15 More On Writers-Producers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (51 seconds)

15 More On Writers-Producers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (51 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:

Likewise, we have Stephen Bochco who really started the idea of multiplicity in storylines in Hill Sreet Blues which is a very famous show. We have Dick Wolf who gave us the Law & Order franchise that was on for 19 years. Didn’t quite make 20. This show’s made 21. I saw it just airing on Sky TV the other night so it’s something available in Britain and of course, there was a British version of Law & Order. They actually did one where they took early scripts and they transferred them here. Didn’t do great but what do you know? Don Bellisario gave us basically military heroes which were pretty big in the states but he himself had been in the military during Vietnam War and so he came out. People may not know it but the Magnum story was that right? He was a Vietnam War vet and then as Bellisiario moved through and these shows all ran a good ten years apiece. so long-running programs.

Watch this entire presentation

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Dr. Rosanne Welch hosts a Master Class With Executive Producer/Showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett — Athena Film Festival 2021

Each year, as a sponsor of the Athena Film Festival, the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting hosts a Master Class interview with a major television showrunner. 

For this year’s virtual festival, I had the privilege of interviewing Gloria Calderon Kellett, co-creator and executive producer of the beloved reboot of One Day at a Time.

 In our interview, Kellett shared how much she learned about running a show from her earliest days as a writer’s assistant, how earning an MFA was an investment in her future, and how much joy she’s had in using the power of her position to Write, Reach and Represent.

Dr. Rosanne Welch hosts a Master Class With Executive Producer/Showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellet -- Athena Film Festival 2021

Please enjoy this Master Class with Showrunner, writer, and actress Gloria Calderón Kellett.

Gloria Calderón Kellett is a Showrunner, writer, director, and actor best known for the critically acclaimed reboot ONE DAY AT A TIME. She is currently on a deal at Amazon Studios where she is developing new shows and movies.

Sponsored by Stephens College MFA Program on TV and Screenwriting

 

14 Writers-Producers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)

14 Writers-Producers 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:

The writer-producers and again they were mostly guys in the 80s and early 90s right mostly guys. I did a big article on these gentlemen as well because I had once worked for Kenny Johnson who’s a marvelous man in the corner with the Incredible Hulk. He did the first tv superhero which was the Incredible Hulk show back in the day. So all these guys came out of the Universal writer’s pool right? Stephen Cannell was so beloved that when he died he was NOT running a show called Castle which ran for nine years on network television but the people who ran this show had been trained by him and when he died at the ending of their program, they ran this logo which was how his tv shows in the 70s and 80s used to end and in honor of him they ran this and called him a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. That’s a big deal in Hollywood where mostly we say nasty things about people. So it tells you something about his personality.

Watch this entire presentation

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Rosanne presents to Oxford Brookes University Students in transatlantic creative education exchange

1200px Oxford Brookes University logo svg


Previous, on-site, presentation at Oxford Brookes

Thanks for our meeting at a Screenwriting Research Network conference almost 10 years ago Dr. Paolo Russo (of Oxford Brookes University) and I have been able to engage in a few transatlantic creative exchanges.

He’s come to speak on Italian Neo-realism to my MFA candidates and I had the pleasure of visiting with his masters candidates (in person! when that was still possible) and giving them notes on their drama series treatments. 

This week I’ll be doing that again on Zoom with the help of Shannon Dobson Fopeano, my Graduate Assistant in the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.  Paolo and I are both interested in expanding the reach of this cross-ocean collegiality in the future!

Stephens College MFA In TV And Screenwriting Workshop

 

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]

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

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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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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* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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!

Event: When Women Wrote Hollywood presentation for the Empire State Center for the Book – Tuesday, March 9, 2021 – 7 pm EST

Event: When Women Wrote Hollywood presentation for the Empire State Center for the Book - Tuesday, March 9, 2021 – 7 pm EST

Tuesday, March 9, 2021 – 7 pm EST

MFA Executive Director Dr. Rosanne Welch will give a Zoom presentation on “When Women Wrote Hollywood” for the Empire State Center for the Book, the New York State affiliate of the Library of Congress Center for the Book. This event begins at 7 p.m. Eastern/6 p.m. Central on Tuesday, March 9, and is free and open to the public. 

Dr. Welch will discuss many highly successful female screenwriters of early Hollywood and explain why they don’t appear in most mainstream histories of the era.

Join the Zoom Call — Passcode: 120524

Visit Empire State Center for the Book Web Site

Rosanne and front window display of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” before reading and Signing event at Skylark Bookshop

Dr. Rosanne Welch Joins Panel on the Monkees TV Show with Plastic EP Live [Video] (49 Minutes)

Dr. Rosanne Welch Joins Panel on the Monkees TV Show with Plastic EP Live [Video] (49 Minutes)

Monkees Top 5 TV Shows With Plastic Ep And A Panel Of Special Guests

Get your copy today!

Dr. Rosanne Welch Speaks at the 2021 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference – Thursday, March 18, 2021 [Event]

Rosanne is speaking at the 2021 SCMS Conference on Thursday, March 18, 2021. If you are attending the conference virtually, please tune into this collection of excellent presentations on the “unreliable narrator” and more.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Speaks at the 2021 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference - Thursday, March 18, 2021 [Event]

V14 Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator

THURSDAY, MARCH 18
SESSION E – 12:00 PM Central Time

  • Chair: Christina Lane, University of Miami
  • Co-Chair: Vicki Callahan, University of Southern California
  • Vicki Callahan, University of Southern California, “Still Looking for Mabel Normand”
  • Philana Payton, University of Southern California, “Eartha Kitt vs. Eartha Mae: Black Women, Self-Fragmentation, and the Politics of Hollywood Stardom”
  • Rosanne Welch, Stephens College, “When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”
  • Christina Lane, University of Miami, “Alternative Writing Strategies: Notes on Discovering the ‘Women Who Knew’ Joan Harrison”

See more upcoming events