Moira Buffini’s Screenwriters’ Lecture

Moira Buffini, has become known for her big screen adaptations. Bringing everything from graphic novel Tamara Drewe and Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre, to her own play Byzantium, to new audiences.

Until recently Buffini was best known as a writer for theatre. Now she is establishing herself as a playwright whose ambitious and confident vision refuses to be restricted by the confines of current theatre conventions.

On 16 September, Buffini took to the stage at BAFTA, 195 Piccadilly, for our 2011 Screenwriters’ Lecture Series.

• Read the transcript from the event

Sharing her experience as a “novice screenwriter” on Tamara Drewe, Buffini says she learnt “nothing in a screenplay can be set in stone.”

She reflected: “I had an idea what my role should be, which is the same role as a writer in a rehearsal room of a play, which is to take care of the writing and try and really, really finish it to the best of one’s ability. And finding myself in at the deep end I learnt really fast.

“I began to see how a scene develops as it’s filmed. How it evolves, how performances deepen and become more nuanced.”

Buffini also went on to share insights about the three scripts she wrote before Tamara Drewe was produced. Delving into why she feels writers have a lot in common with editors, and how the task of writing a screenplay’s ending is much more difficult than conceiving its beginning.