Summer Course in Art and Artificial Intelligence
Duration: 45h
Start: July 1 and 15
Place: Madrid
Takes different approaches to building engaging and complex characters
Both in genre cinema and in more authorial proposals, we tell and are moved by stories of characters.
Their desires, the decisions they make, their actions, their fears, their contradictions; a range of emotions that go through them and generate strong empathy towards them.
Every story describes an emotional journey of a person who faces a conflict and, in doing so, changes. These elements are always present in all stories, although not in the same way.
In this course you will learn to create characters by working through creative exercises, script and film analysis, and rehearsing a scene with actors/actresses.
Title
Summer Course in Character Creation
Duration
45 hours
Date
July 2025
Place
In person in Madrid
Language
Spanish
Takes different approaches to building engaging and complex characters
Both in genre cinema and in more authorial proposals, we tell and are moved by stories of characters.
Their desires, the decisions they make, their actions, their fears, their contradictions; a range of emotions that go through them and generate strong empathy towards them.
Every story describes an emotional journey of a person who faces a conflict and, in doing so, changes. These elements are always present in all stories, although not in the same way.
In this course you will learn to create characters by working through creative exercises, script and film analysis, and rehearsing a scene with actors/actresses.
Request information about our studies
Find out about the options that studying at the largest Arts Campus in Madrid gives you. We will answer you as soon as possible!
Programme
- Sharing some criteria on narration in images. The revealing action and the transforming action. How the scene is built from space, time, light, sound, object, word and body.
- Definition of the character. Characterization process. Multidimensional characters vs. flat characters (archetype vs. stereotypes). Character and gender. The mask.
- The character's body. Energy and state. The history written in the bodies.
- Character psychology. Traumas, contradictions, dreams. The back story and the context.
- The point of view and imagination of the characters. The crisis.
- Character-driven plots: desire as a driver of action. Desire vs. duty.
- The network of characters. The subplots and theme. Functions of the secondary characters with respect to the main characters.
- He talks about the character. Strategies. Dialogues and communication anomalies.
- The character is revealed in each scene. Structure, changes, rhythm. Text and subtext. The underground scene.
- Exercises with actors: based on improvisations and based on a script.
- Three major models of action: fusion, non-fusion, hyperfusion. Origin and evolution. Crossings and influences. Character and aesthetics.
- Towards a personal look at the construction of characters.
Project:
- Analysis of scripts and films (whole and fragments).
- Writing (individual and group) of fiction scripts.
Teacher
Diego Sabanés
Screenwriter, director and researcher. Born in Buenos Aires, he arrived in Spain in 2000 with a scholarship from the Ibermedia Program. Since then he has worked between the two countries, shaping his own projects and participating in productions by other authors.
He has been part of the Residency program of the Film Academy and the Series Creation Laboratory of the SGAE. His projects have received support from institutions such as Hubert Bals Fund (Rotterdam), Talent Campus (Berlin), Cinecittà-Luce (Italy), Casa de América and the Film Academy (Spain). In 2015 he was a jury for Cinema Jove and the Proimágenes fund in Colombia.
He has written and directed the shorts Rats!, Guests always come back y The boy on the train, as well as the length White lies, based on stories by Julio Cortázar, for which he has received several awards at international festivals and five nominations for the Silver Condor in Argentina, as well as the award for the development of co-productions between Italy and Argentina awarded by the INCAA and Cinecittà-Luce.
He has written the documentary series Huesca, beyond a dream (First Video), Zero, the magazine that brought a country out of the closet (Movistar) and the Spanish version of The kiss of spider women by Manuel Puig, who directed Carlota Ferrer with Eusebio Poncela and Igor Yebra. Fiction Mediators, his most recent project, has been selected for the Iberseries Platino 2023 and Conecta Fiction 2024 markets.
In theater he has directed some short pieces of his own, two works by Rafael Spregelburd (lack of appetite y the extravagance), and the revival of Ana Diosdado's latest production, The heaven that you have promised me. He has also been a member of the company of Tristán Ulloa and Carolina Román for four years, collaborating on the works Adentro, Fireflies, Under construction y Broken toys.
He has been a professor at the EICTV (Cuba), the City of Light (Alicante), the Menéndez Pelayo University (Santander), the UBA (Argentina) and other international schools. He has published three co-authored research books on filmmakers of the 60s such as directors Juan Antonio Bardem and Manuel Antin and screenwriter Beatriz Guido.
Access and registration
Aimed at students aged 18 and over with basic audiovisual knowledge.
Fill out the form and an academic advisor will guide you through the next steps.
It is advisable to present an updated CV and portfolio in digital format.
At the end of the course, a diploma and certificate will be delivered attesting to having satisfactorily completed and passed it.
