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Cinema Summer Electives! Open to All Students!

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Unleash your inner screenwriter this Summer with our amazing faculty — Select the best time for you, email Nikita Moyer (moyernr@vcu.edu) for a course override, and get ready to kick start your creative practice.

Course Descriptions:

Cinema 496 Advanced Screenwriting – Shorts

M T W Th 10a-12:45pm — 5 week session: 5/18-6/18
CRN 39545 
Open to everyone
An introductory screenwriting class. Students will read and analyze existing scripts, learn proper script formatting, study story structure, and get to know the profession of screenwriting. Students will develop and write an original 5-7 page screenplay 

Prof. Sheree Chen

Cinema 496 Advanced Screenwriting – Shorts

M & W 3-5:40 pm — 8 week session: 6/8-7/29 
CRN 39547 
The class is focused on narrative screenwriting; the classes are a combination of lecture/discussion and workshopping of material. Each student must hand in approx. 15 pages of screenwriting for 2 workshop rotations and a final portfolio of approx. 30 pages of rewritten work based on the feedback from the workshops. 

Prof. Yossera Bouchtia 

Cinema 496 – Screenwriting Intensive: Short Story Adaptation

M&W 6-840 — 8 week session: 6/8-7/29 
CRN 39546
Open to everyone This class is geared towards writers and filmmakers, and is meant to help connect storytelling and scriptwriting abilities to film production instincts. While we won’t film anything in this class, we will focus our studies and writing exercises on how to best bring works of prose/fiction to the screen 

Prof. Danny Caporaletti

Cinema 491 Sports Film Studies (Storytelling & Production) 

M&W, 1PM-340P — 8 week session: 5/18-7/8
CRN 39540
Open to Everyone  A study of sports movies, emphasizing their uniqueness as a genre, both in production and storytelling structure exploring how the genre often depicts issues related to class, race, gender, and family.
Class will also include guest speaking appearances from stuntmen/sports-tech personnel to study the production elements of sports movies. 

Prof. Danny Caporaletti

Documentary Filmmaking

T&R 2-4:40 5/19-7/9  Cinema 491 Crn 39562 This class focuses on the practice of documentary filmmaking through the lens of editorial. Students will watch and analyze existing documentaries, discuss the narrative storytelling aspect of constructing a documentary, understand the production process of documentary filmmaking, and master a basic editorial workflow catered toward documentary editing. 

Prof. Sheree Chen