Education – Page 85 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 04: Facts and Fancies about a Woman You Know or Ought to Know. Motography, Vol. VIII, No. 8, October 12, 1912, 293-294

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

Facts and Fancies about a Woman You Know or Ought to Know. Motography, Vol. VIII, No. 8, October 12, 1912, 293-294

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IT has been your privilege to know something of the ups and downs of the film business, you who read the ever recurring numbers of this particular brand of yellow-backed journal, and you will be surprised to know that with it is identified a real, for sure woman. This woman, because she has dared to follow her own pleasure into the mysterious realm of motography. becomes at once more interesting than her sisters who merely contribute toward the making. Madam Alice Blache. president and general manager, director and producer, makes films. Get that; she makes ’em. There isn’t any part of the game she doesn’t know. Sbe started early, but she lays claim of being “the oldest man in the business!”

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28 D.C. Fontana from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne

Transcript:

I like novels but I also like TV a lot. I’m a pretty big pop-culture person. So I wanted to look a little bit into the women who’ve written science fiction on television. We don’t hear a lot about them. We know this show. Everyone’s heard of it even if you’ve never seen it. Everyone credits it to Gene Roddenberry, who is the man who invented it. He’s quite a brilliant man. That’s wonderful but along the way he hired this lady DC Fontana who went by the name DC because she didn’t think they’d hire a girl named Dorothy to write a science fiction television show. So she got the job as DC Fontana and did it – she’s worked in every iteration of Star Trek including the games, including the animated series on Saturday. She’s been involved in Star Trek forever and was involved in the very beginning — Wrote several episodes in the first original series. Wrote a few early novels that were out. So she was deeply embedded in that show and embedded in creating powerful female characters and also on creating the alien — the Vulcan guy, Spock, giving him a background. She created much of the background of his culture because culture was important to her. So she’s pretty cool and of course they loved her so much they made — they put her in the animated show. They made an animated version of her.

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Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020 – Oxford, UK – September 9-12, 2020

Of all the conferences I attend, the Screenwriting Research Network conference has been the most valuable in both information I attain from the many panels – there are always too many to see and too little time to see them. (SMILE) But also from the connections I have made which have brought international guest speakers to my MFA program and new colleagues for me to collaborate with on articles, special issues of our journal – and books! And I have been able to help publish several of the alums of my program as the Book Reviews Editor of our Journal of Screenwriting.

Yes, the conferences are typically held overseas, so travel can be costly, but they have also given my family the excuse to see Dunedin, New Zealand, Porto, Portugal, Milan, Italy and Leeds, England so the money has been well spent.

Most importantly, if you can’t make Oxford 2020 – I hope you mark your calendars for Missouri 2022 (on the beautiful campus of Stephens College).

From the Screenwriting Research Network…

The 13th annual International Conference of the Screenwriting Research Network (SRN 2020) will be hosted by Oxford Brookes University in the UK, on Wednesday 9 through Saturday 12 September.

The Conference is organized by the Film Studies Research Unit with the support of the School of Arts of Oxford Brookes University through Quality-Related (QR) research funding. The main location of the Conference will be at Headington Campus. Oxford is well known for its history, culture and academic tradition.

In order to ensure timely notification of shortlisted delegates and subsequent travel planning, please note the deadline for the submission of all proposals/abstracts by 15 December 2019.
We will keep updating the website with useful information about the conference in the forthcoming months, so keep coming back!

Essential information
Calendar (summary of deadlines)

Submissions of abstracts by: 15 December 2019

Shortlisting/notification of acceptance by: End of January 2020

Early-bird registration: From early March until 31 May 2020

Regular registration by: 15 July 2020

Late registration by: 25 August 2020

Conference: 9-12 September 2020

Submissions via email and contact: info@srn2020.com

Keynotes speakers and special guests to be announced in early 2020

My Quora Answer: What is the best theory of story structure for screenwriting, and why?

What is the best theory of story structure for screenwriting, and why?

For the last several years I have taught using the 11 Steps of Dr. Jule Selbo’s “Screenplay: Building Story Through Character”. I find many of the other lists of Steps to be far too finicky while Selbo’s are streamlined to the most important moments to hit to illustrate character growth. Being both an academic AND a practitioner (having written scripts for everyone from Disney to Lucasfilm) she knows what she’s talking about and in her book she provides a huge section that shows how the 11 Steps appear in many classic and current films.

It is easy to use Selbo’s 11 Steps practically off the cuff in any classroom discussion on any movie by asking the questions and the moments are so ingrained in our minds that the answers come easily to questions like the master question “What does the lead character Want?” and even to trickier questions like “When do they receive their second chance at their want?”

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: An insider perspective on the script in practice by Vincenzo Giarrusso

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

An insider perspective on the script in practice by Vincenzo Giarrusso

The machinations of industry, the exigencies of film funding and the producer’s prominent role in setting fiscal and marketing objectives for film production seem incongruous with scriptwriting as a generative creative practice in the filmmaking process. This article presents a case study that investigates the agency of creative practice from the insider perspective of a scriptwriter. In mobilizing the concept of the boundary object, the case links the problematic and transitional status of the script – as it passes out of the hands of the writer – to other roles under the control of filmmaking practitioners. In combining a practice-based reflexive narrative with theoretical observations, the article explores the processes and imperatives that mediate the script and scriptwriting as an embodied experience for the scriptwriter.

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!

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

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#MentorMonday 7 – Jon Vandergriff – Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Today’s the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting #mentormonday goes out to Jon Vandergriff! (IMDB)

Jon Vandergriff received his MFA in screenwriting at the University of Southern California and immediately segued into professional sitcom writing with his debut freelance script for the ABC hit show, Coach.

That was followed by a six-year stint on the even bigger ABC hit, Home Improvement, where he rose from staff writer to supervising producer. He attained the title of co-executive producer on the popular WB show Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Along the way, Vandergriff wrote sitcom pilots for NBC and The WB and also has had two screenplays optioned by Hollywood-based production companies.

A lifelong lover of board games, Vandergriff also is a board game inventor who has had three games published, including Anger Management and A Way with Words, which also is an app and was recently picked up by Electronic Arts to publish on their website, pogo.com.

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27 Nnedi Okorafor from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (23 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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Transcript:

One of the most recent newer writers in the world is Nnedi Okorafor and she just won the World Fantasy Award in 201 — the World Fantasy Award for Best new novel Binti which is a fascinating novel but she’s got a couple out as well that I think are worth paying attention to. Again when he’s thinking about reading again she’s thinking about putting people of African descent in the future. That’s something she thinks of course is important so I think it was pretty cool. She’s Nigerian.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 03: Anita Loos Papers 1917-1981., Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library

Anita Loos, screenwriter and novelist, was born on April 26, 1893, in Sisson, CA, the daughter of R. Beers and Minnie Ellen Loos. Miss Loos wrote the subtitles for D. W. Griffith’s film, Intolerance, in 1916. Her best known work is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She died on August 18, 1981, at the age of 93. The Anita Loos Papers consist of scripts, essays and articles from her career as a screenwriter and novelist. The bulk of the collection dates from 1917-1969. There are also adaptations of her works, unfinished scripts and research notes.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Intellectual spaces in screenwriting studies: The practitioner-academic and fidelity discourse by Terry Bailey

Intellectual spaces in screenwriting studies: The practitioner-academic and fidelity discourse
Author: Terry Bailey

As Craig Batty argues, traditional screenwriting research predominantly concerns itself not with the practice of writing, but its end product. This can lead to the actual process of writing being overlooked. The advent of the practitioner-academic within screenwriting studies has led to the foregrounding of the interests of practice over those of more traditional academic research. According to Batty, the intent of the practitioner-academic’s research is to generate knowledge that can influence the work of screenwriters directly. This article argues that additionally, practitioner-academics can make a valuable contribution towards more ‘traditional’ research, simply by occupying the same unique intellectual space from which they might influence practice. The article uses debates surrounding fidelity within adaptation studies to examine the ways in which the practitioner-academic’s unique approach can enhance ‘traditional’ research, and draws on examples from practice to do so, namely the book to film adaptation Starship Troopers (1997).

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Listen To The Podcast: Location as Character: The Craft of Writing Place Panel Panel at The Writers Guild Foundation [Audio]

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I really enjoyed being invited to moderate this Writers Guild Foundation panel co-hosted by Columbia Collge of Chicago’s Semester in LA program.

In honor of the co-host we chose to have a conversation about “Location as Character” – and for a kid from Cleveland, believe me, I know how much the place you come from infuses who you are – and how important it is for writers to properly portray the effect of location on the many characters who populate their programs.

I was joined by a great collection of panelists from shows ranging from Queen Sugar to On Becoming a God in Central Florida to The Chi and Young Sheldon. Listen in when you have some time!

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From @writersguildf – Writers Guild Foundation

We team up with @ColumbiaChi to talk about how locations inform and impact characters on TV with @qu33nofdrama, @SparksAnthony, Matt Lutsky, @RosanneWelch and Connor Kilpatrick.

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