Guest speaker Justin Trevor Winters presenting Hook Your Audience: Writing Unforgettable Opening Scenes over Zoom.
Guest Speaker
Justin Trevor Winters is a screenwriter, producer, and professor who began his entertainment career at Innovative Artists and Creative Artists Agency, working with writers and directors including Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and Stuart Beattie, creator of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise. His screenwriting credits include “Killing Winston Jones,” starring Richard Dreyfuss, Danny Glover, and Jon Heder, and American Stream, winner of multiple film festival awards, including Best Feature and Best Screenplay. Winters is a full-time faculty member in the School of Film and Television at Loyola Marymount University, where he teaches screenwriting, adaptation, and producing, and also serves as director of The Innovators Film Festival and co-founder and CEO of Verified Labs.
Presentation Description
You can have the greatest story in the world, but none of it matters if you can’t hook your audience from page one. In film and television, writers use teasers and cold opens to grab our attention, introduce compelling characters, and leave us desperate to know what happens next. We’ll explore the art of the opening scene, break down what makes great stories impossible to put down, and share practical techniques that novelists and screenwriters alike can use to keep audiences turning pages.