Browse All Live Event Calendar Course Calendar Is WDU For You? Success Stories FAQ

Watching Movies: Learn from the Masters and Become a Better Writer

BRYAN YOUNG

Watching Movies: Learn from the Masters and Become a Better Writer

BRYAN YOUNG

Join the Waitlist

Subscribe to be notified when this course opens for registration.

We all want to be better storytellers. We all watch movies. What better way to maximize your time than to learn to do both at the same time?

In this 10-week course, we’ll take you through some of the master filmmakers and writers of the past—Alfred Hitchcock, William Goldman, George Lucas, Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, and more—and give you a peek behind the curtain of their work and how they crafted stories.

There are tricks of storytelling that have been used since the dawn of cinema, and they have bled into storytelling of all types. You'll learn how to harness this for your own writing, whether it’s writing for the screen or in prose. We'll discuss the structure of stories, the art of good dialogue, layering in exposition, and how to elevate every scene to its highest and best use.

This class will take you through some of the best films and techniques and help you understand how you can wield films to be a better storyteller. It will help you understand how to see what makes films tick and how you can set that watch for your own stories to make you a better writer.

Some of the films* we'll watch for class include:

  • Rear Window
  • Seven Samurai
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Sabotage (1936)
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Casablanca
  • Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope
  • Shaun of the Dead
  • Hot Fuzz
  • Misery
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  • The Princess Bride
  • And more!

*Please note you will need your own copies or streaming access to the films. We will not be providing them as part of this course.

Join the Waitlist

Subscribe to be notified when this course opens for registration.

We all want to be better storytellers. We all watch movies. What better way to maximize your time than to learn to do both at the same time?

In this 10-week course, we’ll take you through some of the master filmmakers and writers of the past—Alfred Hitchcock, William Goldman, George Lucas, Edgar Wright, Steven Spielberg, and more—and give you a peek behind the curtain of their work and how they crafted stories.

There are tricks of storytelling that have been used since the dawn of cinema, and they have bled into storytelling of all types. You'll learn how to harness this for your own writing, whether it’s writing for the screen or in prose. We'll discuss the structure of stories, the art of good dialogue, layering in exposition, and how to elevate every scene to its highest and best use.

This class will take you through some of the best films and techniques and help you understand how you can wield films to be a better storyteller. It will help you understand how to see what makes films tick and how you can set that watch for your own stories to make you a better writer.

Some of the films* we'll watch for class include:

  • Rear Window
  • Seven Samurai
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Sabotage (1936)
  • Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • Casablanca
  • Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope
  • Shaun of the Dead
  • Hot Fuzz
  • Misery
  • Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
  • The Princess Bride
  • And more!

*Please note you will need your own copies or streaming access to the films. We will not be providing them as part of this course.

Course outline

Course outline

Assignments will include watching movies and identifying techniques taught in class to help expand understanding. How can tracking the timecode of a film help you better understand pacing? How can Alfred Hitchcock help you better understand the power in a juxtaposition of images? How can watching films with intermissions teach us how to better position the beginnings and endings of chapters? This is just a taste of the sort of assignments we'll spend the next 10 weeks going through. Join us and start learning from the masters today!

Meet the instructor

Bryan Young

Bryan Young is an award-winning writer, journalist, and filmmaker. He's worked on numerous documentaries, including one the New York Times called "filmmaking gold." He co-wrote the political documentary Killer at Large about America's obesity epidemic and works daily doing documentary work for government clients. He writes frequently for /Film, StarWars.Com, Syfy, and others.

View Website