Day 6 - Act One Writing Seminar

Day 6: June 26, 2010

8:00 – 9:00 Breakfast

9:00 – 9:30 Rebecca Ver Straten McSparren: Devotion
From Luke: the story of Jesus’ encounter with the bleeding woman and Jairus’ daughter
Suggested Prayers for Others:
God, bridge the gap between ____’s love for him/herself and Your love.
Heal all of ____’s memories.
Place Your Healing hands around ____’s lovely and hurting brain and heart, and heal him/her.
Turn ____’s heart of stone into a heart of flesh.
Free ____ to love You with all of his/her heart, soul, and mind so that ____ is free to become all that You meant him/her to be

(9:30) 10:00 – 12:15 David McFadzean: The Writer’s Point of View (POV)
The Bible is a story, a series of weddings up to a wedding feast.
Character is only interesting within an interesting plot. Character itself does not drive the story.
The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but the inward appearance of things.

12:15 – 1:15 Lunch

1:00 – 12:00 Panel: What is an Act One Film?
Chuck Slocum: Assistant Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, West.
John Shepherd: President of Act One, President of Mpower Pictures, produced Bella and The Ultimate Gift
Barbara (Nicolosi) Harrington: founding Director of Act One, Chair of the Board of Directors. She wrote Mary, Mother of the Christ, with Ben Fitzgerald (The Passion of the Christ) for a 2010 wide-release by MGM, staring Al Pacino and Peter O'Toole, directed by James Foley.
David McFadzean: writers, producer, and partner in Wind Dancer films.Created and executive produced Home Improvement.

Chuck Slocum
How can you show a character is a person of faith?
Watched some scenes from Friday Night Lights.

Barbara Harrington
Mastery of craft united to an unusual quality of depth.
If we can pump 50 of you into the business each year…it is a small business. Some of you will make a difference.

Instead of Christian movies vs. non-Christian movies, I prefer to call them sacred vs. non-sacred. Overtly Christian are sacred as opposed to not overtly, but I hope all are Christian.

John Shepherd
Three circles with a tiny intersection: Commercial, Mission, Art. And an Act One film aims at that tiny point of intersection.
The script itself: If you’re trying to scrape up the money, maybe it’s not a good script. Good scripts are attractive and people want to produce them. So if you’re having trouble, maybe it’s not a good script.
Act One operates on a shoe-string budget and really needs Christians and churches to support us with donations and prayer.


Quotes from today:

“Why are we here at Act One? Why is Act One even needed? Because Protestant Evangelicalism has decided not to embrace Hollywood but only to complain about it.” – David McFadzean

“I came out here [to Hollywood] thinking Christians were getting martyred. But they’re committing suicide.” – Barbara Harrington (because Christians didn’t know the craft and were doing many things wrong, like font and format, yet were getting angry that their scripts weren’t getting accepted. That's why she helped start this training seminar for Christian screenwriters.).

“Theater is the place where people go to sit in the darkness and let people in the light tell them what it is to be human.” – Barbara Harrington