Wiktor Piątkowski
Screenwriter, producer, lecturer and owner of Bahama Films.
Thematic workshop
A scene may be the smallest unit of drama, but if you can’t write engaging scenes nothing else matters. If you want to know how your favourite dramatic scenes work and write like that yourself, this workshop is for you.
The upcoming workshop are in:
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds
Portfolio
One dramatic scene developed across three drafts: structure, language, and information, written and revised in the room
Format
One 8-hour meeting
Language
The workshop will be in English!
Writing a scene – thematic workshop
Howard Hawks said a good movie is three good scenes and no bad scenes. This workshop focuses on the building block every story depends on: the scene. It is a one-day intensive for screenwriters who want to understand how a dramatic scene actually works and leave with two they wrote themselves.
How does the workshop look?
Throughout the day we explore three perspectives. The audience: what are they experiencing moment to moment, and how do you make them feel something and want to know what happens next? The actor: what does each character want, and what are they doing to get it? The storyteller: what are you revealing, what are you holding back, and when do you give it to them?
In the morning you build a character from a given prompt, then drop them into a scene mapped using Jacob’s Ladder, the instructor’s own method for building a scene. In the afternoon you return to the scene you wrote in the morning, this time focusing on how you control what the audience knows and when they know it. Between the two sessions, you revise the first scene under a single discipline: every line must have a verb. Not a feeling. An action.
You will leave with two complete dramatic scenes, revised, table-read, and understood. You will know what each scene is doing, beat by beat. And you will have a method you can apply the next day, on your own.
Opinie naszych kursantów
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Workshop programme
In the room
- What a scene is: objective, obstacle, stakes, turn
- Jacob's Ladder: a strategy for mapping a scene before you write it
- Writing prompt: building a character from a given prompt
- How actors read a script: working in verbs, not emotions
- Noun-verb-noun: action lines and what can be seen
- Surprise vs. suspense: dramatic irony and information control
- Scene studies: mapping objectives and the turn, action verbs, slow disclosure, dramatic irony
On the page
Exercise one
- Freewrite: character from a given prompt
- Write and map your scene using Jacob’s Ladder
- Revision sprint: action verbs for every line
- Read-through and feedback
Exercise two
- Freewrite: situation from a given prompt
- Write your scene with deliberate information decisions
- Read-through and feedback
Twoi trenerzy
Wiktor Piątkowski created and co-wrote HBO’s first original series produced in Poland (Wataha) and the first Polish romantic comedy produced by Netflix (Squared Love). Over the last 17 years he has worked as showrunner, head writer, screenwriter and producer on various shows (crime series, soap operas, scripted reality, period dramas, sitcom), with more than 2000 hours of TV produced. A sitcom he co-created and co-wrote, Just Push Abuba, premiered in 2018 on ZDF. Wiktor is the head writer of the first Polish TV series produced by Viaplay (Murderesses), the first co-production between Canal+ and Polsat (Sortownia) and the first political thriller series produced by Polsat (Vote of no Confidence). Wiktor’s filmography includes, among others, the feature films Heart Parade (Netflix) and Holidays Backwards (which he also produced), and the TV series War Girls.
Wiktor graduated from the Polish National Film School in Łódź, the Warsaw School of Economics, and Warsaw University (psychology), and is an alumnus of Serial Eyes (organized by the Deutsche Film and Fernsehakademie Berlin, and the London Film School), European TV Drama Series Lab, European Showrunner Training, Canneseries Writers Club, The Owl, Midpoint, Racconti and Berlinale Talents. He has participated in many screenwriting courses, led by, among others Syd Field, John Truby, Robert McKee, Linda Seger, Dov Simens, Glen Benest and Sammy Montana. The list of his mentors includes James V. Hart (Dracula, Hook, Contact), Frank Spotnitz (The X Files, The Man in the High Castle), Graham Yost (Speed, Justified) and Jeff Melvoin (Northern Exposure, Designated Survivor, Killing Eve).
Wiktor Piątkowski is also a member of SEAN, the Dirty Dozen Collective, the Polish Filmmakers Association (SFP) and the Polish Screenwriters’ Guild. He has a PhD in television marketing, runs screenwriting workshops in Poland and abroad, and manages Bahama Films, an independent production company based in Warsaw.
Jacob Ramsay
Jacob Ramsay is an American filmmaker and MFA graduate in Film Directing from FAMU Prague. He spent nearly a decade working in the New York film industry, with credits including HBO’s Vinyl (Scorsese), A24’s How to Talk to Girls at Parties (Mitchell), and Maggie’s Plan (Miller), before moving to Central Europe to write and direct. His screenplays and film projects have won awards at international festivals, and his short films have been included in the Cannes Short Film Corner and screened worldwide. He designed and taught a practical directing course at FAMU International, served as a script doctor, and has taught filmmaking workshops in the United States, Macedonia, Czech Republic, and Italy. He is based in Warsaw, where he writes, directs films and music videos.
Workshop date
Location: (Bahama Films, tak jak przy innych zajęciach)
Class location
Writing a scene
Thematic workshop
800 PLN
- 8 hours in a small group
- 2 writing exercises
- getting to know the specifics of writing a scene