Calendar of Events

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Knoxville Writers' Guild: Images and Language in Writing for Film

Category: Classes, workshops and Literature, spoken word, writing

October 12 Workshop
Insights and exercises on how dialogue, images, and setting work together in writing for film by an award-winning screenwriter, with Gerald Wood.

We say and believe that film is a visual medium, but images are equally essential in all our writing: from poetry to the theater. How do we use images differently when we write for the screen? And how do those changes influence the dialogue in movies?

In this workshop, first we will focus on how radically expressive images are in film. We will briefly discuss how Appalachia, for example, is represented in the movies. But our exercise will focus on how writers can suggest the mood and even ideas in the physical place we want to represent. We will practice making a setting “talk” in different ways through visuals.

Less obvious but equally valuable is how visuals require a unique use of language in film. Our second exercise will be to demonstrate how dialogue is given nuance and complexity by visual contexts like close-up, reaction, and POV shots. We also will see that—for good or ill—in film a visual can make speech redundant, even unnecessary.

As we have time, we will also consider the implications of trying to influence the director and cinematographer to follow our suggestions about camera distances and angles, even action beyond the frame.

10:00 am - 12:00 pm at Central United Methodist Church, 201 3rd Avenue
https://knoxvillewritersguild.org