I have refined my skills as a script consultant over 20 years of working with private clients, as well as teaching in academia and at production companies such as Pixar and Lucasfilm. My consulting work began in the early 90s when students in my screenwriting classes started asking to work with me individually on improving their screenplay structure. Initially, I referred to these as “tutorials,” but when I started being approached by writers who had not been in my classes, I had to shift my thinking of them from “students” to “clients.” That was when I discovered I had become a consultant.

I had begun teaching screenwriting when a friend from graduate school asked if I would take over the screenwriting class he was teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York. We had studied screenwriting together at Columbia University when the Film Division was co-chaired by Milos Forman and writer/producer Frank Daniel, also a Czech ex-pat. The East European influence extended to Yugoslav director Dusan Makavejev teaching directing, Stefan Scharff, from Poland, teaching film studies and numerous other Slavs among the staff and students. Columbia also gave me the opportunity to study acting and directing with Brad Dourif and film history with Andrew Sarris.

I had two years of nail-biting screenwriting classes, laboring under Frank Daniel’s exacting standards. But the program’s signature class was Script Analysis, a five-hour marathon in which we would screen a classic feature film and then Frank would lecture on the structure, character and scene elements of the screenplay. (Being pre-video days, we would re-view sequences using an “analyzer,” a 16mm projector that would go in slow motion and reverse or give a washed out freeze frame by throwing a lead screen in front of the bulb.)

In 1995, I decided to take my first shot at teaching Script Analysis at The New School in New York. I analyzed some films from my Columbia classes, but also did other films, applying the principles I’d learned in my own way. Doing a few new films each term, I began to notice new structural patterns as well as departures from the classic model. I became increasingly curious about the historical precedents for these structures and decided to go back to school at New York University to study the history and theory of drama from the Greeks to the 20th century.

At NYU, I learned that three-act dramatic structure is a surprisingly new form. The Roman theorists in the first century had interpreted Aristotle’s Poetics as dictating a five-act structure, which dominated drama until well into the 19th century. I found some of the roots of today’s three-act structure while studying an early 19th century popular form called the Well-Made Play. Looking further, I learned that Ibsen had also studied the Well-Made Play and made artful use of it in his history-making A Doll’s House.

I then took on a study of 19th century playwriting manuals to track the evolution from five-act to three-act structure and found a pivotal point in a manual by William Archer, who is credited with introducing Ibsen to the English-speaking world. But it was not until close to the mid-20th century that three-act structure fully supplanted the five-act form in the writings of the drama theorists. What all this demonstrates to me is that this is a form that has evolved with time and the likelihood is, with time, other forms will evolve to replace it.

Currently, I am working on a new website, called Screentakes, giving my take on the art of screenwriting based on 20 years of studying structure, character and theme in the Great Films. The site will feature articles, essays and blog posts in both text and video form. Launch is planned for summer of 2012. Thereafter, new content will continually be added, including book chapters and long-form videos.

Stay tuned!

Teaching
Lucasfilm Animation Singapore, Singapore
Lucasfilm, Ltd., San Francisco, CA
Pixar Animation Studios, Emeryville, CA
Film Arts Foundation, San Francisco, CA
The New School University, New York, NY
New Jersey City University, Jersey City, NJ
School of Visual Arts, New York, NY
Film/Video Arts, New York, NY

Consulting
Pixar Animation Studios, Emeryville, CA
Independent Television Service, Open Call
Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Screenwriting Workshop
Film Arts Foundation, Robin Eickman Screenwriting Award.
New York Foundation for the Arts, Artists New Works Program
National Endowment for the Arts, Media Arts Program
P.O.V., The American Documentary

Panels
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Seventh Art Film Series
Goethe Institute
The Film Workshop At Prague
New York Women In Film & Television
Bay Area Women in Film & Television

Juries
Marin Arts Council, Screenwriting Grants Program
San Francisco International Film Festival, Golden Gate Awards
Mendocino Film Festival, Narrative Features Category
Film Arts Festival, Narrative Features Category

Journalist
Premiere
The Village Voice
Ms.
Sight and Sound
Screen International
Release Print
Filmmaker
The Independent
The Off-Hollywood Report

Education
San Francisco Art Institute, Bachelor of Fine Arts, Film
Columbia University, Master of Fine Arts, Screenwriting
New York University, History and Theory of Drama