DS wants to do screenwriting

[Merrymaking]

Hi my DS17 is doing A Levels. He loves his film studies ALevel. He goes to drama school at the weekend and has had two short scripts performed as short plays at his drama school. He is interested in going screenwriting at uni. I am worried about future career prospects and will he end up with a degree that he won’t get a job related to. In essence will it be wasted time and money going for a degree that offers little life enhancement.
he is also doing maths and computer science ALevel. I had hoped he get into software engineering at uni.
advice welcome.

Could you encourage him to do something like screenwriting & Comms/PR, that will also be very writing based and will give him another career option.

Excellent choice. Know 2 people in the industry. With all of the streaming services, if he’s good he won’t have any problems finding work.

TBh, doesn’t really matter what you’d hoped for. It’s his life.
Software engineering will probably be obsolete in a few years anyway. AI.

Yes I think I’d like him to maybe doing creative writing and another subject too

Yes so true about his life and his choice. I just want him to be happy but worry about life chances with such a competitive market as script writing.

Honestly lots of people end up in jobs unrelated to their degree- I wouldn't worry too much about that. He will gain lots of transferable skills. It's also better for him to be doing a course he really enjoys, as he'll get a better mark and be less likely to drop out halfway through.

He could maybe consider something in the same industry but slightly less focussed eg a Film & Television degree, with some academic work as well as practical. Bristol Uni does a good one. Then it's still a degree from a uni that's perceived as good, with general academic/research elements - maybe makes it a bit more useful for other jobs if screenwriting doesn't work out.

Screenwriting is hugely competitive, but if he's determined, and talented, he'll be fine. Lots of people try doing it but aren't good enough. If he's good enough, he'll make it. I used to be a script reader for BBC, Pathe films etc - most of what people send in is utter dross. When a good script comes along it gets passed on to the higher ups and that person is usually pounced on for development.

It's a lot harder to make it as a film scriptwriter than a TV scriptwriter though. It can be good to work on TV soaps initially, as a runner and then maybe later as a story editor, then can move into script editing and script writing that way.

Sheffield Hallam have a screen writing course my DS is going to next year (is taking a year out to work atm) it looks amazing.

What about some online courses too?

Agree. My DS wants to go into creative arts ( digital animation and games design) and I was concerned about him not getting work, but I think AI will come for all those processing jobs first. My DBro is a software engineer. He's very mathsy and it sounds like ( when I ask him- it may not be true) that he just does a load of data entry and finding bugs in computer code/ writes computer code). I would imagine if your DS wants to be a screenwriter this would be like a living hell. Steady job or no steady job.