On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director. The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters. Feel free to share! — Rosanne
GEORGE
“The good news, however, is that this overreacting… tends to get proportionately less by generation. So, your kids could be normal.”
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
@drrosannewelch ##Teaching one of my 3 ##classes today for Cal Poly Pomona. This has been my classroom for the last year, like so many others. *DW (from Rosanne’s Prod)
![Teaching one of my 3 classes today for Cal Poly Pomona via TikTok [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/rmw-teaching-tt.gif)
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![12 Describing Your Characters from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (1 minute)](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/rmw-oxford-brookes-12.png)
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
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This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director. The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters. Feel free to share! — Rosanne
MICHEL
People are particularly stupid today. I can’t talk to any more of them.
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:
Everything that’s written that’s remembered is because you learned something while you were watching it. It might be that friends matter which is really the theme of all of the Harry Potter movies let’s admit it. That’s all you learned from those movies. They were quite fun but that’s a pretty good theme. In life, friends matter. Themes are universal. So this is my opinion but I think, generally speaking, people find this the opinion.
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
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
This new “A Woman Wrote That” post is an echo of the Writers Guild campaign of a few years ago (“A Writer Wrote That”) where they noted famous movie quotes and credited the screenwriter rather than the director. The difference here being that we will be posting lines from films written by female screenwriters. Feel free to share! — Rosanne
AMBER
Ms. Stoeger, my plastic surgeon doesn’t want me doing any activity where balls fly at my nose.
I had a lot of fun on my first Twitter Chat last Sunday. Jeanne Veillette Bowerman of #Scriptchat had invited to talk about how to behave in a writers room alongside what are the benefits of an MFA in TV and Screenwriting (such as the one we offer from Stephens College).
Happily, I had just interviewed Gloria Calderon Kellet who had an MFA and who had said so astutely that no one requires that in Hollywood but taking 2 years to invest in herself and her craft meant she had material that was truly of high enough quality to offer up when future producers offered to read her work. So that was nice!
As to Twitter, I knew being short and concise is the bread and butter of Twitter but… wow… I’m clearly a much longer storyteller and kept running over the limit and having to use ellipses to extend a sentence or a thought. But folks seemed to enjoy it and even said I had ‘dropped pearls’ so that was nice to hear as well.
Check out #Scriptchat every Sunday night at 5pmPST/8pmET for more fun guests.
ScriptChat with Dr. Rosanne Welch from Sunday, February 14, 2021
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:
Stephen Cannell — who I’m going to talk about briefly in a second — he was in a writer’s pool and he was asked to write an episode of this one day and the reason he stood out and became then his own showrunner was because he had the craziest little idea. Rather than worry about what’s the crime this week and what’s the problem the cops are involved with, he just thought what would happen if the police were assigned to work in a police car which kept breaking down all day. Just a funny little idea which then was the theme of the whole episode. How do you do your job when you’re not providing the proper equipment and that made other people in Universal buzz about this new cool writer and they pretty much thought he had a particular voice and to me that’s the most important thing and you hear this word a thousand times. What does it mean? How do you do it? What does it prove? I’m gonna make you do a little exercise practicing that because writer’s voice is style plus opinion. You have a style of writing and you have something to say, right? That’s the theme. If you don’t have a theme you have no reason to write anything.
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
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In this clip from a recent Starcatcher podcast film professor (and MFA alum) and host – Chase Thompson – interviews Tech Theatre professor (and MFA alum) Michael Blake about their time as MFA candidates in our Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program.
They both mention the great feedback they received from their writing mentors, which made me thankful for the dedication of the many marvelous mentors in our program. Then the part that made me smile the most… They each reflected on how important it was in the History of Screenwriting courses to learn about all the female screenwriters who founded Hollywood and how often those women were left out of mainstream histories of the era.
It’s a very powerful example of how history takes time — and deep research — or someone(s) will be left out.
![Stephens College MFA Alumni Chase Thompson and Michael Burke Talk About Their MFA Experience on the Starcatcher Podcast [Audio Except]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/starcatcher-106-burke-mfa.jpg)
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Join me for a conversation with Stephens College’s Director of Production, Michael Burke. A former graduate of the Stephens Theatre program, Michael talks about his path to production, his background, why Theatre majors are so good at saying thank you, and his predictions on where the road Theater is heading after the pandemic is over.