In-Residence workshops

Coaching writers
& Writing in-residence

A place and an approach dedicated to screenwriting and story construction

Supporting writing for film and series, exploring new approaches to facilitate the construction of stories, to help writers find a personal approach, to produce narrative with meaning: a blueprint for a powerful film 

Film, series, pre-writing for fiction, acceleration and compaction of ideas: the right support for the right project

Throughout the year, from our HQ at the tip of the Finistère (Brittany, France), we issue Calls for Projects, targeting scriptwriters, writer-directors and producers, corresponding to a range of script-writing schemes:

At Le Groupe Ouest in Brittany, writers are cherished! They are hosted in-residence in Plouneour-Brignogan on the windswept coast, where they work in small groups coached by script-consultants experienced in coaching writers for international networks of independent cinema or writing for series. Meticulous organisation is required to enable the writers to plunge unhindered into a deep exploration of their story. Below we reveal certain essential features of our unique coaching methods – without divulging our secret recipe!

Scriptwriting Coaching

Why such concern? It’s simple: a scriptwriter’s job is way more difficult than most people think and is often the most lengthy and laborious part in the making of a film or a series. The writers are at the base of such creations and we need a variety geographic and social backgrounds, to depict our world in order to help understand it. Providing quality coaching to today’s writers is key to delivering rich and powerful movies for future generations.

Strengthening the fundamentals of European independent cinema

The aim behind working closely with writers is to reinforce European independent cinema at its core as it seeks to open up to new audiences. It’s during the harrowing writing process that each individual strategy is defined which the writer will use to connect with the audience. This stage is key for unlocking the essence of the film which cannot be reconstructed during the shooting or the editing.

Enhancing the conception of European series

Through a highly collective approach enriched with the expertise gained from recent research in cognitive sciences, neurosciences or human sciences, we offer writers new material to help develop their creative singularity and also the narrative power of projects.

A cross-disciplinary approach to storytelling for film

Le Groupe Ouest’s approach has matured with the years of experience with hundreds of writers from Europe and around the world and through their endeavours to select the most useful and multiple methods for today’s and tomorrow’s writers.

There is a critical humanist issue at stake: how do the stories we write today resist the mind-numbing inflicted by a machine churning out narrative in industrial quantities from across the Atlantic? How can they help us forge a world of possibilities and imagination that we feel is an appropriate legacy for future generations.

A time and a place by the sea for exchanging ideas

Le Groupe Ouest’s advocates a cosy working environment reinvigorated by the briny sea air, with long-term perspectives taking gestation time into account. It’s an exchange and nourishing of points of view, it’s where the painstaking construction-reconstruction phases are supervised by consultants, themselves scriptwriters confronted daily with the same writing difficulties. At Le Groupe Ouest, discussion is the modus operandi. The Raconte-moi (Tell Me) is also a means for reshaping or improving the writer’s own personal creative playing ground.