Nathan Skid

Harvey Ovshinsky's six-month screenwriting class promises enough feedback and guidance to help participants generate a complete draft by graduation. View larger photo

Award-winning Ann Arbor filmmaker and storyteller Harvey Ovshinsky will lead a six-month support group for aspiring or frustrated screenwriters beginning Monday at the Community House in Birmingham.

Through his session, “How to complete your first movie script in six months,” Ovshinsky aims to give sufficient feedback and guidance to assure participants paying $325 will have a complete draft when they graduate.

“This is a group energy thing. Everybody works hard and suffers hard with their writing. In a group, the participants stop whining and start doing their dreams. They do their homework,” said Ovshinsky, 60, the CEO of HKO Media Inc. in Ann Arbor. “They polish the product by writing and rewriting and rewriting again. That's the 11th first rule in storytelling.”

Ovshinsky normally offers once-a-month, three-hour classes in Ann Arbor and Grosse Pointe. Participants usually number 15 and come from a variety of backgrounds. This is the first time he's led a six-month session, and depending on its success, he may offer it at regular intervals.

So far, more than 35 people have signed up.

Any number of books can teach structure, Ovshinsky said, but working as a group forces people to write in a format so compelling that other members begin to care as much about the plot as the author.

Participants will receive a sample script, a bibliography of screenwriting books, publications and contests, information about software for formatting scripts, and the latest version of Ovshinsky's popular handout, “The Ten Most Important First Rules of Storytelling.”

Catherine Varner, a former English teacher for the Chelsea Public Schools and lawyer, survived a bone marrow transplant in April. She signed up for Ovshinsky's screenwriting class in Ann Arbor because she wants to write a movie about doctors and cancer patients.

“Writing is all I really want to do. My family has to tear me away to fix dinner. Harvey has a way of letting everybody be OK with who they are at what stage without embarrassing or shaming. Not always easy to do,” Varner said.

“A screenplay has an amazing structure of 120 pages, more blank space than blank ink. I share the secret sauce,” Ovshinsky said. Homework includes attending movies, reading screenplays, and writing practice dialog, characterizations and scenes.

Can graduates find a market for their screenplays?

“Yes, we're getting there” said Mark Adler, director of the Michigan Production Alliance, a nonprofit group dedicated to helping find opportunities for the production community in Southeast Michigan.

According to Adler, the sheer number of movies filmed in Michigan is incubating an interest in venture capital for filmmaking and sparking an interest in home-grown screenplays. He noted that Michigan has luminaries such as University of Michigan professor Jim Burstein, horror film writer and producer Sam Raimi, now living on the west coast, and the people who taught Raimi, Bob Dyke and Bill Dear, creators of the “Northville Cemetery Massacre.”

Over the past year, Ovshinsky shifted half of his business to screenwriting classes. This is up from a third of his activity in previous years. He continues, however, to provide video production and story consulting services to clients such as Detroit Receiving Hospital, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Focus: HOPE.

HKO Media sales totaled $188,693 in 2009, down from $309,473 in 2008 and $211,276 in 2007. Ovshinsky is the only employee.

To register for “How to complete your first movie script in six months,” call the Community House at (248) 644-5832, or visit hkomedia.com. For a format sample, click here.