Peter Markham
Peter Markham is a creative consultant, teacher, author, and former directing head at the American Film Institute Conservatory. His alumni, award winners at major festivals, have notable careers in film and TV. Prior to teaching, he was a director in the UK, and worked with filmmakers including Anthony Minghella and Martin Scorsese.
Directing Class with Peter Markham
Take directing classes with former AFI conservatory directing head Peter Markham:
Deep Screenplay Analysis for the Filmmaker
An exploration of the nexus of dramatic narrative and the language of visual storytelling following the topics examined in Peter Markham's book (see below).
Narrative Point of View in Visual Storytelling
How to connect your audience to your character through camera, staging, sound, and editing. This class makes use of scenes and sequences from over 120 years of cinema.
How to Watch a Movie as a Filmmaker to Develop your Craft
You can watch a film as an audience, as a critic, as an academic, but also as a filmmaker. These classes, each exploring a feature by a prominent director, show how forensic analysis of every element of creative craft can render watching a film a film school in itself.
Masterworks: Notorious and the visual language of Alfred Hitchcock
Masterworks: Gangs of New York and the visual language of Martin Scorsese
Masterworks: Hereditary and the visual language of Ari Aster
What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay
An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors
A structured perspective on the crucial interface of director and screenplay, this book encompasses twenty-two seminal aspects of the approach to story and script that a director needs to understand before embarking on all other facets of the director’s craft.
Drawing on seventeen years of teaching filmmaking at a graduate level and on his prior career as a director and in production at the BBC, Markham shows how the filmmaker can apply rigorous analysis of the elements of dramatic narrative in a screenplay to their creative vision, whether of a short or feature, TV episode or season. Combining examination of such fundamental topics as story, premise, theme, genre, world and setting, tone, structure, and key images with the introduction of less familiar concepts such as cultural, social, and moral canvas, narrative point of view, and the journey of the audience, What’s The Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay applies the insights of each chapter to a case study—the screenplay of the short film Contrapelo, nominated for the Jury Award at Tribeca in 2014.
This book is an essential resource for any aspiring director who wants to understand exactly how to approach a screenplay in order to get the very best from it, and an invaluable resource for any filmmaker who wants to understand the important creative interplay between the director and screenplay in bringing a story to life.
“Peter Markham is a passionate, rigorous, devoted, and (most importantly) mischievous teacher. I cherish my time as his student at AFI, and count myself fortunate to now have this comprehensive guide to refer to.”
Ari Aster, writer-director of Hereditary and Midsommar
“Peter Markham taught me at AFI. With each class I fell deeper under the spell of 'point of view.' To see it as a secret passageway into the heart of any story. He approaches directing as a strengthening of skills by which you are able to do the hard work of externalizing what’s on the inside.”
Zal Batmanglij, Co-Writer, Director, The OA