Category: From the Labs

“My hand hurts” doesn’t apply here at the Sundance Institute Screenwriters Intensive two-day workshop in Los Angeles—specifically Joan Tewkesbury’s screenwriting workshop “Designed Obstacles, Spontaneous Response.” I came to the sad reality that I hadn’t used pen and paper in close to six months, including signing my own name, which is all done electronically now—I type or text everything. This workshop was not about technology or form; it was about detaching from all of it in search for the deepest meaning of ourselves.

We have extended our deadline and are still accepting nominations for our Documentary Creative Producing Lab! The new deadline is Monday, March 21. If you know a talented producer not yet supported by Sundance Institute, we want to hear from you. ABOUT THE LAB AND FELLOWSHIP We will select five fellows to join us for a five-day intensive at the Sundance Resort in Utah.

“I just hope we get to meet Ro-Ro,” Lyle Friedman, my writing partner, sleepily whispered on the van ride from Salt Lake City’s airport to the Sundance Resort. Ro-Ro, of course, being her pet name for beloved film icon/perfect person, Robert Redford. I, too, deeply wished that I would at least get to see him once in real life so I’d have something to immediately brag about on Facebook.

In my short career as a co-writer of pilot scripts, I have struggled to explain the importance of “not-writing” to the writing process. Especially to my writing partner and husband, Matt Berninger. He is somehow always writing when he writes, by which I mean (and he does too), typing out scenes.

Arriving at the Sundance Institute Documentary Edit & Story Lab as an advisor on my first day, fellow advisor and editor Kate Amend greeted me with a hearty, “Welcome to paradise.” She said it in a way that seemed to reference more than just the beautiful surroundings. I didn’t know exactly what she was alluding to, but I had heard this kind of thing many times before.

Amidst the dramatic drops and amber foliage of Utah’s natural offerings, the Sundance mountain stands proud, a modern day Mount Olympus where good things happen. It is here that the muses of contemporary storytelling orchestrate a transformative experience. Advisors, staff and peers—one more brilliant, generous and different than the other—are at your humble disposal over the course of those five days, both in mind and in space.

What is the future of story?” Kamal Sinclair, co-director of Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab, asks in her welcoming remarks. I came to the New Frontier Day Lab at the Allied Media Conference this year because I have this same question. What does my future as a filmmaker look like and how is the art of storytelling expanding and the technical craft changing?
Just like the cinematic leaps we’ve taken from black-and-white to color, to sound to film to digital and beyond, is the “communication architecture” in which we tell our stories about to take another leap that I need to prepare myself for? Artists are projecting moving images onto people’s retinas these days, and I’m still trying to figure out my 90-minute, three-act structured drama/comedy with sharpies, note cards, and double-sided tape on a big empty wall.

When we five playwrights came to Joan and George Hornig’s astonishing house on Flying Point Road in Long Island for the alumni writing studio, the spring was still groping around without much conviction. After our brutal New York winter, it was hard to believe that such a promised warmth and regeneration was even possible. But then it seemed just as unlikely that the five of us would be put up in such luxury and fed for a full week by our own private chef (oh, the food!) on grounds just a few minutes’ walk from a glistening beach.

Last week, Sundance Institute and the Knight Foundation held ShortsLab Miami, a free workshop dedicated to informing and supporting aspiring filmmakers in an open forum. In attendance were filmmakers Michael Almereyda, Sara Colangelo, and Kenny Riches, who participated in Q&A discussions moderated by Sundance short film programmer Mike Plante on topics such as the actor-director relationship, transitioning from shorts to feature films, finding financing and producers, and how to engage with and draw inspiration from your local arts community. Below, we’ve distilled the day down to include some of the most enlightening points overheard at ShortsLab Miami.

To paint the picture: it’s 9:28 a.m. on a Saturday in Miami.

The tone was set early on. Even before I set-off on my journey, Paul Federbush and Matthew Takata, the inimitable international director and manager of the Feature Film Program, respectively, emphasized that the Lab would not require any writing. “No writing?” I naively thought to myself, “Isn’t this a screenwriting workshop?”
“Be open to the process.

I’ve been encouraged by Oprah and Deepak Chopra via my mother to keep a journal. On the evening of my arrival at the Sundance Institute Episodic Story Lab, I wrote the following entry: “This evening was kind of rough and soul-crushing and made me feel like I have no place in this industry.”I was never good at summer camp, or college, or any of those supposedly fun, nurturing places that outcasts are expected to flourish in.