Author: Dr. Rosanne Welch

03 Managed Chaos from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

03 Manage Chaos from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

So that’s kind of my philosophy. I really don’t like the auteur theory and neither do a lot of other writers. This particular quote comes to us from the gentleman who gave us, in America, Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan. So I want to talk about writer’s rooms and his is considered one of the most organized so perhaps the less chaotic but still what happens in the room has its own form of chaos. So I think it’s really interesting that he is willing to defend the idea that writers are more important than directors. He’s certainly got an Emmy to prove he’s an important writer but I appreciate very much what he had to say. The room is about making people as comfortable as possible and this can be a difficult task but it’s the task of the executive producer or the showrunner to make sure that the people in the room are open to sharing as many of their interesting ideas as possible right? So chaos but managed chaos. You have to allow for much conversation but you’re the one managing what’s being said so you don’t run off on a tangent and of course Vince was brilliant at that.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

Screenwriting Research Network Conference, Porto, Portugal, All Sessions

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Related posts:

  1. 01 Introduction from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
  2. 02 Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
  3. How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television, Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 Minutes)
  4. Presenting my talk “How the chaos of collaboration in the writer’s room created the golden age of television” at the Screenwriting Research Conference in Porto, Portugal
  5. 06 Inside The Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (43 seconds)

A Woman Wrote That – 18 in a series – The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Writer: Caroline Thompson

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 18 in a series - The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Writer: Caroline Thompson

MAYOR

Jack, please, I’m only an elected official here. I can’t make decisions by myself.

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  4. A Woman Wrote That – 16 in a series – Gilmore Girls, Wr: Amy Sherman-Palladino
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Where’s Her Movie? Abolitionist, Sojourner Truth – 11 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film.  This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history.  — Rosanne

Where's Her Movie? Abolitionist, Sojourner Truth - 11 in a series

Sojourner Truth (/soʊˈdʒɜːrnər truːθ/; born Isabella “Belle” Baumfree; c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) was an American abolitionist and women’s rights activist. Truth was born into slavery in Swartekill, New York, but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. After going to court to recover her son in 1828, she became the first black woman to win such a case against a white man.

She gave herself the name Sojourner Truth in 1843 after she became convinced that God had called her to leave the city and go into the countryside “testifying the hope that was in her”.[1] Her best-known speech was delivered extemporaneously, in 1851, at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. The speech became widely known during the Civil War by the title “Ain’t I a Woman?“, a variation of the original speech re-written by someone else using a stereotypical Southern dialect, whereas Sojourner Truth was from New York and grew up speaking Dutch as her first language. During the Civil War, Truth helped recruit black troops for the Union Army; after the war, she tried unsuccessfully to secure land grants from the federal government for formerly enslaved people (summarized as the promise of “forty acres and a mule” — Wikipedia

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  1. Where’s Her Movie? Civil Rights Activist, Rose Matsui Ochi – 6 in a series
  2. Where’s Her Movie? Civil Rights Activist, Elizabeth Peratrovich – 5 in a series
  3. Where’s Her Movie? Computer Scientist, Margaret Hamilton – 9 in a series
  4. Where’s Her Movie? Painter, Artemisia Gentileschi – 3 in a series
  5. Where’s Her Movie? Physician/Author, Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler – 7 in a series

A Big Thank You For World Book Day!

In honor of World Book Day I wanted to say thanks to all the Readers of all my books -- and to all the Librarians who have purchased books to be read! What would we do without librarians and libraries? Writers need them for our research and readers need them as homes away from home. I can't count the summer days I spent in the local library gathering a cart of books to take home and read. As an only child, books were my summer companions. Now it's amazing to me to think books with my name on them sit on shelves beside all the ones I loved. Read a book today to celebrate a Happy World Book Day!

In honor of World Book Day I wanted to say thanks to all the Readers of all my books — and to all the Librarians who have purchased books to be read!

What would we do without librarians and libraries?  Writers need them for our research and readers need them as homes away from home.  I can’t count the summer days I spent in the local library gathering a cart of books to take home and read. As an only child, books were my summer companions.  Now it’s amazing to me to think books with my name on them sit on shelves beside all the ones I loved.  

Read a book today to celebrate a Happy World Book Day! 

RMW PHD signature 2015

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13 Characters and Susannah Grant from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)

13 Characters and Susannah Gra from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)

Thanks to the gracious invitation from my Screenwriting Research Network colleague Paolo Russo – and a grant he was able to procure (and in the before-Covid time) I was able to spend a week at Oxford Brookes University working with the screenwriting masters students in Paolo’s course. At the culmination of the week, I gave this lecture on how writers rooms worked in the States.

Transcript:

All right, so. what I wanted to do for about half a minute is describe this woman. Visually describe this character. Her name is Erin Brockovich. You may or may not have seen this movie all right. So we might know something about her from the movie but visually — and she’s Julia Roberts, you can tell — quickly how would you describe her if you’re writing that action line in your script? If nothing else, think of three adjectives. We always start with that. Style comes from what you do in the action lines because the dialogue has to sound like your characters but the action lines sound like you alright. Shy doesn’t work in the writers’ room. If you don’t have an idea, I’ll stop paying you a contract and you go home. I always tell my students when they have to pitch, you better have an idea right away because you’re turning down $38,000 because if there’s a new script and we need one done next week and you don’t do it your friend just got that much money. That’s a lot of money to turn down because you’re too shy to open your mouth. So school is when you practice not being shy.

Watch this entire presentation

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† Available from the LA Public Library

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Related posts:

  1. 12 Describing Your Characters from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (1 minute)
  2. 05 Women Writers Matter from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (27 seconds)
  3. 06 Inside The Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (43 seconds)
  4. 07 The Monkees Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (44 seconds)
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“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 26 in a series

Giuseppe’s words were magnified by the arrival of Mazzini from France, ready to raise the needed support to defend the nation. “There are not five Italys, or four Italys, or three. There is only one Italy and the destiny of Rome and the destiny of Italy are the destiny of the world.”

Get your copy of A Man Of Action Saving Liberty Today!

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 2: Writing With Light: The screenplay and photography by Kathryn Millard

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Writing With Light: The screenplay and photography by Kathryn Millard

This article considers alternative processes for recording the screen idea, specifically, processes that draw on photography and images in the writing process. It discusses screen works inspired by the photographs of Samuel Bollendorff (Journey to the End of Coal, 2009), Arthur Felig Weegee (The Naked City, 2002) and August Sanders (Do Right and Fear No-one, 1975), and proposes that ‘writing with light’ is an appropriate metaphor for screenplays that are inherently unstable and always in transition.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 2: Writing With Light: The screenplay and photography by Kathryn Millard

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

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The Civil War On Film – 21 in a series – Friendly Persuasion involves the much rarer Northern experience

The Civil War On Film - 21 in a series - Friendly Persuasion involves the much rarer Northern experience

While many Civil War films cover the Southern perspective, Friendly Persuasion involves the much rarer Northern experience, this one of a devout Indiana Quaker female minister whose family tries valiantly to uphold their pacifist values in the face of Confederate attack.

Movies profiled in this book:

Related posts:

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  3. The Civil War On Film – 6 in a series – “…the so-called Irrepressible Conflict.”
  4. The Civil War On Film – 12 in a series – Reformer Jane Addams condemned the film as ahistorical and prejudiced…
  5. The Civil War On Film – 15 in a series – “…a Civilization gone with the wind.”

02 Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

02 Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

 

 

When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

This is my teaching philosophy. Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter, and that’s something I try to focus on as much as possible. There’s a lot of women who never get mentioned and that bothers me but that’s a different lecture so — I did that last year this year. We’re talking about why writers are important and how the writers room works. As far as I’m concerned we have to remember that writer precedes director so I want more of our students to know the names of the writers of their favorite films not always just the directors because when you talk about a film you don’t say “Do you remember that beautiful camera angle in scene seven?” You say “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” and that is something the writer did so I think we have to remember that the dialogue is what makes movies special and the characters.

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

Screenwriting Research Network Conference, Porto, Portugal, All Sessions

Ready to present my talk yesterday at the Screenwriting Research Conference here in Porto, Portugal via Instagram

Follow me on Instagram


* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Related posts:

  1. 01 Introduction from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]
  2. How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television, Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 Minutes)
  3. Presenting my talk “How the chaos of collaboration in the writer’s room created the golden age of television” at the Screenwriting Research Conference in Porto, Portugal
  4. 04 Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 5 seconds)
  5. 06 Inside The Writers Room from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (43 seconds)

A Woman Wrote That – 17 in a series – Father of the Bride (1991), Writer: Nancy Meyers

This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director.  The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters.  Feel free to share! — Rosanne

A Woman Wrote That - 17 in a series - Father of the Bride (1991), Writer: Nancy Meyers

GEORGE

“The good news, however, is that this overreacting… tends to get proportionately less by generation. So, your kids could be normal.”

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