stephen cleary's thriller and horror lectures

Lectures with Stephen Cleary.

Stephen Cleary

Lecture 1: Thriller, Thursday 14 May
The Thriller is the most consistently successful and enduring of all film genres, but there are also many different kinds of thriller: the chase thriller, spy thriller, psychological thriller, detective thriller, conspiracy thriller, heist thriller to name but a few.

Stephen Cleary's Thriller lecture looks at the roots of the thriller, the underlying principles of the genre, the distinctive qualities of the various types of thriller and demonstrates exactly how, in the writing, you pull the audience to the edge of their seats and then keep them there.

Lecture 2: Horror, Friday 15 May
The Horror Film has been on the up over the past few years both in Europe and in the international film industry. But if you're looking to write, direct, produce or develop Horror films, where do you start? 

In this lecture with Stephen Cleary we'll explore where Horror comes from, see how the key elements of Sex and Death and Fear play through character and plot, discover the fundamental importance of metaphor in the genre, as well as examining in detail the essential structural rules and principles of Horror screenwriting.

Stephen Cleary
Stephen Cleary was Head of Development at the UK's national film Agency, British Screen, for three and a half years. He developed over 60 produced feature films including Land and Freedom (Ken Loach), Before the Rain (Milcho Manchevski), Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones) and Butterfly Kiss (Michael Winterbottom).

He founded Arista, Europe's largest private film development agency in 1996. Graduates of Arista's training programs have written, directed or produced over 250 feature films and thousands of hours of television drama.

Presented by Film Victoria