In a move de­signed to strength­en the lo­cal film in­dus­try, the T&T Film Fes­ti­val (ttff) has part­nered with the British Coun­cil to host a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry work­shop for sto­ry (script) ed­i­tors, screen­writ­ers and pro­duc­ers from March 8 - 12 in Port-of-Spain.

A re­lease said the work­shop will bring to­geth­er up to 15 film pro­fes­sion­als and will cov­er key is­sues com­mon to script de­vel­op­ment and the role of the script ed­i­tor in that process.

The five-day pro­gramme is de­signed to in­tro­duce the con­cept and prac­tice of good fea­ture script de­vel­op­ment by fo­cus­ing on the role of the script ed­i­tor and how they work with writ­ers and pro­duc­ers. The pro­gramme will en­able par­tic­i­pants to gain the skills nec­es­sary to en­hance their own film­mak­ing and that of their peer com­mu­ni­ty and wider in­dus­try. By the end of the work­shop there will be a num­ber of com­mit­ted, con­fi­dent script ed­i­tors ready and able to help make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al film­mak­ing.

The pro­gramme will in­clude prac­ti­cal ses­sions us­ing scripts from par­tic­i­pants as well as more gen­er­al film ref­er­ence ma­te­r­i­al, to give par­tic­i­pants im­me­di­ate ex­pe­ri­ence of the process and al­low scriptwrit­ers to take ad­van­tage of feed­back for their spe­cif­ic projects.

Ac­cord­ing to An­nalee Davis, Caribbean Arts Man­ag­er, British Coun­cil: "When the British Coun­cil con­sult­ed with re­gion­al stake­hold­ers and film­mak­ers in No­vem­ber 2016, it be­came clear that screen­writ­ing was an area where fo­cus would be wel­come, with a par­tic­u­lar em­pha­sis on cre­at­ing the con­text for a stronger cul­ture of project de­vel­op­ment. The British Coun­cil is there­fore de­light­ed to be col­lab­o­rat­ing with the ttff, to run this Sto­ry Edit­ing work­shop.'

Bruce Padding­ton, Founder and Fes­ti­val Di­rec­tor of the ttff com­ment­ed: "Good scripts not on­ly re­quire ex­cel­lent writ­ers but al­so the in­volve­ment of per­cep­tive script ed­i­tors who can help shape and im­prove the script. This work­shop is there­fore time­ly as T&T strives to de­vel­op its film in­dus­try. The ttff is pleased to be work­ing with the British Coun­cil on this im­por­tant ini­tia­tive.

The work­shop will be led by Lu­do Smol­s­ki, a script de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tant, script ed­i­tor and read­er for a va­ri­ety of or­gan­i­sa­tions in the UK, in­clud­ing iFea­tures4, Cre­ative Scot­land, Scot­tish Film Tal­ent Net­work, Film4 and the British Film In­sti­tute (BFI) Film Fund.

He pre­vi­ous­ly worked for The Script Fac­to­ry, run­ning their de­vel­op­ment and script feed­back ser­vice, and de­vis­ing and de­liv­er­ing train­ing cours­es and work­shops for screen­writ­ers, de­vel­op­ers and read­ers, both in the UK and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Smol­s­ki is al­so a Tu­tor for the Na­tion­al Film and Tele­vi­sion School's Post­grad­u­ate Diplo­ma in Script De­vel­op­ment, and de­liv­ers cours­es in script analy­sis and de­vel­op­ment for Cre­ative Eng­land, the Film Dis­trib­u­tors' As­so­ci­a­tion and the Broad­cast­ing, En­ter­tain­ment, Cin­e­mato­graph and The­atre Union (BEC­TU). A sim­i­lar work­shop will be held in Ja­maica in a col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the British Coun­cil, the Ja­maica Film and Tele­vi­sion As­so­ci­a­tion (JAF­TA) and the JAM­PRO Film Com­mis­sion (JAM­PRO), from March 1 - 5.

More in­fo

For more in­for­ma­tion and guide­lines, vis­it: https://caribbean.british­coun­cil.org/pro­grammes/arts/mak­ing-de­vel­op­ment-work