That semester in Irvin Kershner's class I began to learn about the artistry of filmmaking as we studied classic, foreign films and wrote papers about them.
Kersh asked us to began developing ideas for projects, and after his approval we would then develop them into short stories. For the final, we would turn in the first 25 pages of a screenplay. There was room for fewer than 20 people in the class and several people dropped the class because they wanted to turn in screenplay pages they'd written every week.
I'd written one screenplay before, with much enthusiasm and little skill, and I knew how grueling it was to produce 25 new pages in one week while working full-time; and if any part of the storyline needed to be changed it meant hours spent reworking each scene that followed.
Kersh told us that if a fully developed short story were completed and polished, it should then take two weeks to write the screenplay. And at the end of his class I tried it--I took a two-week vacation from work and completed the screenplay. I submitted it the next day into a film fest and it was one of 10 finalists. I then called the competition contact number and asked, "Did you have only 10 entries?" The person who answered the phone laughed. "You should see our offices," she said. "They're filled with boxes and boxes, hundreds of entries."
So on Day 4, Roadmap into the industry, I am remembering the words of advice Kersh said dozens of times to his students, "It's all about the story."
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