish the Job, a timely, intimate portrait of three Iraq War veterans returning home
• Five Time Champion, a Texas coming-of-age drama
• Night Terrors, a supernatural thriller

• These writers joined the chosen directors, producers, cinematographers, production designers, costume designers and composers to create Teams.  Additionally, team department heads joined each other in Groups (aka the Directors Group, the Costume Designers Group) coordinated and guided by Mentors, trained professionals in their fields willing to use this class as an opportunity to both educate and provide professional advice.

• Teams work with the screenwriters on a subsequent rewrite.

• These teams identify, cast, rehearse and shoot three key scenes, developing a framework by which to better explore the film’s characters, story, tone, look and market viability.

• As the writers tackle another rewrite, each team crafts a fully developed production package to demonstrate the depth of their understanding of the film to potential investors, and/or production companies.