Initiatives

DigiPOD is a 4-day workshop series led by internationally renowned story consultant Mike Jones (The Craftsman, The Transgressions Cycle), who will shepherd participants through a 4-week development program for multi-platform projects. Featuring practical, hands-on exercises the program will provide eight ACT-based screen practitioners the opportunity to explore the possibilities that a well-considered multi-platform strategy can bring to their projects, and offer them ongoing feedback to help develop a market-ready package to begin seeking funding and production opportunities.

DigiPOD is designed to take a holistic approach to story development by framing grounded narrative principles within a process that can flexibly adapt a story to a variety of forms – both traditional and new media, episodic and interactive. The program integrates ideas of Storyworld Design, Episodic Narratives, Cross-platform experiences and interactive mechanics. Participants will receive clear, focused feedback from Mike Jones, as well as the opportunity to workshop their project within the group in a constructive writers’ room environment.

ScreenACT presents an intensive 2-day screenwriting workshop this April (16-17) with international story consultant Stephen Cleary. The workshop is aimed at writers, directors and producers who want to give an existing or new project a rigorous structural workout to bring the plot and characters of their project into sharp focus. This workshop gives participants a deeper understanding of the interplay between plot and character over the whole sweep of a story, sequence by sequence and through individual scenes. Understand what story structure really means, and how plot, character and theme can be organised into a successful, coherent whole.

ScreenACT presents an intensive 2-day workshop with audience engagement specialist Laurel Papworth on how to develop new strategies to engage, build and retain audiences online.

Early audience awareness and engagement have become critically important for content creators in today’s development and distribution landscape. ScreenACT’s Audience Engagement Workshop will outline the key steps to building, reaching and activating audiences during a project’s development stage (including crowdfunding campaigns), at the moment of its distribution and beyond.

Join Laurel Papworth in a practical workshop that will focus on specific audience engagement strategies, with a special emphasis on how to employ social media as an effective community-building tool. Participants will have the opportunity to share their own audience engagement situations and challenges, and will receive expert feedback on how to build a successful audience engagement strategy for their project.

ScreenACT is excited about a new development initiative that will be delivered in partnership with the ACT Screen Industry Association, Griffin Accelerator and Odin’s Eye International.

• Accelerator Pod, a 10.5 day development program
• Screen Accelerator, an intensive 6-month development and commercialisation program for projects selected from Accelerator Pod (maximum of 4 projects)

Our industry research has shown there is a strong interest in low-budget genre feature films. Michael Favelle (ODIN’S EYE INTERNATIONAL) is an Australian based international sales agent and distributor who will help guide and eventually select up to four projects to enter the Screen Accelerator.  Odin’s Eye will be attached as a distributor and sales agent to the selected Accelerator projects, and will be heavily involved throughout the process.

Accelerator Pod will educate participants on everything they need to know about developing a commercial low-budget genre feature.  Led by well-known script expert Karel Segers (founder of THE STORY DEPARTMENT), Accelerator Pod will assemble a team of top industry experts to consult at each of the program’s four phases to ensure a solid foundation in making films with strong market potential. Individuals will get ongoing feedback on their ideas at a number of stage points from a variety of leading industry voices.

The Pod will be delivered in four phases, and each phase will concentrate on a particular set of skills and outputs. Designated time blocks between each phase will allow participants to put their learning into practice. All workshops have been designed to run outside of work hours (evenings and weekends), and will be held in Canberra for Phase 1 and 2. Monday evening webcasts will be included for our interstate participants.

Documentary producer Susan MacKinnon (Paul Kelly – Stories of Me, Life in Movement, The Oasis) will be visiting Canberra this August (29–30) to run ScreenACT’s DocoPOD, a 2-day intensive course aimed at giving filmmakers the necessary skills to develop their documentary idea into a solid project with strong market potential.

Across the two-days you’ll learn everything from how to develop an idea, how to pitch your project to commissioning editors, and how and where to apply for funding. Susan will also give a studied overview of what is currently happening in the world of documentary, and what options are available to emerging filmmakers.During DocoPOD participants will also have an opportunity to share their documentary ideas with Susan, and receive expert feedback.

WebiPOD was an intensive development program for content creators working in online media to learn how to create episodic narratives and webTV. The online environment is one of open access and direct audience engagement, with an absence of traditional industry gatekeepers. The opportunities stemming from this are enormous, but so too are the challenges. WebiPOD explored ideas and strategies that help participants navigate the process with an improved understanding of the current digital landscape.

Facilitated by Shelley Birse (creator of The Code) The Writers’ Room was about the process, and trying out a development strategy that embraces teamwork by replicating the model used in the United States (where many major TV shows use writers’ rooms that gather around a ‘showrunner’ so ideas can be bounced around in a high-pressure creative environment). The idea was to import the writers’ room experience into the workshop environment to demonstrate the creative potential that can be drawn from a culture of cooperation. It’s hope was that the experience would foster new creative partnerships and collaborations that will continue long after the workshop.