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Admissions 

Seri­al Eyes is a full-time course based in Ber­lin at the Deutsche Film- und Fernse­hakademie Ber­lin (DFFB). Dur­ing the first semester, lec­tures and work­shops take place at the DFFB itself. With the start of the second semester in Janu­ary, the pro­gramme takes place in extern­al sem­in­ar rooms loc­ated in the Ger­man cap­it­al. Par­ti­cipants will have at least one study trip to anoth­er European city as well as vis­it­ing the Séries Mania Fest­iv­al in Lille. Par­ti­cipants must be avail­able and present full-time through­out the programme.

Requirements 

Applic­ants must be from the European Uni­on, Ice­land, Nor­way, Albania, Bos­nia and Herzegov­ina, North Mace­do­nia, Montenegro, Repub­lic of Ser­bia, Geor­gia, Mol­dova, Ukraine, or Tunisia. Applic­ants from oth­er coun­tries may apply for a very lim­ited num­ber of places on the programme. 

Advanced know­ledge of com­mon dram­at­ur­gic­al con­cepts for fic­tion­al / seri­al storytelling is required. Applic­ants should have at least 1–3 years of pro­fes­sion­al exper­i­ence as a screen­writer and should have writ­ten at least one pro­duced epis­ode for a seri­al­ized format for a TV chan­nel or a platform. 

Applic­ants should enter the pro­gramme with mul­tiple ideas for ori­gin­al TV or web series that could be fur­ther developed over the course of the programme.

A high stand­ard of spoken and writ­ten Eng­lish is essential.

Required Applic­a­tion Material 

  • CV with detailed work, train­ing exper­i­ence and filmo­graphy (if applicable)
  • Per­son­al let­ter of motiv­a­tion out­lining why you would like to par­ti­cip­ate in the Seri­al Eyes pro­gramme, your expect­a­tions and your pro­fes­sion­al goals (max. num­bers of char­ac­ters 3800)
  • Ana­lys­is of a recent scrip­ted TV drama series. The ana­lys­is must dis­cuss the main char­ac­ter­’s emo­tion­al arc, the arena (time and set­ting), the main conflict(s) and the struc­ture of the series (max. num­bers of char­ac­ters 3800)
  • Pro­pos­als for two poten­tial TV series con­cepts you would like to devel­op at Seri­al Eyes ( max. num­ber of char­ac­ters 2200–2500 each)
  • A full-length screen­play (fea­ture film, TV drama or com­edy) in Eng­lish. If no Eng­lish-lan­guage script is avail­able, you can sub­mit a full-length script in its ori­gin­al lan­guage plus an excerpt of 10 pages from that script trans­lated into Eng­lish. Scripts should be format­ted in stand­ard industry format.
  • For applic­ants request­ing a tuition fee waver: Schol­ar­ship applic­a­tion let­ter that spe­cifies your fin­an­cial reas­ons for the schol­ar­ship request
  • A let­ter of recom­mend­a­tion in Eng­lish by a pro­du­cer or broadcaster
  • All applic­a­tion mater­i­als must be in Eng­lish and sub­mit­ted online via the Seri­al Eyes website

Selec­tion Process 

Based on the applic­a­tion mater­i­al, the selec­tion com­mit­tee will make a first selec­tion con­sid­er­ing the author’s voice, skills, style and over­all artist­ic tal­ent. In the second round, we will ask the 20 short­l­is­ted applic­ants to write in 2–3 days a short doc­u­ment in our second round assign­ment based on a cre­at­ive brief and invite them to an online inter­view with the Head of Studies. 

In select­ing the twelve par­ti­cipants, we shall also take account of the over­all com­pos­i­tion of the group (gender/​country mix) and the con­tri­bu­tion the applic­ant will make to his/​her peers. 

Costs 

The pro­gram fee is €4,500 and includes tuition, travel expenses and accom­mod­a­tion dur­ing the study trips and neces­sary accreditations. 

Scholarships 

Seri­al Eyes offers up to three MEDIA – Cre­at­ive Europe schol­ar­ships for applic­ants. Along­side each applicant’s coun­try of res­id­ence and cit­izen­ship, we shall con­sider the fol­low­ing cri­ter­ia in our alloc­a­tion policy: the participant’s poten­tial in the European audi­ovisu­al industry, the participant’s fin­an­cial situ­ation, their back­ground and the situ­ation of their loc­al film industry. The schol­ar­ship cov­ers the full tuition fee. 

Interested? 

Want to take part in Seri­al Eyes? The applic­a­tions round for Sea­son 12 is now open! It will close on the 8th of April, at 6pm. 

We wish you good luck ! 

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