Lesson 15 - Developing the Supporting Characters

Chris Huntley is an Academy Award-winning software developer and Vice President of Write Brothers® Inc. Chris is also the co-creator of Dramatica®, an acclaimed theory of story and the basis of the popular Writer's DreamKit™ and Dramatica® Pro software. Chris regularly teaches workshops and classes on story structure and development.

While an undergraduate in Cinema Production at the University of Southern California, Chris created several short films, including the award-winning animated short, “Daddy’s Gone a’ Hunting,” which was chosen as the short film screened before the world premiere of the George Romero film, “Dawn of the Dead.” After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Cinema Production, Chris worked for several years in the film industry.

In 1982, Chris went into business with fellow USCinema alum, Stephen Greenfield, and formed Screenplay Systems Inc., now doing business as Write Brothers® Inc. Together they created Scriptor™, the world’s first professional screenplay formatting software, for which they won a 1994 Technical Achievement Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They went on to produce other award winning, industry standard software, such as Movie Magic® Budgeting and Movie Magic® Scheduling, Dramatica® Pro, Writer’s DreamKit, Movie Magic® Screenwriter, StoryView™, Word Menu® and more.

As co-creator of the Dramatica® story theory, the co-author of “Dramatica: A New Theory of Story” (1994), and co-developer of the Dramatica® Pro and Writer’s DreamKit™ software, Chris has spent thirty years working with narrative theory and its practical application.

Today, Chris splits his time working as Vice President of Write Brothers® Inc. between design work for new products and overseeing day-to-day business affairs. Chris also spends a fair amount of time giving workshops in story development in the U.S. and abroad.

Educated at Harvard and The Yale School of Drama, he began his writing career as a playwright: Failing, Rain in Lent, and Peter and Wendy.

Among his  produced screenplays: Under the Volcano, directed by John Huston;  Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, directed by Peter Hunt;  The Enormous Radio, an episode of Tales from the Dark Side. His poetry and fiction have been published in BOMB and the Mississippi Review.

 

Guy has taught screenwriting at the Film Division of the Columbia University School of the Arts for over twenty years.  He also teaches at Columbia and Barnard College.  And has taught the history of modern drama at Princeton and NYU.

 

The Last Christmas, a screenplay written in collaboration with his wife Jeannine Dominy, is creeping up on pre-production. Most recently he has completed two stage play, Passage and Still Life with Nude, and a screenplay Hawker.

 

His book on screenwriting, Screenwriter’s Compass: Character as True North, was published by Focal Press in March, 2012.

Jason J.Tomaric is a multiple Emmy, Telly and CINE Award-winning director and cinematographer. With four feature films, sixty commercials, music videos and an educational DVD series on the market, Jason's approach to filmmaking has made for a successful, fulfilling career. Jason has worked in over 20 countries as a director and has taught at some of the nation's most prestigious film schools including UCLA and the New York Film Academy. Jason's book, "Filmmaking"(Focal Press) is available in bookstores worldwide.

 

Jason is also the creator of FilmSkills.

 Ken Dancyger is Chairman of the Undergraduate Department of Film and Television, New York University, one of the leading programs in Film/TV in the United States, and a past president of the University Film and Video Association. Has also taught various film courses in the United States at Boston University, Emerson College, and Clark University and in Canada at Sheridan College and York University. He has edited a number of his own productions for film and television and is a screenwriter of numerous documentaries and dramas for film and television. In addition, he has been a director, production manager, producer, story editor, and script consultant for various films. He is the author of Broadcast Writing, Alternative Scriptwriting, The Technique of Film and Video Editing and Writing the Short Film (Focal Press).

 

He is currently rewriting an animated feature based on the popular Tadeo Jones comic books for El Toro and Warner Bros. Pictures, for whom he also worked as executive script consultant on the film, "Lope,"Writer, “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” “Melrose Place,” “The Magnificent Seven,” and MTV’s “Undressed”