Arts & Entertainment, Writing
The West Wing Writers' Room: Part 3
Lesson time 16:32 min
Aaron and the students continue to work together to break episode 501 of The West Wing.
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Topics include: Virtual writers' room
Teaches Screenwriting
Aaron Sorkin teaches you the craft of film and television screenwriting.
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OK, so I want to hear from you guys. I just want to hear your off the top of your head, unformed, bad ideas. OK? This is the time now for bad ideas. And feel free to reach outside the box. There is no reason-- we've done this several times on the show. And I like it when we do. There's no reason why this episode has to begin 2 minutes after the last episode. It can. That was my first thought. It can begin five years ago. It can be a flashback episode. If we hadn't done it already, and we've done it twice, you could cut back and forth between the campaign when everything's great to now when everything is terrible. But we did that with the top of season 2 with . Let me hear from you guys. What do you think so far? I have two intertwined story lines. So one of them is related to Zoe's boyfriend waking up and CJ and the West Wing crew finding out that his drug dealer is basically linked to this white supremacist group of, like, Christian fundamentalists. And they're trying to resurrect this group called the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. And so they're basically-- That's a real group. That's a real group that basically went defunct in the '80s. So these are basically young Christian fundamentalists who supposedly have kidnapped Zoe. But they don't know yet that she's been kidnapped. They just know that this might be a link that I think Nancy McNally had alluded to at the end of season 4. So that's the information that they have right now is that they have this drug dealer. There's a supremacist group that he's linked to. And maybe they have Zoe. And then the other story is linked to John Goodman's character as the acting president. And the Qumari terrorists, or Bahji operatives. Have basically sent a video to the White House claiming responsibility for Zoe's kidnapping. And the footage basically shows a captured girl, who kind of resembles Zoe. But they can't confirm for sure that it actually is her. But going off of this video basically that is not leaked to the press yet, Leo and Glenn Allen Walken and the situation room, basically, are forced to decide whether or not to storm the place, because the CIA is located-- they pinpointed where this place is, where they shot the footage and where Zoe might be located. So the question is whether or not to stage this rescue mission, which may very well incite a war between Qumar, which is a US ally at the moment in order to save the president's daughter. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there. But I'm confused about one thing. They've got footage of someone who's going to turn out to not be Zoe. Right? Yes. But based on where this footage was shot, they were able to somehow recognize this place, which I buy. If anybody has seen the movie The Good Shepherd-- Yes. In that movie, there is-- and this is talking about te...
About the Instructor
Aaron Sorkin wrote his first movie on cocktail napkins. Those napkins turned into A Few Good Men, starring Jack Nicholson. Now, the Academy Award-winning writer of The West Wing and The Social Network is teaching screenwriting. In this class, you’ll learn his rules of storytelling, dialogue, character development, and what makes a script actually sell. By the end, you’ll write screenplays that capture your audience’s attention.
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Aaron Sorkin
Aaron Sorkin teaches you the craft of film and television screenwriting.
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