March 4 – Special Pre-Oscars Meeting (FREE)

StoryBoard Development Group Presents

A Special Exclusive StoryBoardDG.com Pre-Oscars Event!

Meet online from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on March 4th (the Monday before the 96th Academy Awards) to discuss this year’s ten Oscar-nominated screenplays!

It’s Awards Season again, which means it’s time for our 2nd Annual FREE pre-Oscars session of StoryBoard! Join us for a casual conversation about each of the ten nominated screenplays and discuss their chances of winning the industry’s top prize.

***HOW TO REGISTER*** If you wish to participate in this free pre-Oscars event, please send an email to StoryBoardDG@gmail.com prior to March 4 and you will receive an email with login instructions on the day of the event.

Don’t worry about reading the scripts. Just try to see as many of the films as you can before the meeting.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

American Fiction
Cord Jefferson

Barbie
Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach

Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan

Poor Things
Tony McNamara

The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet

The Holdovers
David Hemingson

Maestro
Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer

May December
Samy Burch

Past Lives
Celine Strong

DANNY HERCULES will lead the not-so-in-depth discussion. Danny is the creator, publisher, and one of the authors of ScripTipps, a line of inexpensive ebooks on screenwriting conceived in part by his participation in StoryBoard. An award-winning filmmaker, Danny was co-founder and president of San Diego Filmmakers and sat on the board of directors of Scriptwriters Network where he ran their writers groups and staged readings programs. In 2012 he published the popular young adult Christmas novel North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus and later adapted it into a musical through the Academy of New Musical Theatre, where he also wrote the book for Chaturbate: The Musical, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2017. A member of StoryBoard’s Screenplay Discussion Group since November 2009, Danny has never missed a meeting.

Note: StoryBoard will also hold our regular Screenplay Development Group meeting on Monday, March 11, when comedy writer Steve Kaplan will lead an in-depth analysis and discussion of Poor Things.

July 10 – Dunkirk

(registration deadline: Friday, July 7)

Meet on the Fox Studios backlot on July 10th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay DUNKIRK.

Logline: WWII Allied forces mount a mission to rescue 400,000 soldiers surrounded by the enemy after the Battle of Dunkirk.

Screenwriter: Writer-director CHRISTOPHER NOLAN gained acclaim for his second feature, Memento (2000), a noir thriller told in converging timelines as a man with short-term memory loss attempts to hunt down his wife’s killer. His Dark Knight trilogy has grossed more than $2.4 billion worldwide and his screenplays for Memento and Inception have both been nominated for Academy Awards. Dunkirk is his first film since 2014’s Interstellar, and his first film based on true events.

The film, which will be told from three perspectives (air, land, and sea) and will contain as little dialogue as possible, stars Tom Hardy (The Revenant), Kenneth Branagh (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets), Cillian Murphy (Scarecrow in the Dark Knight trilogy), Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies), and Harry Styles of One Direction in his acting debut.

Producers and Production Companies: As with all his films since Batman Begins, Nolan produced Dunkirk with his wife, Emma Thomas, through their London-based production company Syncopy, which also produced Man of Steel, on which Nolan shares a story credit.

Release Date: July 21 (Warner Bros.)

Rated PG-13. 107 minutes. 130 pages. Historical Drama, War, Action.

DANIEL P. CALVISI will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. Dan is a story analyst, speaker, screenwriter, and the author of Story Maps: How to Write a GREAT Screenplay, Story Maps: TV Drama, Story Maps: 12 Great Screenplays, and Story Maps: The Films of Christopher Nolan. He is a former Story Analyst for major studios like 20th Century Fox, Miramax, and New Line Cinema. He coaches writers, teaches webinars on writing for film and television with The Writers Store, and speaks at writing conferences and book signings. He lives in Los Angeles and holds a degree in Film and Television from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. To learn more about Story Maps and how you can work with Dan, visit ActFourScreenplays.com.