Through the Looking Glass: Applying the Cinematographer’s Lens to Written Narratives

“I remember watching Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence at an arthouse cinema somewhere in Manhattan when I was in my twenties,” says instructor Kerry Muir. “The movie went against all convention. It made me want to tell stories about the truth, no matter how erratic, bumpy and insanely flawed the truth might really be.”

What movies have served as touchstones, guideposts, or talismans in your personal and creative life? How has the cinema influenced you as a writer, in terms of your style, voice, the types of characters you’re drawn to, the kinds of stories you feel called to tell?

In this five-week course, through in-class exercises, discussions, viewings of film clips, readings, and optional take-home assignments, we’ll explore the fertile connection between cinema and written narrative. Additionally, we’ll embark on a series of exercises designed to conscientiously apply cinematic techniques to written narratives, whether we’re working in fiction or memoir. While we tend to think of terms like zoom, framing the “shot,” depth of focus, and compression and dilation of time as cinematic in nature—and they are!—the fact is: the finest prose uses these very devices in spades.

Students will leave the class equipped with an arsenal of new techniques to help them become more capable writers of dramatic scenes that grab and hold a reader’s attention, page after page. All levels and genres welcome.