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, writers are important. Writer comes before director when people are writer-directors because writers are more important. You cannot direct nothing. You cannot direct some people walking around a room right? Somebody has to say why they’re there and what they’re doing. So writers are very important and women writers — well this is one of my reasons why writers are important too — when you talk to friends about a movie you love, you do not generally say “remember the camera angle in scene five.” You say “remember the dialogue.” You quote dialogue to your friends. That’s the writer. That’s why the writer is more important. That’s why more people should want to be writers.
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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
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Transcript:
Just in the United States, this show finished a six-season run. It’s from England and we’d always had programming from England because we had that in our national channel always brought in stuff from England because in the United States we think the English folks are smarter and more intellectual than we are right? We think that they’re just better because they have Shakespeare and we don’t. So we like English programming but what I liked was it taught me about a book series I had never heard of right? So I was exposed to some literature from another country that way. likewise, this is from years ago but this book series was a tv show in England that aired in the United States which I liked a lot.
Watch this entire presentation
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
I had the pleasure of sitting down with Alex Miller, the Senior Director of Admissions at Stephens College the other day to talk about our MFA in TV and Screenwriting.
Alex had collected some of the basic questions asked by applicants so we answered them over this short 10 minute video.
If you’d like to know what sort of activities fill the days during our 10 day residency intensive or wonder about the composition of our cohorts, or what type of classes we offer that are unique to our program — here’s the place to find out. — Rosanne
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:
I do teach at Stephens College which is located in Missouri but we teach low-residency so they do everything online but they come to Hollywood — which is where I live — for 10 days twice a year and that’s a lovely thing. It’s at the Jim Henson Studios so there’s Kermit saying hi to you when you come in. Very lovely and very welcoming to see Kermit every morning. I have a teaching philosophy which is pretty simple. Words matter. Writers matter. Women writers matter. Thank you very much. Yes Indeed. We haven’t thought about women a lot over the years and I do. One of the things I think we need to think about — this is a Facebook post that I saw the other day and – how words can be misused. So I don’t want to get too political on you. I’m coming from a place where there’s a lot of politics going on, as you can imagine, but think about how these words were misused right? Take a little second. Your brain will wrap around the mistake in these words. Think about it you could have written that a different way but they had an opinion they wanted to put out, right, so words are important.
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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
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 on transitioning to TV writing from other careers. Learn how our panel of TV writers and producers made the jump to television, how their previous experiences inform their writing, and how that lens impacts their approach in the writers room.
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Transcript:
This is actually a program from New Zealand. Who knew New Zealand made television, but I have my students write spec scripts — speculative scripts — which are their own versions of a show that already exists to teach the art of copying, because if you’re going to write television you have to copy what exists and then you make your own story, but you have to know how the characters sound. So, I have them pitch ideas from programs they are watching, but they have to write a United States show because that’s what the people are going to read in the United States. This young man pitched an episode of this show because he saw it on Netflix and he didn’t even realize it wasn’t from the United States. he didn’t even notice that they were using city names from New — he didn’t know what New Zealand was really, but the TV showed him and I stay that we learn the mythology of other cultures. This is a show about Norse mythology. the young boys on the program discover that they are the re-born versions of Norse gods and their goal is to get together with the other Norse gods and eventually go back to heaven together and rule the world. It’s adorable and I wouldn’t have heard about it except for Netflix.
Watch this entire presentation
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
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:
As Paolo said — so I won’t spend a lot of time on it — these are the shows –these are the books I’ve done. Sorry. Largely a big Doctor Who fan. Any Doctor Who fans in the house. Really we’ll talk a little bit about the writing of that. It’s quite a brilliant show, I think. These are most of the things I’ve done. Also, love Torchwood has also been quite well done. I am the book review editor, so if you’re Masters students — when you graduate — you can email me, and if there’s a book you’d like to have for free — because they don’t pay you to write in journals — you can review the book and I’ll have it sent to you so you can do that and it’s a credit for you so it’s a lovely thing and Written By Magazine is the magazine of the Writers Guild. You can read this online for free if you go to writtenby.com. You go to WGA, which is our website for the Writer’s Guild, and every two months or so it comes out. Always interviews with writers and showrunners, movie film writers, people like that, so it’s really I think an excellent thing it’s like having a guest speaker come to you and very in-depth interviews, right? We’ll talk about some of them that I’ve done over time.
Watch this entire presentation
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
* 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
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.
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
* 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
Join our program director, Dr. Rosanne Welch, for a virtual open house to learn more about our Master of Fine Arts in TV and Screenwriting. As we prepare to welcome the 2021 cohort in fall 2021, we invite you to learn about the program, hear how the admissions process works, and an open Q&A to get all your questions answered.
Write Reach Represent
Online Open House with Program Executive Director Dr. Rosanne Welch and Director of Admissions Alexandra Miller
New York, USA Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 7:00 pm EST Columbia, USA Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 6:00 pm CST Denver, USA Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 5:00 pm MST Los Angeles, USA Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 4:00 pm PST
Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!
Transcript:
That’s why these services are so important to what we’re going to be able to do in the future because so many films are now co-productions with Netflix and they know they want to keep this worldwide audience because soon we’ll have the Disney streaming channel and we’re going to have an NBC streaming channel. There will be too many of those to pick from. The one thing Netflix has going for it is it’s done co-productions with so many countries. So people can have an interest in seeing their stories more than repetitive Disney stories, as much as I like Disney after a while I don’t need to see Aladdin filmed by 47 different actors again and again and again. So I think it’s really important and so even when I was preparing and thinking about doing this I watched some Brazilian television. I was able on my own television to simply dial up these programs and see what they were all about and because of that, I can then share them with my students who are very interested in finding out because my students come from many, many different backgrounds — many many different heritages and they don’t always see themselves represented on film. So the idea of seeing television shows and movies from their families home culture is a beautiful way for them to keep that culture even in a world where assimilation is the thing that more people are respecting, and they feel they lose their culture.
Watch this entire presentation
A Note About This Presentation
A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.
To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.
Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.
* 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
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