Characters and Dialogues Workshop (20508)

Degree/study: Bachelor's Degree of Advertising and Public Relations
Year: third- fourth.
Term: third
Number of ECTS credits: 4 credits
Hours of studi dedication: hours
Teaching language or languages: catalan-spanish
Teaching Staff: Gemma Ventura

1. Presentation of the subject

The course aims at enabling students to learn how to create principal and supporting characters, as well as writing and locating dialogues by means of developing a pilot episode for a TV series.

 

2. Competences to be attained

-To learn how to think and work as a professional scriptwriter, both individually and in group.

-To learn to analyze audiovisual documents usefully.

-To understand how to develop creativity in a practical and controlled way.

 

3. Contents

 

Unit 1. CHARACTERS ORIGIN

Creation of a character

Research

Our experience

Biography

Context

Physical description

Interview

 

Unit 2: HOW TO CREAT MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS

Coherence and derived coherences

Paradoxes

Character arch

Character psychology

Details

Characteristic tricks

Stereotypes

 

Unit 3. SUPPORTING CHARACTERS

 

Unit 4. RELATIONSHIPS AMONG CHARACTERS

 

Attraction

Conflict

Contrast

Transformation

 

Unit 5. DIALOGUE

Real conversations / Fictitious dialogues

Conflict / Emotion / Attitude

Subtext

Planning

Importance of context and space

 

4. Assessment

 

The course will be assessed as follows:

-Group grade: 50%. Creating a pilot episode for a fiction series.

-Individual grades: 50%.

-Creation of a principal and supporting character (context, biography, physical description, interview, coherence and paradoxes): 20%

-Individual fictitious dialogue: 15%

-Paper on the character arch in the pilot episode and the relationships he has with the other characters: 15%

 

5. Bibliography and teaching resources

5.1. Basic bibliography

SEGER, LINDA. Cómo crear personajes inolvidables. Paidós Comunicación, 2011.

SEGER, LINDA. Cómo convertir un buen guión en un guión excelente. Editorial Rialp.

MCKEE, ROBERT. El Guión. Sustancia, estructura, estilo y principios de la escritura

de guiones. Barcelona: Alba Editorial, 2002.

FIELD, SYD. El Libro del Guión. Editorial Plot, 2000

CHION, M. Cómo se escribe un guión. Madrid: Cátedra, 1992

FELDMAN, S. Guión argumental, guión documental. Barcelona: Gedisa, 1990

VALE, E. Técnicas del guión para cine y televisión. Barcelona: Gedisa, 1993.

5.3. Teaching resources

Information sources list.

 

6. Metodology

Most part of the course is practical (individual tasks just as much as group tasks). In a first phase, students will do individual tasks and eventually they will do group tasks. The objective is that every student can experience and develop the creative process from beginning to end, individually and as a group. Every student will be free to create a principal and a supporting character that later will have to integrate in the pilot episode of a  fiction series including those characters and the ones created by the other members of the group.

Regarding dialogue writing, the methodology will be very similar to the one applied to character creation. In a first phase, every student will have to individually experience and develop the task of converting a real dialogue into a fictitious dialogue. Afterwards, the exercise will be repeated within the groups. The required different dialogues for the pilot episode will be developed on the basis of the dynamics created in the group.

The theoretical part consists of five basic units that will be reinforced with different audiovisual examples and the analysis of practical cases from fiction series and films.

 

7. Planning of activities

Week	Activity in class/ Grouping / Type of activity	Activity outside the class/ Grouping / Type of activity
Week 1	Session 1: Unit 1 / self-knowledge individual exercise.	- Searching a character (individually).
Week 2	Session 1: Unit 1 (cont.).   Session 2: Presentation of the individual characters.	- Developing the character biography (individually).
Week 3	Session 1: Unit 2.	- Working on the character dimensionality (individually).
Week 4	Session 2: Unit  (cont.).   Session 2: Unit 3 / Practical case analysis: House episode.	- Creating a supporting character (individually).
Week 5	Session 1: Presentation of the supporting characters to the group.   Session 2: Unit 4 / viewing of American Beauty.	- Analyzing the relationships among the characters in American Beauty (in group).
Week 6	Session 1: Discussion about the American Beauty characters.   Session 2: Introduction to the dialogue / the action line. Analysis of the pilot episode of Sex in the city.	- Establishing relationships among the characters of every group and start defining the pilot episode (in group).
Week 7	Session 1: Working on the pilot episode in group.   Session 2: Unit 5.	- Recording and transcribing the real dialogue (individually).
Week 8	Session 1: Dialogues practical analysis in group	- Writing a dialogue adapted to the group characters (in group).
Week 9	Session 1: Polishing up the group dialogues.   Session 2: Dialogues analysis in group. Working on the pilot episode treatment.	- Locating the dialogues in the pilot episode (in group).
Week 10	Session 1: Final location and development of the dialogues in the pilot episode.   Session 2: Working on the pilot episode.