Ryan Gilmore is an award-winning screenwriter who specializes in horror and thrillers. He won the UCLA Professional Program Screenwriting Competition as well as numerous horror film festivals. Most recently, Ryan won “Best Short Screenplay” at the 2011 Shriekfest Horror Film Festival for his script titled HEAR NO EVIL. The short film HEAR NO EVIL completed [...]
That’s no typo. Not ‘better.’ ‘Bitter.’ Here are eight precepts guaranteed to turn you into a writer who is unhappy and unfulfilled. 1: Never doubt that your writing is worthy. Eventually there arrives the second stage: an appreciation–however frail, however grudging–that we do indeed deserve a position among the pros. Sure, we’re not creating timeless [...]
Michael Colleary is a graduate of the UCLA masters screenwriting program, and now one of its most popular professors. He has been a professional screenwriter and film producer for more than 20 years. A frequent collaborator with fellow UCLA alumni Mike Werb, his feature film credits include Face/Off which The New York Times named one [...]
If you were a casting agent and met a frail, petite waif of a wispy, longhaired blond, who weighed maybe ninety pounds, and on tiptoes stood four-ten, how would you cast her? As a live-action Tinkerbell or a bouncer in a biker bar? Read on to see why the latter is precisely the way to [...]
What Happens When You Turn in a Script 1 Day Late to Richard Walter’s Class? You may just write a runaway hit, if you follow his advice like Akshat Verma did… and decipher how to not be your O.W.E. In a humorous recounting of how this writer’s story almost didn’t come to be, Akshat recounts [...]
Behind the Screen: Getting to Know Paul Chitlik Screenwriter/producer/director Paul Chitlik has written for all the major networks and studios. He was story editor for “The New Twilight Zone,” and staff writer for Showtime’s “Brothers.” He has written features for Rysher Entertainment, NuImage, Promark, and others. He received a WGA award nomination for his work [...]
It’s easier to win admission to the Harvard Medical School than a seat in Professor Richard Walter’s legendary screenwriting seminar at UCLA. He takes you all the way, from idea to draft to studio deal. UCLA-trained screenwriters have won two Oscars and three Oscar nominations in the past four years, and written ten movies for Steven Spielberg. Through a special Summer Session course both non-UCLA [...]
It’s 2011 and the start of my 101st quarter in Westwood. As I discuss in the feature below, just as the elements of a good narrative haven’t changed since Aristotle, misperceptions regarding the writer’s role remain constant. Our charge remains the same: to tell a story that is engaging and compelling, that is, a story [...]
After copping a quick degree in a jackpot, giveaway, draft-dodge of a Masters program in Radio/Television at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications in 1966, I piloted my VW beetle to California for what I expected to be a visit of three weeks. At the time there were only about eleven people in the [...]
