My name's Stuart Hepburn. I'm a screenwriter and actor.
I've been screenwriting and acting for about thirty years. For the past four years
I've been working at the University of the West of Scotland where I'm
teaching screenwriting, performance and I'm the new team leader of the new contemporary screen
acting programme.
I was always interested in communication
so my degree was in politics and sociology. So I was very interested in how people communicated
with one another but I never ever got any structured training as such. At my final year of university
I got involved in drama
and then we
were doing a play and we needed the play rewritten and I rewrote it. And
then I started writing a few sketches and then I was fortunate enough to be asked to write a show
for the Tron and the show for the Tron became a wee
play that I wrote for television. So it kind of gently
and gradually developed. When
your a screenwriter your working for a committee.
You can have all the great ideas in the world
but you've got someone who's funding it, someone's who's directing it, someone's who's producing it and really you
have to keep them in the loop.
So you can never be the full
master of your own creativity
and so what I really learned was
maybe think before opening my mouth at meetings is what I've finally managed to learn.
If you want to be creative hang about with the creatives
so learn the craft, it is a craft,
learn the skills, go to a skills accredited college and get those skills
but hang about with creative people.
None of us can be creative on our own, we all need to work with a team. Unless we are novelists then we are okay.
So if you need to work with a team, work with other creative people and the whole
is always greater than some of the creative parts.