Program Overview
The Story and Film Workshop for Educators is designed for high schools interested in using the techniques of screenwriting to enhance their curriculum. The Story and Film Workshop combines the study of literature and film, providing tools for critical analysis of literature and increasing literacy skills while encouraging students to write their own stories and screenplays.
Approach to Learning
The Story and Film Workshop's two-medium, experiential teaching style is designed to reach a wide range of students and learning styles. Instructional strategies – games, word and image exercises, character and story development – increase literacy, improve grammar, vocabulary and writing skills. While sharing and developing stories, students gain the benefits of reflection, collaboration and creative expression. Young people today have technological sophistication and digital fluency that most of their teachers and parents cannot fully appreciate. The media component of the Story and Film Workshop allows students to build on their facility with digital media as they increase other skills.
Teacher Training
The three day Story and Film Workshop for Educators gives teachers the fundamentals of film analysis, three-act structure and story development and provides materials to take the Story and Film approach into the classroom. The initial work on film analysis involves dissecting a classic film and can be coordinated with class literature requirements. For example, the class may analyze the film To Kill a Mockingbird while also studying the novel. This gives students context and alternative approaches to understanding story structure, theme, character development and motivation. Film analysis is followed with creative assignments using the principals of Story and Film through which teachers help students nurture an idea, collaborate with fellow students, create an outline and finally write a short script or story. Teachers monitor this process using a Story and Film rubric that outlines students’ objectives throughout.
Interlochen Center for the Arts is an authorized provider of continuing education units (SB-CEUs) as approved by the Michigan State Board of Education. Michigan educators participating in the Story and Film Workshop for Educators may be able to receive SB-CEUs. If you are interested in earning SB-CEUs for attending the Story and Film Workshop for Educators, please see the program registration form for further details.
All workshop classes will be held in the DeRoy Center for Film Studies on the campus of Interlochen Center for the Arts. The DeRoy Center for Film Studies is the first and only building in the nation dedicated to the study of motion picture arts at the high school level. The 26,000 square foot state-of-the-art building includes a film studio, editing and production suites, a sound stage and a screening room.
