Robert McKee
Story Seminar Australia 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2004
Story Seminar New Zealand 2004

Author, Screenwriter, Script Editor, Instructor, Robert McKee is the most widely respected and celebrated screenwriting instructor in the world today. For 20 years, McKee's Story Seminar has been the world's ultimate story class - virtually a career imperative - for everyone who creates, evaluates, interprets and sells stories.

A Fulbright Scholar, he is the author of the award winning bestseller, 'STORY - Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting'. His Story Seminar draws sell out houses all over the world and he is a project consultant to network television producers and major Hollywood film studios. Paramount annually purchases this course for their entire development staff.

His former students' accomplishments are unmatched: They have won 27 Academy Awards, 141 Emmy Awards, 20 Writers Guild of America Awards, and 17 Directors Guild of America Awards. Past students include Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings trilogy), Charlie Kaufman (Adaptation, Being John Malkovich), William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) amongst thousands of others, from first time writers right through to Hollywood’s A-list filmmakers and screenwriters.

Robert McKee quotes from The Age article July 4, 2000

"The most important thing is that until you have actually made a conscious effort to study the craft, you are never free. The big misunderstanding here is the belief that if I just work on inspiration, I'm free. The opposite is true. When you're working on inspiration alone, you're a slave to habit and you're not aware of it. When you master the craft, it becomes a liberation not an inhibition."

"The foundation of what I teach is what I want, is for writers to be free. To be genuinely original and fresh and make it work for the audience is to master the craft. There's a reason Picasso was Picasso... His early paintings look like Flemish masterpieces. By his early 20s, he'd mastered everything... he summed up his whole life as 'the struggle against my overwhelming capacity to draw'. You need complete command of the materials in front of you and then you're free. I want my students to become Picassolike, to say so much with one little line and image."

back to tours

Upcoming Story Seminar Australia 2009

Melbourne Story 19, 20, 21 June 2009
9:30am - 8:30pm on each of the three days at
Kino Cinema, Lower Collins Place, 45 Collins Street Melbourne

Sydney Story 26, 27, 28 June 2009
9:30am - 8:30pm on each of the three days, venue TBC

Click here for more information