Jack is Chair of Film at the Columbia University School of the Arts.

He has taught these classes:

Writing and Script Analysis For Producers

This is a seminar for all second-year Creative Producing students. It’s about how to work with writers — how to analyze a screenplay, write coverage, and give notes. Every week, the class watches a movie and then breaks down its structure. It starts with classically constructed three-act movies, and proceeds to movies that have very different structures.

But producers can’t truly understand a writer’s experience until they’ve been there themselves. So each student also writes either a short film script or the first act of a feature screenplay. The student writes an outline; revises the outline; writes a first draft; gives notes on someone else’s draft; takes the notes on their own draft; rewrites someone else’s script; writes a “crazy draft” (in which characters who live, die; characters who die, live; characters who don’t meet fall in love; characters change age, gender, profession; etc.); and then writes a final draft.

Story Structure

This is a seminar for second-year Screenwriting and Directing students. It’s very similar to WASAP, but without the all the writing (and with different movies on the syllabus).

Role of the Producer

This is a lecture class for all first-year students in the Columbia film program. It’s an overview of the producing process in film and television, from identifying material through marketing and distribution.