Building on a year of Film London Labs covering everything from writing and production to breaking into TV and the world of interactive, we took the opportunity of everyone being stuck at home in Covid-lockdown to go deep.

Film London Labs: The Writers Sessions was an extended Lab that took place in seven sessions across three weeks, led by the amazing Angeli Macfarlane of Script Cube and featuring some really special speakers drilling into their process and their best advice for writers working on longform projects, both feature film and TV.

How can psychoanalytic theory help writers?

Guest speaker psychotherapist Arabel Charlaff in June, on creating psychological consistency in your characters:

“If you really understand where your character comes from, then you'll understand who they are, their hopes, their fears, their desires, their vulnerabilities. The things which they hide from other people, the things which they hide from themselves. And this will provide you with a blueprint of what your character is likely to do in any relationship and the environment, and also an understanding of why they're doing it.”

Here are the speakers who joined us in June:

• Arabel Charlaff, story-editor turned psychodynamic psychotherapist who uses psychoanalytic theory to help writers bring their characters to life.
• Alrick Riley, Bafta-winning English television director (credits too numerous to list, but they include The Cops, NCIS, The Walking Dead and Shonda Rhimes’ Bridgerton)
• Mae Martin, comedian and writer (Feel Good, Channel 4/Netflix)

Guest speaker Mae Martin in Feel Good (Click through for trailer.)

Testimonials from some June writers:

If you missed it, we’ve got you. We’re going to run it again, starting on September 7th.

Sign up to attend the Labs.