On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
Getting ready for my panel at DTLA Film Festival on Sunday
Chatting with Maria Staroselets of the DTLA Film Festival before our panel discussion, Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting.
Video of this panel coming soon
Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!
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The Morning Telegraph (NY) report April 17, 1921: “Sarah Y. Mason has returned to Hollywood after a year in New York as a leading lady in the Selznick scenario department. She has just completed an original story for screen purposes and has orders for several continuities. However, Mason contrives to divide her time equally between screen and society.”
The Six Degrees of Sarah Y. Mason and Victor Heerman
by Pamela L. Scott
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This Sunday at 4pm join me at the DTLA (Downtown LA Film Festival)!
I’ll be moderating a panel on implicit bias in screenwriting. “Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting” will take place at the Regal Cinema at LA Live. Panelists will include Maria Escobeda, one of the Stephens MFA in TV and Screeenwriting’s favorite mentors, as well as representatives from the worlds of entertainment journalism, marketing and theme parks – all of whom need to understand this idea in order to reach – and succeed – with customers from all over the world. — Rosanne
Date/Time: Sun, October 27, 2019 @ 4:00 PM
Running Time: 60 Minutes
Location: Regal LA Live MEZZANINE
Panel Description
Privileged Characters: How to recognize and avoid implicit bias in your screenwriting
How do writers recognize and avoid implicit bias in their work? In this panel we review examples of how implicit bias infects popular shows and movies — even now in the wake of the Black Lives Matter, #MeToo and #TimesUp movement.
We’ll also learn about the tools and techniques available to combat implicit bias in the written word.
Finally, we’ll tackle the prickly question of writers who can authentically create characters and stories that are intrinsically about people who demographically different from them?
Panelists
Beverly Gray
Beverly Gray has spent her career fluctuating between the world of the intellect and show biz. As she was completing her doctorate in Contemporary American Fiction at UCLA, she surprised everyone (including herself) by taking a job with B-movie legend Roger Corman, for whom she helped develop 170 low-budget feature films. Following her Corman years, she covered the movie industry for The Hollywood Reporter. She has also published the best-selling Roger Corman: “Blood-Sucking Vampires, Flesh-Eating Cockroaches, and Driller Killers”, as well as “Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond”. Currently, she teaches advanced online screenwriting workshops for UCLA Extension’s internationally-known Writers’ Program, and her popular twice-weekly blog, “Beverly in Movieland,” covers movies, moviemaking, and growing up Hollywood-adjacent. Her most recent book is “Seduced by Mrs. Robinson: How The Graduate Became the Touchstone of a Generation.”
Maria Escobedo
Maria Escobedo is a film and television writer with credits including “Grey’s Anatomy”, Hulu’s “East Los High” and the indie film “Rum and Coke”, which she wrote and directed. She’s developed movies and pilots for Lifetime, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon. She also has written for animated kids’ TV, including “Dora the Explorer”, “Go Diego Go”, “Elena of Avalor”, “Special Agent Oso” and “Nina’s World”, which earned her a Humanitas Award nomination. Escobedo is currently writing for Amazon’s “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”, Netflix’s “What-To-Doodles” and Nickelodeon’s “Santiago of the Seas”.
Hanala Sagal
Hanala Sagal, screenwriter-producer of “Elvis & Nixon” (Tribeca Film Festival 2016 Centerpiece), starred on “Shape Up L.A!” as Suzan Stadner (1985-2000.) Her brand is Comedy Wellness: Content for a Better Tomorrow and Funnier Today, trending on YouTube with 500M views and 400K subscribers. Hanala is in development on “Traumaland” (dark comedy, feature) based on her best-selling memoir “My Parents Went Through the Holocaust and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt” featured in “The Last Laugh” starring Mel Brooks.
Donna Bonilla Wheeler
Donna Bonilla Wheeler is a Peruvian-American film + theatre writer/director who began her film career writing and directing for Walt Disney Productions Theme Parks. Her original screenplays have been selected as Academy Nicholl Fellowship semi finalist/quarter finalists, IFP No Borders, Austin 2nd Rounders, and Slamdance Script Labs, among others. She sold her experimental short about the creative process, “Mind’s Eye” at the Cannes film market. She received the Grand Jury Prize, Narrative Short for her dramedy film, “The Girl Next Door” at Mystic Film Festival, and her family comedy/mystery she wrote and directed, “Death of a saleswoman” has received global recognition at multiple festivals. Donna is a fiscally-sponsored 501c3 filmmaker, working in the Latinx, LGBTQ+ diversity spaces.
Kala Guess
Kala Guess is a marketing professional at Final Draft. She acts as both Contest Director for the Big Break Screenwriting Contest and Content Producer for the Final Draft blog and “Write On” podcast. As part of her focus on the customer experience, she produces engaging and insightful content for screenwriters and operates as a champion for emerging talent. Additionally, Kala is a driving force in Final Draft’s efforts for diversity and inclusivity in the entertainment industry. Previously, she worked as the marketing and publicity coordinator for an independent film and television studio in Hollywood. Kala has a decade of experience in various capacities in the entertainment industry.
Evette Vargas
Evette Vargas is an award-winning writer, director, producer and immersive storyteller. Named by the New York Times as an “Artist to Watch,” Vargas’ has produced series for Amazon, MTV, Bravo, DirectTV; and interactive content for Fast And Furious, Lord Of The Rings trilogy and Madonna. Vargas executive produced, wrote and directed her digital series Dark Prophet, starring Henry Rollins, which was in contention for two Emmys. Vargas sold her drama series, Muses, to TNT Super Deluxe. Vargas is creating a drama series for MGMTV with Marc Guggenheim and Rosario Dawson serving as executive producers. Vargas wrote The Current War VR Experience, a companion piece for the film, starring Benedict Cumberbatch. A proud member of the WGA, ATAS and PGA, Vargas was born in the Bronx and learned to tell stories at the dinner table where the imagination ruled. Vargas collects action figures, typewriters and shoes; has past lives as a DJ, a fashion designer and is a recovering New York City advertising Art Director.
Watch this entire presentation
![22 Octavia Butler from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction - Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (46 seconds)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/scifi-rmw-cpp-22.jpeg)
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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:
…and we had a marvelous presentation about two weeks ago on Octavia Butler right? So moving now moving further and further into the 90s. Octavia Butler the first African-American female to be successful writing science fiction. We had a presentation here from the curator of her papers at the Huntington Library because she lived in Pasadena. So she’s a local to California and a lot of her stuff was infused with sort of the attitudes and the progressive ideas that we tend to be surrounded by here. She won a MacArthur Fellowship again the first science fiction writer — not a person of color and not even a woman — the very first science fiction writer ever to get a MacArthur grant which is a huge piece of support to creative people and artistic people so I think that’s really cool.
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Demonstrating My Usual Exhuberent Presentation Style 😀
The 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar was so enjoyable.
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I’m so honored to be a part of this international group of screenwriting academics – who plan by far the best conference I’ve ever attended each year. — Rosanne
First meeting of new Executive Council yesterday – spanning 18 time zones!!! Got the ball rolling for the new academic year and picked up suggestions from last month’s AGM. Minutes to follow soon on the SRN website.
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Mackenzie Institute In Sao Paolo.
My host for the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar Keynote.
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Highlighting the articles in the latest edition 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
Influences on story development in transnational pan-Arab dramas: A case study of the series 04
Fadi G. Haddad
Despite the growing research interest in the transnational nature of the Arab World’s television industry, screenwriting in the Arab World has received little academic attention. Moreover, while the media plays a major role in shaping the ‘narratives of identity’, the reality of television drama production is as much about cultural, economic and political influences as it is about aesthetics. Set within a unique interpretation of the theoretical context of the ‘Hierarchy of Influences Model’, this article aims to explore to what extent the routine practices in screenwriting govern the artistic decisions taken at the level of the screenplay development of transnational pan-Arab dramas (Arabic: al-drāma al ‘arabiya al-mushtaraka). Taking ‘04’ (Zero Four) as a case study, a pan-Arab drama produced by the Saudi-owned UAE-based MBC television that tells the story of four young expatriates from four different Arab nationalities living in modern-day Dubai, and through in-depth interviews with the show creators, the article attempts to present an example of novel screenwriting practices in the Arab World between single authors and writers’ room.
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!
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This is definitely driving me crazy!
After reading the attached article I had to write this letter to the Los Angeles Times:
Did Tracy Brown really write a whole article (“How Angelina Jolie’s daughter inspired the secret backstory of ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’”) about the story process for the new Maleficent sequel WITHOUT ONCE mentioning the name of the credited screenwriters – Linda Woolverton (who also wrote the original film) and Noah Harpster?
The article even begins with naming the director in the first sentence. This is a ludicrous example of the unexplained contempt journalists (who are writers themselves) seem to have against screenwriters – or solid evidence that the now disproved-in-academia-but-still-mistakenly-believed-by-others auteur theory still holds sway. But directors do not write their films unless you call them ‘writer-directors’.
Read the entire article – “How Angelina Jolie’s daughter inspired the secret backstory of ‘Maleficent: Mistress of Evil’”
Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.
Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?
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Transcript
This is a particular moment in the show that shocks me that got on to network television at that time. They’re playing dominoes as you can see and at one point when all the dominoes fall down Davy says to Peter “What do you call this game?” and Peter says “Southeast Asia.” which if you know about Domino Theory of Communism is it — I mean — and the censors didn’t cut that and a lot of times it’s because Trevor Silverman said that Network people didn’t understand the joke. They didn’t get it because they were an older generation of men — all men — and they didn’t see what was going on. So that to me is an amazing thing who got away with what they did. Television mattered to The Monkees — both the writers and, of course, the performers. They understood that it was this giant place — this giant podium from which to send out a message to everybody and they they knew that was important.
Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture
A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.
Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.
This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.
Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.
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