DV Talent's Winter Warmer Offer - Patrick Uden Commentary Masterclass

Overview

Patrick Uden is one of the most influential and sought-after executive producers working in British television today. In particular, he is called on by broadcasters and Indies to hone and tighten the commentary on their key series, one of the hardest skills in filmmaking. 

This interactive one-day course will reveal Patrick's trade secrets to writing good commentary, including giving you a clear understanding of the function and evolution of commentary, as well as a toolkit for sharpening your own writing and editing skills. 

The course is structured around reviewing clips, discussion and practical exercises so that you will come away confident of understanding both the 'why' and 'how' of writing better scripts. 

•  An Analogue Art in the Digital World:  the importance of writing for factual; commentary that is integral to the story, not an addition, structuring your content and re-editing through words.
• Script Doctor:  Patrick Uden reviews trainee’s scripts and give feedback.
• Sources of Metered Writing, e.g. Philip Larkin ‘The Whitsun Weddings’
• Exercise in effective commentary.
• The Story of Commentary:  the evolution of commentary for factual programming – with illustrated examples.  A look at current styles of factual entertainment (from The Gap Year to Come Dine with Me to The Apprentice), polemic and observational styles.
• Key rules of commentary – empower the sync, facts not feelings, spoken not read.
• Case Study:  Patrick Uden looks at examples of commentary from the web and broadcast and discusses how to doctor/turn sentences around for more impactful writing.  Word efficiency for the Twitter generation.
• Design:  the importance of script layout for effective commentary.
• Exercise in Commentary Writing:  trainees get to practice their newly found skills by re-writing a personalised script into a neutral commentary.
• Exercise Writing to Pictures:  trainees watch The Apprentice without the commentary and write their own cues.  Comparisons between online and broadcast versions.
• Question and Answer session.