University degrees: Postgraduate
Course length: 2 years full-time
Could you write an award-winning movie, TV drama or animation? Or devise a multi-layered narrative for a ground-breaking game?
Could you write an award-winning movie, TV drama or animation? Or devise a multi-layered narrative for a ground-breaking game?
Graduates are currently writing TV episodes from Humans to Casualty, Penny Dreadful to Eastenders, and working with movie directors such as Sam Mendes, Lone Scherfig and Darren Aronofsky.
This rigorous, practical course has a long history of producing outstanding writers for film, television, animation and games. Taught by working screenwriters, producers and script developers, the course addresses all aspects of professional screenwriting and more. Recent graduates have won or been nominated for an Oscar, several BAFTAs and Royal Television Society Awards, a Nichol Fellowship, Screen International Stars of Tomorrow, Women in Film & Television New Talent Awards and many other prizes.
The voice of the individual screenwriter is at the heart of the course. That voice will be nurtured, developed and challenged to produce work of quality and originality ready to take out to the industry. Screenwriters will collaborate with other departments – directing fiction and animation, producing, games, etc. – putting into practice the skills they learn throughout the course, with all production costs met by the School.
All NFTS students can attend the School’s masterclasses programme, with recent guests including Martin McDonagh (In Bruges, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Killing Eve), Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna, Diego Maradona), Lynne Ramsay (You Were Never Really Here, We Need to Talk About Kevin), Louis Theroux, and M Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Glass).
This course is industry recognised by ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for the UK’s screen-based industries, and carries the ScreenSkills Select quality-mark which indicates courses best suited to prepare students for a career in the screen industries.
Unlike a Screenwriting MA based in an academic institution, this is a hands-on course set in a working film and television studio. It covers all aspects of screenwriting across film, television, games and animation, in different forms and genres, from the development of ideas, treatments and bibles, through the drafting of scripts, into production and post, and offers comprehensive preparation for the professional world of the screenwriter.
Screenwriters also have their writing work-shopped by professional directors and actors and, working with student producers and directors, have the chance to see their writing tested in production. Samples of their work will be read by literary agents, broadcasters, commissioners and film and television production companies, in advance of a round of industry meetings in their final term where they can pitch their ideas directly to the industry.
The course is intensive and full time and requires a high level of dedication, a prolific output, and the ability to meet professional deadlines. Graduation is also based on completion of a tutored dissertation.
