REEL LIFE : More Movie Screens Popping Up Across County : Edwards, United Artists and Wallace are unveiling or planning theaters in Thousand Oaks, Camarillo and Santa Paula.

Although Santa Paula filmgoers have to wait a little longer for their new cinema to open, the long-promised theater boom is starting to roar across the county. United Artists reopened its renovated six-screen theater at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks two weeks ago and Edwards Cinemas will cut the ribbon on its new Camarillo Movie Palace early this month.

“It’s got new carpets, new sound and nice new seats with those funky little cup holder armrests too,” said Bill Quigley, vice president of United Artists Theaters, who spoke by phone from corporate offices in Colorado.

Quigley said construction is going ahead on another UA theater complex in Ventura, an 11-screen movie house on Camarillo’s east side near the intersection of Camino Ruiz and Adolfo Road. That one is slated to open in the spring. When it does, UA will be competing head to head with Edwards for the lucrative summer box office.

In the meantime, though, Edwards has the holiday season--the second biggest next to summer--all to itself. The 56,000-foot cinema will have wall-to-wall screens in all 12 of its theaters. The more modest 16,000-square-foot movie house originally slated to open this month in Santa Paula will be delayed.

“Bad weather delayed the construction,” said Brett Havlik, general manager of Wallace Theater Corp., the Honolulu-based company that will operate the seven-screen theater in Santa Paula. “We’re going to miss the holiday season, but we didn’t want to rush it and have a bad opening for the residents of Santa Paula.”

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Early sign-ups are being accepted for a seminar offered by the Ojai Film Society to study screenwriting with a well-known writing teacher. Katherine Ann Jones, an award-winning actress and writer, will lead a two-day intensive film and TV writing workshop on Jan. 14 and 15 at the Ojai Art Center.

The hands-on course, aimed at beginning and advanced writers, will cover such topics as how to choose a good story for a film or TV show, screenplay structure, plot and character development, constructing good dialogue, possible sources for stories, adapting from one medium to another and how to sell your screenplay.

Clips from well-known films will be used to illustrate specific points, and frequent round-table discussions will provide the student with feedback from the teacher and participants.

Jones, an Ojai resident, is on the faculty of the USC Cinema and Television School, where she teaches advanced screenwriting for graduate students. The course costs $125 for those signing up before Dec. 15, and $150 after that date. Classes fill quickly. For more information call 646-8946.