Teaching Center

Story is the hardest subject to learn or teach for most filmmakers and instructors these days. What if you could take all of the students and faculty at your school and raise them up to a new professional level of visual storytelling abilities in about 20 hours? How would the microbudget digital films your students make change? "Writing A Great Script Fast" covers everything you and your students need to know to tell a great visual story in a film or novel.

Get Writing A Great Script Fast For Your Library

"Writing A Great Script Fast" is now being used to teach story to filmmakers, animators and writers all over the world! The countries now using this workshop to teach story include 1000's of schools in the US, China, Singapore, Canada, England, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, France, Japan, Ireland and Italy.

This new 20 hour DV story workshop seems to connect best with the college crowd and above, but some high schools are using it for their advanced students with great success. Teachers in many schools are forming study groups, between the digital media and English departments, going through the workshop together as a career development project, then teaching it to their students across departments as the new way to create engaging stories!

A big thanks to everyone who is already using the workshop! The feedback has been amazing. If you have already purchased a DVD workshop, please send me an email requesting the new files with "WAGSF Workshop" in the subject line and I will send them to you.

Several US school systems are now in the process of integrating the new DVD workshop "Writing A Great Script Fast" into their curriculum as the official story class for their schools! By using our new MyFlik Video Server Teaching Technology™ this will only cost about $2 per student per year. Los Angeles County Schools will be one of the first to start using it in January 2008. If you have any questions please send an email with the subject "DVD Workshop."

If you are a teacher and would like to receive a free copy of the book please order one by clicking here. If you are a teacher interested in purchasing "Developing Digital Short Films" in bulk for classes you may call Pearson the publisher at:

1-800-922-0579

You may also order the book in bulk online at Peachpit by clicking here. If you have any questions about academic orders, please send an email here. Click here to read what other people are saying about the book.

Your School Needs This Book!

Listen to what these other teachers are saying:

Many digital film and animation schools get bogged down trying to teach their students all the technical skills, while forgetting to teach the creative language of filmmaking and visual storytelling. By having your students focus more on developing compelling visual stories, you will empower them to take these fundamental skills throughout their classes, lives and careers. If they leave your school with only a very basic understanding of how to operate a particular model of video camera, or work with one or two types of software, their knowledge will often become outdated within a few years as the equipment and software continue to evolve. Preproduction classes are cheaper to teach than production classes, and will help the students create better films throughout their coursework. This book focuses on using all the power of digital technology and tools, to save schools time and money, while inspiring students to push their creative limits up to new levels of sophistication and depth by doing 100’s of simple project exercises.

“Developing Digital Short Films” may be used as a textbook for the following types of courses in your program:
• Digital Production
• Screenwriting or Creative Writing Classes
• Cinematography
• Digital Preproduction
• Storyboarding
• Character Design
• Senior Project Study Guide
• Final Project Film Study Guide
• 3D Animation (for creating short 3D film class projects)
• Modern 2D Animation (using After Effects & Flash)
• Sound Design
• Narrative Editing
• Digital Video
• New Media Project Classes (for interactive stories/games)
• Film Studies (use techniques in book to deconstruct films)

"This book has proved invaluable to me as the coordinator of a first year undergraduate course designed to introduce media students to film and video, as well as multimedia skills. Sherri's informal style of writing, coupled with her unpretentious approach to sharing her own experiences as a digital film maker, makes this an ideal text for first year students. This book captures the spirit of the convergence between traditional film and multimedia, and the countless examples and case studies presented throughout the book are a great source of inspiration for students.

While many of the concepts addressed in the book are not new and have been adequately addressed in other texts, Sherri describes these concepts in a way that is highly engaging, and the comic book style illustrations appeal to a young audience (as well as those of us who are not so young). Of particular note are the chapters that deal with "generating new ideas" (something first year media students find difficult), "creating original characters, themes, and visual metaphors" and "developing plot points", as well as the final three chapters of the book that deal more specifically with the convergence between film and video and multimedia.

Two of my lectures this semester were based on Sherri's analysis of several popular movies, and the sections of those lectures that focused on themes and also on the use of color palettes in popular movies were real winners! Moreover, Sherri was more than willing to communicate via email and made several resources available to me as a teacher to address particular student needs.

When you purchase this book you are investing in a treasure trove of teaching tips, techniques and resources. Sherri's Website adds to the richness of these resources, and her commitment to inspiring and motivating budding film makers is evident in this book and Sherri's willingness to go the extra mile to further such educational ideals.

Thanks Sherri for providing educators with such a powerful set of teaching tools at a time when we are challenged to meet the demands of a student population who need to be conversant with both traditional and digital film making techniques. "

- Dr. Denise Wood, University of South Australia