storytelling

As a cinematographer Arthur Jafa has lensed striking images for Julie Dash, John Akomfrah and Spike Lee to name but a few. He is known for his longterm quest for an "authentic" black cinema. In his words “the idea(s) is obvious, the implementation is not.”

Character, plot, story, description, soundscape, dialogue, these and more are the elements that combine in the author controlled medium of dramatic radio. This radio scriptwriting workshop will guide workshop participants through the process of creating short radio plays for WPEB. Participants should come to this workshop with a story idea on a topic or issue relevant to their community, and be prepared to get dramatic!

This workshop is an introduction to the primary elements of story telling - passion for the idea, characters worth meeting, a message with meaning – as they relate to screenwriting. The workshop is designed to explore your personal voice and encourage a regular writing practice. Participants will be expected to do weekly writing assignments and should have a story idea that they are working on.

Video on the web is every where but good video on the web is harder to find. This workshop will introduce participants to ways of shooting video specifically destined for the web and then prepare your media to be uploaded for the world to see. Participants will learn new media concepts and best practices, as well as practical and hands on techniques on how to shoot, compress, encode, upload and distribute your video and audio on the internet. The workshop will cover working with the major media formats such as Windows, QuickTime, Realplayer, and Flash.

Learn basic editing with Apple’s Final Cut Pro, an exciting and powerful non-linear editing program that combines professional capability with consumer-level accessibility. This course builds a strong foundation that gets you started with logging, capturing, editing, transitions and much more. Basic computer knowledge is required. In addition to the workshop meetings, individual edit time is required.

Through this workshop, participants turn their non-fiction project ideas into workable shooting scripts. The course will cover research, developing and visualizing ideas, scripting and storytelling techniques. At the time of registration participants must submit a one-page description of their film idea for the instructor to review prior to the start of class.

Do you have an idea for a short radio documentary about a person, place or happening in West Philadelphia?

We are honored that the distinguished poet and playwright Sonia Sanchez will conduct a workshop this summer on writing audio monologues. Over three sessions, Sanchez will help participants find their voice through the process of creating a performance monologue. A soliloquy or monologue, told simply and directly, is what most thrills us about radio, theater and often film. The audio monologue is the essence of storytelling. Workshop participants are invited to come with an idea, an image or experience that they would like to explore and write about.

This workshop is an introduction to the primary elements of story telling - passion for the idea, characters worth meeting, a message with meaning – as they relate to screenwriting. The workshop is designed to explore your personal voice and encourage a regular writing practice. Participants will be expected to do weekly writing assignments and should have a story idea that they are working on.

Have an idea for a video documentary project? This intensive workshop is designed for people who want to work in small-format video (DV and miniDV). We will focus on how to creatively develop and break down your idea into a one-page treatment and introduce materials to create project production schedules and a sample budget. This is the ideal workshop for first-time videomakers at the start of their projects.