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Screenwriting BA

College of Liberal Arts / Fine Arts
Undergraduate major / Bachelor of Arts

About The Program

Focused on exceptional visual storytelling and inspirational content, the Screenwriting Program at Metro State teaches artistic individuals how to create commercially viable, socially conscious media (scripts, films, TV shows, documentaries, web series, etc.) by building creative & technical skills, offering critical perspectives, and providing practical preparation for a career in professional screenwriting, filmmaking and/or media production.

The only of its kind in the state of Minnesota, our Screenwriting BA Program is unique because it covers every step in the creative process. Led by diverse, award-winning faculty, students learn to harness their imaginations and write original screenplays; collaborate, produce, direct, shoot, and edit films; and then exhibit and share their films with audiences in Metro State University’s 320 seat digital cinema, Film Space, located on the Saint Paul campus.

Students attend film festivals, screenplay readings, panels, and other professional development events in the Twin Cities as part of normal course work. This community engagement is woven into the curriculum and offers valuable networking and learning opportunities. Each student completes multiple screenplays and short films that are both important creative accomplishments and professional portfolio samples. A required internship helps bridge the gap from college to career.

For a look at some of the work of students and alumni in the program, check out the Lakes List, a collection of exemplary screenplays for movies, short films, web series and TV shows, written by the screenwriting students and alumni of the Screenwriting BA program.

Student outcomes

  • Development of original cinematic voices as demonstrated by writing non-derivative, boundary-breaking, market-ready screenplays, professionally presented, with identifiable themes and compelling stories as demonstrated within the written screenplays
  • Understanding of craft tools, including but not limited to concepts of character development, character journey, and story structure as demonstrated by effective use of these within the written screenplays
  • Preparation for a career in screenwriting, filmmaking, and/or into entry level positions in film, video and TV production, related media fields within a corporate or nonprofit environment, and/or graduate school
  • Understanding of the film and TV industry, including but not limited to national and local filmmaking and screenwriting community resources (grants, fellowships, etc.)

Related minors

How to enroll

Current students: Declare this program

Once you’re admitted as an undergraduate student and have met any further admission requirements your chosen program may have, you may declare a major or declare an optional minor.

Future students: Apply now

Apply to Metropolitan State: Start the journey toward your Screenwriting BA now. Learn about the steps to enroll or, if you have questions about what Metropolitan State can offer you, request information, visit campus or chat with an admissions counselor.

Get started on your Screenwriting BA

Program eligibility requirements

Students must have completed a minimum of 30 credits before declaring a screenwriting major.

Courses and Requirements

SKIP TO COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Requirements (120 credits)

+ Core courses: (24 credits)

Five courses and one internship are required.

The process of writing narrative screenplays will be introduced through writing exercises, screenplay readings, film viewings and discussion. Writing exercises will explore creativity, individual voice and practical skills. Writing in screenplay format will also be covered. Students will finish with at least one complete short screenplay ready for production. This course provides a foundation for further study in screenwriting.

Full course description for Beginning Screenwriting

Through writing exercises and screenwriting assignments students will explore and practice writing in a variety of forms including adaptations, webisodes, scripted series, or other emerging episodic forms. Films and screenplays will be analyzed and discussed for critical and historical perspectives. Professional development opportunities will be introduced.

Full course description for New Screenplay Forms

The course introduces the principles and practices of electronic filmmaking as a personal and creative art form. Students will engage in exercises and projects to explore and understand editing, camera work, light, composition, and sound. A variety of cinematic forms will be examined. Student screenplays may be produced. Students will film and edit individual creative projects.

Full course description for Film Production and Editing I

This course investigates the dramatic essence, creative demands, and craft of feature length screenwriting. Originality and distinctive voice will be analyzed and explored through readings and writing exercises. Students will write a rough draft feature length screenplay. Films and screenplays will be analyzed and discussed for critical and historical perspectives. Professional development opportunities will be presented.

Full course description for Advanced Screenwriting

In a supportive workshop environment, students will complete a market ready screenplay and prepare a portfolio of previous work. Students will also participate in community engagement opportunities such as attending film festivals and related professional networking events. Career development strategies will be presented. This is an opportunity to enhance screenwriting skills at an advanced level, reflect, and participate.

Full course description for Senior Capstone: Portfolio Prep

Internships offer students opportunities to gain deeper knowledge and skills in their chosen field. Students are responsible for locating their own internship. Metro faculty members serve as liaisons to the internship sites¿ supervisors and as evaluators to monitor student work and give academic credit for learning. Students are eligible to earn 1 credit for every 40 hours of work completed at their internship site.

Full course description for Screenwriting Individual Internship

+ Electives: (12 credits)

Choose at least three of the following courses equaling 12 credits or more. No course can count in two areas.

Special Topics is a course designation that is used to accommodate the exploration of various elements, themes, and creative techniques that supplement and enrich a student's artistic education within the screenwriting and film production craft framework. Topics will change from semester to semester. Topics may include, but are not limited to: Documentary Filmmaking, The Writers' Room Experience, Creative Financing and Distribution, Producing the Independent Film, and TV Studio Production. If more than one Special Topics course is taken in fulfillment of the major, they must be different course titles. Note: This course may be taken three times for credit as long as the topic is different.

Full course description for Special Topics: Variable Subtitles

This course centers the cinematic art from communities historically excluded from mainstream American cinema: Indigenous Cinema, Black and African-American Cinema, Women-led Cinema, Asian-American Cinema, Latinx-American Cinema, Queer (LGBTQ+) Cinema, Disability Cinema, among many others. The major goal of this course is to consciously and radically shift perspective in contemporary cinema studies away from the traditional film school canon to the above. We will discuss the causes of this suppression, study reports and statistics, discuss intersectionality, explore the effects this exclusion has had on American society, and analyze the barriers to inclusion. Past the history into the present, we will study films from the New Wave of Diversity in 21st Century American Cinema, explore their equitable aesthetics, and highlight equitable producing, financing and distribution options for filmmakers who are disabled as well as for Women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ+ filmmakers. Significant focus is…

Full course description for Excluded Voices of American Cinema

This is a 6 week course centered around the Catalyst Story Institute requiring 2-3 nights of travel to the Catalyst Content Festival in Duluth, MN, Minnesota's premier industry marketplace for independently produced episodic and narrative programming. Activities include panel discussions, film and TV screenings, table reads, pitch sessions, workshops, and networking with film and TV professionals. Transportation and lodging will be the responsibility of the student. Festival dates vary yet are always in early October.

Full course description for Catalyst Storieroad and Festival Experience

Through a hands on, learn by doing experience, students will select a project, plan the production, audition actors, work as crew filming on location, and direct a short digital film. Each student will edit their own individual project. This course offers a complete package overview of writing and directing low budget, short narrative digital films. This course may be taken twice for credit.

Full course description for Film Production and Editing II

This course explores the ways identities are presented, fantasized, manipulated and politicized in popular films. We will look at how images of self and other are constructed according to social, cultural, ethnic, and gendered meanings within film narratives through categories of race, sex, class, and gender. Students will be introduced to the vocabulary and primary theories of film analysis and focus on both sociological and psychoanalytical film theories and conduct an analysis of a film of their choice. The aim of this course is to give students the critical tools for analyzing how film both constructs and presents identities, which affects how we define ourselves, experience enjoyment, and relate to others.

Full course description for Cinema, Self and Other

This course uses currently playing films as entry points into a study of wider issues around film as an art form, cultural phenomenon and industry. Students attend various screenings of Hollywood blockbusters, low-budget art films and experimental works, and then analyze them and their significance relative to topics in film theory and aesthetics.

Full course description for Contemporary Cinema

This course introduces students to early conventions of representing women's lives on film, tracing how those representations changed and expanded the 1930s to the present. Focusing on the genre of "the woman's film," students will learn specific film analytic approaches and recognize how technical components of film-making affect narrative, character, subtext, and theme to influence how an audience responds to stories about women. The trajectory of the course ends in examining changes in the woman's film when representations of women become more diverse, and as more women participate in screenwriting and film-making. Assignments in the course will develop the student's ability to write critically about film, tying mechanical techniques to narrative analysis, using contemporary film theory to advance the student's own thesis on depictions of women in particular films.

Full course description for Women in Film

An opportunity for students to explore the world, world cultures and film traditions, and world issues through films from around the globe. The goal is to enrich students' film and cultural understanding of selected parts of the contemporary world.

Full course description for World Cinema

This course uses full-length playscripts, videos of plays and film adaptations to tour the dynamic traditions of the theater. Students are to demonstrate reading knowledge of all plays on the reading/viewing list through online discussions, critical/creative thinking activities, and the focused analysis of six short questions for each play read or watched. The playscripts are provocative and diverse, exploring theories and concepts of dramatic literature from multiple perspectives, and serving as an entry point into discussions about politics; social justice; and issues of identity, including race, gender, sexuality, class, and subjectivity.

Full course description for The Art of Reading Plays

Actor training can be life enhancing. In this class, advanced students are guided to discover, explore and develop their emotional, physical and psychological resources using varied acting exercises and techniques. Prerequisite: Acting II (MCTC) or equivalent (Screenwriting students exempt from prerequisites).

Full course description for Acting III

This course examines the ideas, individuals, institutions, and innovations that have contributed to the development of theater, from its precursors in the ancient world to the present day. Through the reading and viewing of seminal works, the essential elements of live theater - acting, directing, dramatic texts, design elements, performance space, and the audience - are explored with a focus on staging practices, aesthetics, and theatrical convention.

Full course description for The Evolution of Western Theater

Writing for the spoken word and for acting demands different skills than writing for the page. Develop your ear, your signature of voice, your sense of subtext. Through a variety of approaches, from improvisation to creative autobiography, students explore character, conflict and drama as metaphor. Writers with material they would like to explore or adapt for the stage are welcome. Expect to complete at least one short play.

Full course description for Playwriting I

Writing Short Creative Works is a multi-genre workshop designed for creative writers who wish to work exclusively on very short pieces. Students will deepen their knowledge of the general craft of writing, expand their personal writing horizons by writing outside familiar genres, and work intensively on drafting and revising short works. The range of writings possible in this class include poems, prose poems, personal essays, sudden fiction, humor writing, short-short memoirs and creative non-fiction, and other genre-defying work. This course may be repeated for credit.

Full course description for 1000 Words or Less

This class is a hands-on workshop that explores, explains and discusses all the essential aspects of craft employed in the writing of poetry, short fiction, short memoir and other, less easily-definable works of short creative writing. Character development, point of view, tense, dialogue, chronology, voice, narrative arc, pacing, tension within both scenes and an overall narrative, creative use of language, and all basic literary terms will be covered, with the goal of helping students tell a compelling story no matter the genre.

Full course description for Boot Camp: Creative Writing