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.