LA/Los Angeles – Page 16 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

25 Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!

Transcript:

Sissy Spacek was quite wonderful. Do a little pop culture moment here. That’s Sissy Spacek and she’s with Carrie Fisher. Why would i put those two together in a picture? I’s because long ago and far away onthe day that they each auditioned for their separate movie, the two directors swapped the women. So Sissy Spacek could have been Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher could have been Carrie. Think about how different both of their careers would have gone had that happened and how much that each of them affect the further work they did. Carrie Fisher would always argue and I believe with her Princess Leia was powerful. She wasn’t as powerful as she could be but she was a character that took a weapon and helped with saving herself right? So each of them affected the work they did in the future.

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24 Carrie from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

So now I want to focus for a second here also now on what happens when women are in horror films and what kind of women kind of female role models are we seeing in that world right? So, in movies, we didn’t have for a long time women doing a lot of writing so the women were represented as the characters in this piece so right? Popular, most famous, of course, being Carrie so now we’re back to Stephen King who wrote that right? So not written by a girl and the movie was actually adapted by Lawrence Cohen, but Carrie’s an interesting study in a girl revenge movie right? This is a chance for “You misused me and I’m going to get you back,” and that wasn’t something frequently that girls had a chance to get. They just got bullied and hurt and then gee who saves the day? She’s going to save her own day when she rises from the dead.

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Panel Discussion: More Than A Period: Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories For TV [Video] (1 hour 27 minutes)

Panel Discussion: More Than A Period: Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories For TV

Recently, I had the honor (and the fun) of moderating another panel for the Writers Guild Foundation with a conversation centered around how we write “Girls Coming of Age” stories for television.

Our panelists included Rheeqrheeq Chainey (The Baby Sitters Club), Sonia Kharkar (On My Block, Never Have I Ever), Ilana Peña (Creator, Diary of a Future President) and Christina Nieves (Generation), an alumna of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting, which was the greatest pleasure of the whole event!

For each Workshop the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting hosts a panel with the Writers Guild Foundation which takes place at the Guild offices in Los Angeles. For this August it will be on Zoom which means many more attendees can RSVP to join us – and we hope you will because this panel is extra-special.

It’s the second year in a row we’ve been able to invite an MFA alumna to be a panelist because they have become a working writer. Last year it was Class of 2019’s Sahar Jahani (who has written for Ramy and 13 Reasons Why) and on this panel we’ll be welcoming Class of 2020’s Christina Nieves to discuss Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories thanks to her new position as a staff writer on Generation.

We hope you can join me, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting as I moderate the discussion.

Photo by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash

More Than A Period: Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories For TV

Wednesday, August 12, 2020
4:30 PM 6:00 PM

We at the WGF may have hit a pause on our live events, but thanks to technology, we’re aiming to provide more access to advice and knowledge from film and TV writers while we’re all social distancing. Over the last few months, we’ve been hosting free Zoom panels about craft and all things relevant to writers.

For this session, we team up with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for a discussion about crafting girls’ coming-of-age stories. The panel of writers will share how their shows address this formative period for its characters, how their own experiences informed their writing, and why coming-of-age stories are an endless source of stories.

Panelists:

Sonia Kharkar – Executive Story Editor, On My Block, Never Have I Ever
Christina Nieves – Staff Writer, Generation
Ilana Peña – Creator, Diary of a Future President
Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch, Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

23 Taking Horror Seriously from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (43 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

It’s one of those questions you find yourself — you know people think, “Oh you’re doing a class on horror. That can’t be anything you take seriously.” Well, we have to because it’s information people are taking in. What is it making you think right? If you’re with a dude who’s scary, do you think oh yeah it was good for her. It all worked out in the end for he.r Maybe not right? Let’s reconsider how we’re taking these fictional stories into our life. So I think that’s really interesting. Twilight of course was put together by Melissa Rosenberg who had come off the tv show, Dexter. So what an interesting background before you’re gonna write about Twilight and vampire romance, she’d written about a serial killer who you know kills once a week. I don’t know but uh she made a good ton of money off that and obviously was pretty successful.

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22 Modern-Day Vampires from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

We also then, of course, know about The Vampire Diaries. Julie Pleck put that out, but now she has Legacies which is a sequel to that and Origins which is another one. Interesting because here she’s also turning them more into the sexy dudes and we’re starting to talk about that concept. The problem behind it is at what point does the super-sexy guy really become a way to hide the toxic romance that’s going on when we think about vampires, because vampires are, in fact, capable of killing you. This is a boyfriend who can kill you and you are agreeing to be with him knowing how dangerous that is. That’s a definition of domestic violence in its own way and yet we’re turning it into pop culture hot oh boy which one do I pick? Which team are you on? Right? so is that, again, defanging them, or is that accidentally empowering those kinds of relationships?

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Panel Discussion: More Than A Period: Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories For TV – Wed, August 12, 2020, 430pm PDT

We hope you can join me, Dr. Rosanne Welch, Executive Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting as I moderate the discussion.

Photo by Kyle Gregory Devaras on Unsplash

More Than A Period: Writing Girls Coming of Age Stories For TV

Wednesday, August 12, 2020
4:30 PM 6:00 PM

We at the WGF may have hit a pause on our live events, but thanks to technology, we’re aiming to provide more access to advice and knowledge from film and TV writers while we’re all social distancing. Over the last few months, we’ve been hosting free Zoom panels about craft and all things relevant to writers.

For this session, we team up with Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting for a discussion about crafting girls’ coming-of-age stories. The panel of writers will share how their shows address this formative period for its characters, how their own experiences informed their writing, and why coming-of-age stories are an endless source of stories.

Panelists:

Sonia Kharkar – Executive Story Editor, On My Block, Never Have I Ever
Christina Nieves – Staff Writer, Generation
Ilana Peña – Creator, Diary of a Future President
Moderated by Dr. Rosanne Welch, Director of Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting.

Panel starts at 4:30pm Pacific time.

Space is limited so RSVP now. After signing up, you’ll receive information on how to access the Zoom panel.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at events@wgfoundation.org.

For anyone who was unable to RSVP for the panel, we will record and post it at a later date

21 Buffy and Masculinity from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 9 seconds)

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Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

The other thing that was going on with Buffy and a couple of other shows we’ll talk about, is that we’re taking vampires who were the other and the scary and the bad and we’re making them sexy and hot, which is a female perspective but then we have to ask ourselves is that good or is that bad? Is that good because in a way when you make the men the objectified sexual object are you taking power away from them and therefore giving that power to the women? That’s a question because you can’t deny David Boreanaz was hot. This is all there is to it. He’s still hot. I know through Buffy through Bones and through Seal Team that man just… but I think it’s a great credit to this actor. We have to recognize he could manage to be deeply, deeply masculine while not being the most important person in the story. He could be the supportive man beside her and that made him all the more man and that’s a different way to define what manhood is and that’s I think a really important thing we’re seeing in some newer literature. So that I think is fascinating.

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Rosanne Hosting Screenwriting Discussion at The Athena TV Lab

Many thanks to the many great MFA mentors who are doing double duty as mentors to this year’s Athena TV Lab. You can find them on the last two lines of this (now familiar) Zoom grid (starting on the 3rd tier/4th spot): Dawn Comer Jefferson, Jon Vandergriff, Rashaan Dozier-Escalante (also alumna of the MFA Class of 2018), Amy Straus, and Laura Brennan. And there are 2 MFA alums here, too (Sydney Haven and Pam Winfrey).

The Athena Film Festival Virtual Writers Lab

The Athena Film Festival at Barnard College Virtual Writers Lab is for emerging women writers who have not had a feature-length narrative script produced within the past 10 years. Writers must submit a screenplay that includes a woman or women characters in a leadership role or position at the center of the story. Scripts must be feature-length narratives (between 80 and 120 pages).

The Athena Film Festival at Barnard College Virtual Writers Lab provides women identified storytellers with training, skills, and a robust supportive network. Participants will have several one-on-one mentoring sessions with experienced screenwriters as well as peer-to-peer and group sessions.

The Athena Film Festival at Barnard College Virtual Writers Lab will also include industry events where participants will learn about how to navigate the industry as well as a keynote conversation from an established filmmaker. Past panels have included: The Fluidity of Writing, How Does Representation Work, and The Art of Pitching and past keynotes have come from Gina Prince-Bythewood and Kat Candler.

20 Even More On Buffy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 16 seconds)

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Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

The other thing that’s important about Buffy is that we’re going to blend in some LGBTQ stories in the course of time. We’re going to blend in the fact that these men in her life help but never save the day. In any other story, it’s the men who come along and save the damsel in distress. In this case, it’s the chick who saves the dudes in distress or through sharing the work they make the solution happen. One of the special things about Buffy was it is about how a woman masters a problem in a feminine way right? Sadly we tend to think that when boys learn how to save the day they learn how to master a weapon and go one on one with the bad guy. That’s what they’ve seen in a million movies — many movies that i enjoy myself. The way women do it is they gather a group around them and they empower that group to be as good as they can be together and then as a group they go forward and they save the day and that’s a feminine way of doing things that’s a very that’s a very teacherly way of doing things. Together we will learn this and we will master this thing and move on in the world and succeed. So i think the show did so many things from a feminine perspective and i think it’s because of those two ladies. That makes a big difference.

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19 More On Buffy from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (39 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Importantly, Jane Espenson eventually went on and created Warehouse 13 which is an adorable little show also in the sort of sci-fi world. Really good show. So I think it’s really important to think about everything that Buffy did to throw all the tropes of horror to flip them. So now we have the blonde is saving the world. This rarely happens. The blonde is usually the one who gets dead first right? So not only is she a girl who saves the world she has to be a blonde girl and she has to be a cheerleader because we have to take every single anti-female trope and say “no”, there’s power in who she is.

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