WHAT DO WE DO ON AN SFM? (PART 5)

By Josh L.

An SFM Graduate shares about his favourite topic - Dramatic Scriptwriting

I took the SFM with a view of becoming further equipped to work in the arena of film making. The week I was looking forward to the most was Dramatic Scriptwriting. Although I had previously studied film, this week of teaching completely changed my approach to cinematic storytelling. Over the years, many of my ideas and story concepts have been abandoned in the scripting process simply because I had no framework for 'translating' them into a workable screenplay. It had been too big a jump and I had no way of ensuring I had all the elements I needed to script an effective story.

I had often reacted, in a sense, to the idea of confining my stories into any sort of predefined structure. But as I listened to the teaching on the SFM, I found that rather than limiting my imagination, I was actually gaining a framework to build my story ideas into effective, holistic narratives. I found this turned scriptwriting from a confusing mystery into a tangible process. It’s helped my stories gain greater depths of meaning, while helping them to be both engaging and entertaining. It’s helped me have greater confidence showing my writing to prospective producers or filmmakers that will partner with me in seeing my story come to life on the screen.

On our outreach, we applied this teaching to producing an evangelistic film for an unreached people group in India, but I am using those skills every time I engage in any narrative filmmaking.