Santa Monica Barnes & Noble Book Panel May 19

I’ll be on a discussion panel and signing books to celebrate the publication of Write Your Way into Animation and Games (which I’ve contributed chapters to) at the 3rd Street Promenade Barnes & Noble in Santa Monica, on May 19, 7pm.

Joining me on the panel will be fellow WGA member (and my talented and esteemed wife) Carolyn Handler Miller, and animation writer Jean Ann Wright. We’ll be discussing strategies for writers and screenwriters to enter the burgeoning worlds of animation and interactive media (including videogames), and challenges that writers will face in these arenas.

Teaching screenwriting seminar April 16-18

I’m returning to the Santa Fe Community College Film Program to teach a 3-day intensive screenwriting seminar this weekend, April 16-18.

The seminar still has a few slots open, and it’s a chance for students to discover some of the basics of screenwriting and apply their knowledge to writing anything from public service announcements and local television commercials to spec feature screenplays and television episodes.

We’ll be working with Celtx and Adobe Story (more on this in a future post) and seeing how these new tools are part of a more collaborative production workflow — further redefining screenwriting in the 21st century.

Screenwriters and the Web

From the WGA’s recent seminar on screenwriters exploiting the Web as a distribution and marketing platform.

Listen to ‘Cinemascope’ radio program

Even if you missed the live broadcast of my solo guest shot on KSFR-FM’s half-hour ‘Cinemascope’, you can listen here to the audio recording. Just click on the embedded MP3 link to stream the interview. Topics include my new book, an upcoming screenwriting seminar I’m teaching for the Film Program at Santa Fe Community College, and the role of screenwriting in the 21st century.

On KSFR-FM’s Cinemascope Fri., March 26

I’ll be the sole guest on the half-hour radio program ‘Cinemascope‘, broadcast by Santa Fe’s KSFR-FM, on Friday, March 26 at 6:30pm (Mountain time).

You can stream the show live, even if you’re outside the broadcast area.

The topics include discussion of my new book End to End Game Development; the nature of screenwriting in the 21st century; and the weekend seminar I’ll be teaching for the Santa Fe Community College Film Program in mid-April.

Listen live if you can; I’ll do my best to make an MP3 recording of the broadcast available in the near future.

Speaking at UNM ArtsLab April 2

I’ll be speaking at the University of New Mexico’s ArtsLab Friday, April 2 at noon, as part of their ongoing Digital Lunch series.

The topic will be my new book End to End Game Development, published by Focal Press.  I plan to offer a quick sampling of serious game output, and discuss some of the unique issues faced by developers of serious games, persuasive games and simulations.

If you find yourself in Albuquerque on that date, please come!

WGA Coverage – Videogame Writing Work

The WGA is hosting an informational seminar on getting videogame writing work covered under the WGAw’s Interactive Program Contract (IPC).

Full details:

Partial Archives Now Up

alt.screenwriters was a column that ran in the WGA trade magazine Written By from 1996-2007.  For historical purposes, I’m in the process of re-publishing the columns online.  (They were published online by yours truly from 1996 to 2009; WGA member and fellow author Deborah Todd was co-writer during the first several years.)

The first 23 years of columns are now available, and I’ll continue to add to the archive throughout the Spring and Summer.  If you’d like to know about the dawn of convergence between traditional screenwriting and emergent media/new media/interactive screenwriting, this will provide some of the bulletins from the bleeding edge, as they were filed.

Synapse to Screen 1.0

We’re still “under construction” here at alt.screenwriters, but in the meantime, I’ll be speaking and presenting at the first annual Synapse to Screen Conference being held in conjunction with the Santa Fe Film Festival on Wednesday, December 3. The conference looks at media content creation tools, and pre-production and production tools.

I’ll be comparing tools like Celtx, Movie Magic Screenwriter and Final Draft, both from an outlining/brainstorming standpoint and from the actual scripting standpoint.

The full slate of presenters is still being put together, but it’ll be interesting to see how big an audience exists for an event focused on scripting, budgeting and scheduling tools.

Stay tuned

Future home of altscreenwriters.com.

alt.screenwriters was a column running in Written By magazine (the Writers Guild of America’s monthly trade publication) from 1996-2007. Its mission was to explore the convergence of traditional screenwriting and new media forms, and the columns map a history of media transformation during those years.

During Fall and Winter 2009/10 I’ll be working on re-compiling the online archive of the columns, and reviving alt.screenwriters as a place to discuss continuing developments in the practice of screenwriting.

In the meantime, you can visit terryborst.com for more about the author.