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The University of Texas at San Antonio’s (UTSA) film and media studies department launched the San Antonio Screenwriters’ Spring Break (SSB) in 2023 as a way to engage students and provide them with an exciting, immersive learning experience. After a brief pause in 2024, UTSA film and media studies brought it back this year, with one extra day and an additional instructor. SSB creates a space where students can work with professional television writers who mentor them as they develop original television show ideas in a small group setting. In addition to developing their skills and ideas, students also build relationships with one another and with professional television writers who serve as a source of support and mentorship. After completing the program, many students continue to work with their groups to develop their ideas. The program is in high demand. This year, there were twice as many applicants as there were spaces.
Here, we share a look at the benefits of such a program and an in-depth look at how UTSA ran the program, which can serve as inspiration for other colleges and universities.
Behind the Scenes: Coordinating People, Ideas, and Logistics
Administrative Preparation:
According to Paul Ardoin, director of film and media studies at UTSA, planning for SSB starts a full year before the event. “We have to select ideal dates including diplomatic pestering to try to align university and local school calendars, secure staff support, secure talent with an eye not only toward impressive creative and professional accomplishment, but also genre variety and a commitment to mentorship, arrange their travel details, secure flights and hotel rooms, coordinate honorarium payment, (and) secure internal and external funding.”
The “talent” Ardoin is referring to are the television writers who instruct students in their writing rooms. John Herrera, associate professor of practice, began teaching for UTSA film and media studies back in the fall of 2022. He is a working television writer, whose credits include Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. He led one of the rooms and was instrumental in recruiting the other talent, which included Herrera’s writing partner, Nina Fiore, and Tian Jun Gu, who were both recommended to the program by Herrera. Raymond Arturo Perez, who is a San Antonio native and friend to the program, and Brandon James Childs (who was recommended by a different faculty member) rounded out the group. All five are professional television writers who were not only passionate about writing but also about helping students.
Instructional Preparation:
Once all the professional writers are selected, they all meet and agree to coordinate how they will run the rooms. Because of time constraints, the instructors all agreed that students should turn their ideas in ahead of time.
Student Preparation:
“Prior to the event, we solicited series ideas from the students,” said Hererra.Each student wrote a one-page description of a series concept and characters. The instructors evaluated the ideas and had the students vote for their favorite. “Between that vote and each instructor’s discretion, we chose the idea we’d focus on,” said Herrera.
The Event in Action
With the ideas selected, 55 students showed up on day one, ready to work. SSB took place during UTSA’s Spring Break, which meant the students were free to focus all their attention on their writing room activities.
They spent four days in their rooms, fine-tuning their ideas and giving them life under the guidance of their instructors. They also received valuable career advice on how to break into Hollywood. At the end of the four days, each group emerged with a finished pitch deck of their show idea.
While some college students were hard at work creating and developing their television show ideas into pitch decks, others were working to guide high school students as they developed movie ideas in a similar event for high school students that ran simultaneously with the event for college students.
The Benefits of an Immersive Program
Hererra described the program as “multi-faceted.” “It forces everyone to speak up and express themselves. We have students on all ends of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and the time and method allow us the chance to give the wallflowers space to get comfortable. But also, every writer’s room requires diverse brains — some are idea people who never stop creating, some are detail people who know how to take those ideas and lay them out, some are visual and great at creating visual aids or illustrating concepts cinematically. But above all, we are taking days during which none of us use phones or much technology (besides laptops to type on and create visual decks) to construct complicated, longform stories. In a world where attention spans are decreasing, seminars like this allow students to embrace subjects that are complicated and require time to fully understand and explain to others.”
According to Ardoin, it helps students build skills that are applicable — not just in television writing, but across other academic disciplines as well. “They don’t just become better writers and storytellers,” said Ardoin. “They also become better collaborators, which helps them in all parts of their creative, academic, and professional lives. And they take their new knowledge of story structure, character development, audience expectations, etc., back to their artistic classes in directing, video production, etc., as well.”
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