Education – Page 79 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Children’s Animation Panel at the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop (3 photos)

Children’s Animation Panel at the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

MFA mentor Maria Escobedo (Dora the Explorer, Give a Mouse a Cookie) organized a children’s Animation panel for January’s workshop so MFA candidates were treated to a visit by Laura Kleinbaum (Butterbean’s Café, Esme and Roy) and Jenny Keene (Phineas and Ferb, Big City Greens).

Questions about the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting?

Leave a comment here or email me, Executive Director, Dr. Rosanne Welch and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: Network television writers and the ‘race problems’ of 1968 by Caryn Murphy

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

Network television writers and the ‘race problems’ of 1968 by Caryn Murphy

This article examines the development of television scripts in the crime drama genre within the context of US commercial broadcasting in the network era. In 1968, public discourse around race relations, civil rights and violence reached a height following the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr and Robert F. Kennedy, and the release of a government study on urban uprisings by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Ironside (1967–75, NBC) and N.Y.P.D. (1967–69, ABC) are two crime dramas that drew on recent events related to black militants and white supremacy in order to appeal to viewers with socially relevant entertainment during this time. The archival records of screenwriters Sy Salkowitz and Lonne Elder make it possible to trace the development of one episode from each series over the course of multiple drafts. This analysis of the script development process explores the relationship between public discourse, industrial context, commercial agendas and creative priorities. Ironside and N.Y.P.D. are both crime dramas, but an examination of both series yields points of divergence which help to illustrate the norms of the network system in terms of act structure, genre tropes, and the oversight of standards and practices.

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.

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Alum Rashaan Dozier-Escalante Speaks On Her Screenwriting Career Journey at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop (2 photos)

Alum Rashaan Dozier-Escalante (Class of 2019) stopped in at January’s workshop to tell our current Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting candidates the story of her career journey to become a staff writer on CBS’s Seal Team.

Questions about the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting?

Leave a comment here or email me, Executive Director, Dr. Rosanne Welch and I’ll be happy to answer your questions.

Visit Stephens.edu/mfa for more information.Follow @StephensMFA on Instagram

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#MentorMonday 8 - Dawn Comer Jefferson - Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

#MeetTheGraduatesMonday: Rene Rawls – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Every Monday we will be profiling a member of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting 2020 graduating class. This exciting, fresh crop of writers are the future of the industry and are going on to do BIG things, so get to know them now! First up is Yousif Nash! #MeetTheGraduatesMonday

This week in our #MeetTheGradsMonday, we are featuring Rene Rawls!

With hands-on experience challenging the minds of tots, tweens, and teens, Rene Rawls is a former teacher turned writer who now has a classroom full of students all around the world. She’s participated in several programs with her kids-centered content, including Tribeca All Access and the PGA Diversity Workshop. Rene loves the fun and magical moments of learning, so she strives to capture that in the content she creates. Her animated script, Sule and the Case of the Tiny Sparks, stars an African proverb detective and was the recipient of the 1st Annual Mandela Day/Tribeca All Access Award. Sule was produced as an animated short, and it has over 200,000 Youtube views to date. Rene participated in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop with her middle grade novel, Leba: Modern Day Savior, and her feature script about youth football in South Florida, The Big League (which is about kids but not for them), is currently being developed with RDR Release Films. In May 2020, Rene will graduate with her MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College.

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Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think via The Atlantic

Fascinating read about happiness as folks age out of their first careers…especially this point: “teaching is an ability that decays very late in life, a principal exception to the general pattern of professional decline over time. A study in The Journal of Higher Education showed that the oldest college professors in disciplines requiring a large store of fixed knowledge, specifically the humanities, tended to get evaluated most positively by students.” — Rosanne

Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think

“It’s not true that no one needs you anymore.”

These words came from an elderly woman sitting behind me on a late-night flight from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. The plane was dark and quiet. A man I assumed to be her husband murmured almost inaudibly in response, something to the effect of “I wish I was dead.”

Again, the woman: “Oh, stop saying that.”

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but couldn’t help it. I listened with morbid fascination, forming an image of the man in my head as they talked. I imagined someone who had worked hard all his life in relative obscurity, someone with unfulfilled dreams—perhaps of the degree he never attained, the career he never pursued, the company he never started.

At the end of the flight, as the lights switched on, I finally got a look at the desolate man. I was shocked. I recognized him—he was, and still is, world-famous. Then in his mid‑80s, he was beloved as a hero for his courage, patriotism, and accomplishments many decades ago.

Read this entire article at The Atlantic

Lilliana Winkworth Presents On Writing Sketch Comedy at Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Lilliana Winkworth, of The Second City’s National Touring Company, gave a workshop on writing sketch comedy during this January’s MFA workshop at the Jim Henson Studios.

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Screenwriter Thomas Dean Donnelly Speaks At Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Screenwriter Thomas Dean Donnelly (Conan the Barbarian, Jax of Heart) lectured on How to Increase your Writing Productivity at the January workshop for the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

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Serendipitous Learning at the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting Winter Workshop

Some of the best things about hosting the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting at the historic Jim Henson Studios (after the quality of our guest speakers, of course) is the accidental opportunity to meet writers working on the lot. After our graduate assistant met a writer in the studio kitchen, the current first -year class was invited to the set of a sizzle reel – a 3-minute trailer for a television show the writer-producers will use to shop around town for the funding the make the full show.

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#MeetTheGraduatesMonday: Yousif Nash – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Yousif Nash is a true nerd who prides himself for having an encyclopedic knowledge on games, comics, anime, film, and television. An American born Iraqi, his parents regaled him with stories of their homeland, how it felt like a mystical land with history, culture, and wonder. It influenced him to become a storyteller, but he delayed that pursuit as he answered the call of duty and became an officer of the United States Air Force. When he left, he pursued writing seriously. He was accepted to the Writers Guild Foundation Veterans Workshop, worked on short and feature length films in his hometown, and is finishing his Masters of Fine Arts in TV Writing and Screenwriting from Stephens College. He just finished an internship at Hivemind (The Witcher, The Expanse) and is currently in another internship at Berlanti Productions (Arrow, The Flash, Riverdale) and Avi Arad’s Production Company (Spider-Man, Venom). He likes to write about nerds that suffer the normalcies of life, sci-fi, fantasy, and about Arab characters being normal people in America.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: Walter Reisch: The musical writer by Claus Tieber

Walter Reisch: The musical writer by Claus Tieber

Academy Award-winning Austrian screenwriter Walter Reisch’s (1903–83) career started in Austrian silent cinema and ended in Hollywood. Reisch wrote the screenplays for silent films, many of them based on musical topics (operetta films, biopics of musicians, etc.). He created the so-called Viennese film, a musical subgenre, set in an almost mythological Vienna. In my article I am analysing the characteristics of his writing in which music plays a crucial part. The article details the use of musical devices in his screenplays (his use of music, the influence of musical melodrama, instructions and use of songs and leitmotifs). The article closes with a reading of the final number in the last film he was able to make in Austria: Silhouetten (1936).

Walter Reisch (IMDB)

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

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK

* 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!