Take your screenwriting to the next level and learn alongside professionals who know what makes a great, make-able screenplay. In this masterclass, attendees learn tools that pros use to create stronger concepts and scenes. Students should bring an idea or concept for a feature or pilot screenplay and the first few pages of that script, either as a hard copy or on laptop. All levels of experience are welcome.
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Instructors: Joy Goodwin & Ron Thompson
Emmy-award winner Joy Goodwin serves as chair of the MFA Screenwriting program at the UNC School of the Arts. She has screenplays in development with directors Debra Granik (“Winter’s Bone”) and Nicholas Ma (“Won’t You Be My Neighbor”) and has been named a 2020 Film Independent Screenwriting Fellow, a 2020 Tribeca Sloan Grant winner, a 2020 Athena List winner, and a 2019 Austin Film Festival Feature Comedy finalist. Goodwin has developed and co-produced films that have won Golden Globe, Sundance and Spirit Awards, and have been distributed by Lionsgate, Fox Searchlight, HBO Films, ABC and Focus, among others. She’s written, produced and directed documentary television for ABC, ESPN, NBC, A&E, and The History Channel. She’s a former theater critic and reporter for The New Yorker and The New York Times.
Ron Stacker Thompson has had an impressive career as producer on films such as “A Rage In Harlem, “Deep Cover,” “The Cemetery Club,” “Sister Act 2” and “Hoodlum.” In television, he wrote and produced “America’s Dream,” an HBO Special nominated for nine Cable Ace Awards, winning two for Best Writing and Best Producing of a Dramatic Series or Special. The film starring Danny Glover and Wesley Snipes, and based on short stories by Maya Angelou, Richard Wright and John Henrik Clarke, was also honored with an N.A.A.C.P Image Award for Best Television Movie or Mini-Series. Thompson has also written “Nat King Cole: Loved in Return” for A&E Network’s “Biography,” as well as “Funny Valentines,” starring Alfre Woodard and Loretta Devine for BET/Universal.
Thompson also has a distinguished background in theatre. As founder of the Oakland Ensemble Theatre, he produced/directed over 50 plays. He’s directed national tours for productions starring Della Reese, Ted Lange and Yolanda King, daughter of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thompson’s also written/directed productions at The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, The National Black Theatre Festival in North Carolina and the famed Apollo theatre in Harlem, among others. His most recent works include REJOICE! A Holiday Musical Celebration and Douglass/Dunbar, a historical musical based on the lives of Frederick Douglass and Paul Laurence Dunbar. Thompson is currently artistic director of the Willingham Theater in Yadkinville, N.C., and chairs the Screenwriting Department in the School of Filmmaking at the UNC School of the Arts.