With episodic storytelling currently in high demand, the MIDPOINT international script development training programme is organising a special workshop focused on developing television series, called Story Launch. The TV Lab head of studies is Alan Kingsberg, who has been teaching television writing at Columbia University since 1999 and has been a show runner on five animated television series, with a producing or writing credit on just under 220 half-hour episodes. The participants will work under the tutelage of film and television director and writer Rumle Hammerich, head of the film direction department at the Danish National Film School and former head of drama production at Danish national television station DR, and Steve Matthews, consulting producer on television series The Borgias, who also produced the award-winning gangster series Love/Hate and is currently serving as executive producer of drama development at HBO Europe Original Productions.

The workshop is a continuation of the development session that began in April, where writers, writer-director or writer-producer teams with projects focused on elaborating series concepts and pilot-episode scripts, while writers, producers, directors, television development executives, commissioning editors and readers with no project attached engaged in other writers’ projects and concentrated on preparing and developing an idea for a series.

Selected participants with a project will expand on the ongoing works; however, the workshop, scheduled to take place from 18-24 October in Prague, is also open to new applicants with or without a project. Half-hour (25-30 minutes) and one-hour series project proposals are eligible, while the focus is on “compelling stories and innovative series concepts that range from high end to grass roots”.

The deadline for applications is 31 August; more information can be found here.