On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
What are your favorite sights in London? Add them to the comments below!
Off to London today with my Oxford Brookes University students for a film research trip. Gathering resources for my own paper and book, too!
* 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
First day of lecture/research trip to Oxford-Brookes! (Oxford, UK)
I’m off to the UK once more to spend a week teaching Screenwriting to the students of Oxford Brookes University. This is part of an exchange program between Oxford Brookes University and the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.
Paolo Russo, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, has twice spent a week as a guest lecturer here in Los Angeles and now I get a chance to spend a week with his students. This Master Class is just one part of my activities there. I’ll be working closely with his screenwriting students individually and also get a chance to visit some important research locations like the Bodleian Library.
A clip from my presentation at the 11th Annual Screenwriting Research Network conference. Held on the campus of the beautiful Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
In the presentation, I covered the reasons writers have been marginalized – and the reasons they oughtn’t to be so disrespected. Then I talked about how my course works, what books I assign, what guest speakers I invite, what research the students do – and ended on a high note by introducing ‘When Women Wrote Hollywood’ – the book of essays from our inaugural class which has now been published by McFarland.
Transcript:
They also all do a research paper — as anyone should do in a master’s class. A gain through the network I’ve been able to provide them with books they can think about. Nunnally’s there. Emma’s there because of female screenwriters. That’s a lovely book –where she has the script and then she discusses filming and being on set as a writer and how difficult it was to do both and and of course it’s one of the movies I have them watch, so that’s lovely. There’s a million books they can use. These are some examples. I like, while it’s John Gregory Dunn’s book, it’s the story of he and his wife Joan Didion, who were creating a film for Disney and this is the entire eight years it took them from the day they were offered the job until the day the movie was made and how — the difficulty. So to teach students the process and how hard the process is I think is very important. So that’s very handy book. It’s also very thin. So students like to read it. They also are the writers of the third — the second remake of “A Star IS Born.” The one with Kris Kristofferson and Barbra Streisand. So interesting to hear their perspective before the new Lady GaGa version comes out.
Books mentioned in this clip
†
Watch the entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne Welch, Ph.D on YouTube
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
I’m off to the UK once more to spend a week teaching Screenwriting to the students of Oxford Brookes University. This is part of an exchange program between Oxford Brookes University and the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.
Paolo Russo, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, has twice spent a week as a guest lecturer here in Los Angeles and now I get a chance to spend a week with his students. This Master Class is just one part of my activities there. I’ll be working closely with his screenwriting students individually and also get a chance to visit some important research locations like the Bodleian Library.
A Master Class With Hollywood Writer-Producer – Thursday 4 April, 2019 – Oxford Brookes College
The focus of Rosanne’s master class will be American television, but her insights will be useful for anyone interested in breaking into the industry either side of the pond. Rosanne will talk for about one hour + a 30-minute Q&A.
ROSANNE WELCH has written/produced for television (“Touched by an Angel”, “Picket Fences”, “Beverly Hills 90210”), teaches on the MFA Writing for Television at Stephens College and at California State University-Fullerton in Los Angeles. She serves as editor for the Journal of Screenwriting and on the Editorial Advisory Board for Written By, the magazine of the Writers Guild of America. Her most recent publication is “When Women Wrote Hollywood: Essays on Female Screenwriters in the Early Film Industry” (MacFarland, 2018).
Attendance to this master class is mandatory for my Screenwriting students, but everyone else is welcome until we fill up the room.
A clip from my presentation at the 11th Annual Screenwriting Research Network conference. Held on the campus of the beautiful Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
In the presentation, I covered the reasons writers have been marginalized – and the reasons they oughtn’t to be so disrespected. Then I talked about how my course works, what books I assign, what guest speakers I invite, what research the students do – and ended on a high note by introducing ‘When Women Wrote Hollywood’ – the book of essays from our inaugural class which has now been published by McFarland.
Transcript:
We also bring in guest lecturers like my friend Paolo who I met coming to an SRN. So he came to town for a week and we did some story work with our students. This is our first class. You can hear about it a little more in a minute. So this was great. He came to lecture about the Global Neorealism because we wanted an Italian expert so there you go. I’m also very fond of the idea that I’ve learned a lot from doing this with my students because I planned the whole thing focusing on women only to realize that I’ve left behind minorities. There were African American filmmakers in the silent era. Oscar Micheaux is one of them. Very famous. Much of their work has been lost so it’s difficult to teach them or to offer students the chance to study them or analyze their work but he has a lot of work out there. So I’ve had to find texts that cover the gaze the focus of African Americans in the film in America through the years. So this one– it turned out it’s mostly about actors — but it gives you a sense and then also my LGBTQ students want to see where they fit in the picture and this is an excellent book on the history of LGBTQ people in Los Angeles — screenwriters, actors, directors — the whole thing. So by them asking me what they want or where they don’t see themselves in the picture, it’s forced me to go outside of my own background and give them more.
Books mentioned in this clip
†
Watch the entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne Welch, Ph.D on YouTube
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!
Get “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
Married at age nineteen and together until Sam’s death, their marriage fed the comedic portrayals of the mishaps of women and men as they fall head over heels for each other and rage against the other. More of a writing partnership than romantic in some ways, as a team the Spewacks conquered Hollywood during a turbulent time when their peers were being sacrificed by producers to a government blacklist fueled by fear of Communism.
Marriage of Words: Bella And Sam Spewack
by Laura Kirk
Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
“So that’s when I realized as a kid, “Oh, when they take a book or a play and make a movie out of it, they don’t actually just copy what was already done. Oh. That’s kind of annoying , but now it means I really have to focus on the actual piece of literature first.”
Watch this entire presentation – You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaption
Thanks to Karen Lindell for attending my library lecture on When Women Wrote Hollywood at the Pollak Library on the campus of California State University, Fullerton. Her article tries to make sense of the many subjects that have populated my books, and she rightly deduces that it is highlighting the work of women writers that is my main mission. Even in my book on The Monkees I made sure to fully cover the career of Treva Silverman, who by writing on that show became one of the first women to write for television without a male partner.
Video of “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Coming Soon!
Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center
As a young girl in Ohio, Rosanne Welch was a regular at her local library, pouring over autobiographies and memoirs of screenwriters from Hollywood’s early years. By the age of 10, she knew that she wanted to have a career in television or film.
Welch, lecturer in screenwriting at Cal State Fullerton, did make it to Hollywood, where she wrote for television shows “Beverly Hills 90210,” “Picket Fences,” ABC’s “Nightline” and “Touched by an Angel.”
But a funny thing happened on the way to the studio … as Welch prepared for her career, she was surprised to find that the female screenwriters she had read about as a child weren’t mentioned in her screenwriting courses.
This piqued her curiosity. Upon researching the matter, she found several reasons why these women had been sidelined in history.
Read Faculty Screenwriter and Author Gives Voice to Forgotten Women via CSUF News Center
* 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
A clip from my presentation at the 11th Annual Screenwriting Research Network conference. Held on the campus of the beautiful Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
In the presentation, I covered the reasons writers have been marginalized – and the reasons they oughtn’t to be so disrespected. Then I talked about how my course works, what books I assign, what guest speakers I invite, what research the students do – and ended on a high note by introducing ‘When Women Wrote Hollywood’ – the book of essays from our inaugural class which has now been published by McFarland.
Transcript:
We also bring in guest lecturers like my friend Paolo who I met coming to an SRN. So he came to town for a week and we did some story work with our students. This is our first class. You can hear about it a little more in a minute. So this was great. He came to lecture about the Global Neorealism because we wanted an Italian expert so there you go. I’m also very fond of the idea that I’ve learned a lot from doing this with my students because I planned the whole thing focusing on women only to realize that I’ve left behind minorities. There were African American filmmakers in the silent era. Oscar Micheaux is one of them. Very famous. Much of their work has been lost so it’s difficult to teach them or to offer students the chance to study them or analyze their work but he has a lot of work out there. So I’ve had to find texts that cover the gaze the focus of African Americans in the film in America through the years. So this one– it turned out it’s mostly about actors — but it gives you a sense and then also my LGBTQ students want to see where they fit in the picture and this is an excellent book on the history of LGBTQ people in Los Angeles — screenwriters, actors, directors — the whole thing. So by them asking me what they want or where they don’t see themselves in the picture, it’s forced me to go outside of my own background and give them more.
Books mentioned in this clip
†
Watch the entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne Welch, Ph.D on YouTube
Buy a signed copy of when Women Wrote Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Do you know about these women screenwriters? Many don’t. Learn more about them today!
Get “When Women Wrote Hollywood” Today!
“As Zoë Akins attempted to prove the legitimacy of her work, the need for commercial success could not be ignored. Like her characters, Akins had to secure her own economic future. While her parents lived a comfortable life, they did not support her fiscally. Such restraints meant setting aside the high-minded rebellion of Papa. She needed to fill theatre seats, so she had to fulfill specific story requirements. Akins wrote, “…I longed for the freedom which money alone could buy” (OTM 127). She used that declaration as the foundation for her next work.”
Zoë Akins: A Quiet Rebellion
by Sarah Whorton
Buy a signed copy of when Women Write Hollywood
Paperback Edition | Kindle Edition | Google Play Edition
* 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
