Lecturer: Birgit Wittemann
Live-Webinar - 03.10. und 04.10.26 - Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Early Bird offer until 27.09.26 Early Bird 270 €, after that 290 €
Learn what makes a successful film story – and how to write one yourself.
Great stories follow certain laws – and once you know them, you can apply them masterfully or break them deliberately. In our two-day intensive seminar Screenplay Essentials: A Two-Day Intensive Workshop, we provide you with the dramaturgical tools behind successful film stories in a compact, hands-on format – grounded in the most important theories and handbooks of the industry.
What to expect:
You'll get to know the core building blocks of screenwriting: character development, protagonist and antagonist, goal and need, the three-act structure, scene construction, and the functions of dialogue. We'll also dive into the finer points of structure, such as rhythm and pacing, and introduce sequence structure as a key tool for building stories step by step. We'll contrast open narrative form with a concrete example, setting alternative storytelling approaches apart from the classic dramatic structure. As inspiration for your own characters, we'll present various models — including psychological ones.
Through theory, film examples, hands-on exercises and a joint analysis of the screenplay of a German feature film, you'll experience how dramaturgy works in practice – tangible, easy to follow, and directly applicable to your own writing.
From Manuscript to Market
To end the seminar, we'll look beyond the desk: how do you successfully market your own story? We'll cover target audiences, making contact with production companies and TV broadcasters, common contract types, and how to present yourself in meetings with producers and commissioning editors.
Who is this seminar for?
Screenplay Essentials: A Two-Day Intensive Workshop is designed for anyone who wants to learn the fundamentals of screenwriting craft in a compact, well-grounded way – as well as for career changers taking their first steps toward becoming a screenwriter.
Included:
- Comprehensive handouts on all topics following the seminar
- We'll send you the screenplay covered in the seminar by post in advance
About the Lecturer
In addition to studying theater and film studies Birgit Wittemann worked as a dramaturgy assistant at the Berliner Volksbühne until she moved to Pandora Film in Cologne. With a scholarship from the Film Foundation NRW, she was involved in script development and production. After that, she attended the writing school at the IFS and, following further development work at the Hamburg Kino Kompanie under Hark Bohm, she became self-employed as a dramaturge, editor, and lecturer. She now works for numerous broadcasters and producers, such as Constantin Film, Degeto, Moin Filmförderung, Sat1 and WDR, and teaches, among others, at the Film Academy in Ludwigsburg. To understand better how characters work she additionally completed a bachelors degree in psychology - but dramaturgy remains her passion and she aims to help writers find the essence and form of their narration so that it stays as lively and unique as its creator..MORE ...