On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
@drrosannewelch ##Screenwriting ##Question ##3: ##Act ##lengths in ##TV ##scripts ##screenwriting
![Screenwriting Question #3 : Act lengths in TV scripts via TikTok [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/swq-003.gif)
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@drrosannewelch ##Screenwriting ##Question 2: Do ##Act ##Breaks Still Matter Even On ##Streaming ##Shows? ##tv ##television ##tips ##writing
![Screenwriting Question 2: Do Act Breaks Still Matter Even On Streaming Shows? via TikTok [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/swqq-002-act-breaks.gif)
Read more about screenwriting with these books
* 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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Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne
‘Message for Posterity’: The Singing Detective (1986) 25 years on by John R. Cook
This article offers a reappraisal of Dennis Potter’s television script for The Singing Detective (BBC, 1986) in the 25th anniversary period of the production’s first broadcast. The article reviews the history of the author’s intellectual engagement with The Singing Detective – of what it meant to him then, when he first saw the production in 1986 and of what it means to him now. It discusses the relationship of The Singing Detective to literary modernism, particularly James Joyce’s novel, Ulysses published in 1922. It examines debates on whether Potter is a postmodern writer and also explores the relationship of The Singing Detective to psychoanalysis. It concludes by arguing that Potter’s TV screenplay for The Singing Detective is best seen as a religious work in which spirituality is redefined as the capacity for human beings to reshape their own reality. In this lies Potter’s Christian optimism and The Singing Detective stands as his message for posterity in this regard.
The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.
Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!
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![08 Stephen J. Cannell and Adam-12 from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/srn-porto-08.png)
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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
Stephen Cannell — who’s the first person I worked for as an assistant — they tell a great story when he was in the writer’s pool Universal. They came in for this show, Adam-12, they said we need an idea for the show. Who wants to write one and the first thing that came to him was — they’re policemen who rode around in a squad car all day — and his unique idea was, what if they got the squad car that was misbehaving — that had engine trouble and a flat tire and everything went wrong with the car. So the whole episode was about these men managing the tool of their job more than managing what the crime of the week was and that stood out in people’s minds. He was using the formula in a different way and that started to make people pay attention to him. So that he could leave and do other things.
For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit
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@drrosannewelch Question: What of someone steals my idea? ##screenwriting ##questions ##answers ##television ##film ##movies ##education
Read more about screenwriting with these books
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@drrosannewelch Have ##questions about the ##craft and/or ##business of ##screenwriting for ##film and ##TV? Drop them in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them!
![Have questions about the craft and/or business of screenwriting for film and TV? Drop them in the comments! via TikTok [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/rmw-ask-me-questions-tt.gif)
Read more about screenwriting with these books
* 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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![Srn port07 The Writer's Voice from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/srn-porto-07-1.jpg)
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
And I think that’s where we started to learn that, particularly in television, you had to find people with a defined voice and that is something you could build a show around and so when I define voice everyone has a slightly different concept but to me, it’s a simple matter of your opinion and the style in which you deliver it and that tells us your different voice and I think some of the shows I’m going to mention — it’s very clear they have very unique voices and that’s where they come from. So we started to recognize that the idea of the creator and television was the writer and that person should run the entire show themselves and should begin to gather about them a group of people who could mimic their voice while still keeping their own. That was the difficult job of television which is also still a difficult thing to teach students to write a spec script that sounds like, but doesn’t obliterate, your own voice, and that’s what you’re trying to do in the room, which again, is more chaotic than I would say.
For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit
* 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!
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In the latest installment of Monkees 101 – a segment of the Zilch: A Monkees Podcast which I co-host with Dr. Sarah Clark. We’re covering all 58 episodes of the show one at a time.
In this show we analyze “I’ve Got a Little Song Here” (written by the amazing, future Emmy-winning Treva Silverman), which aired November 28, 1966.
In the story Mike writes a new song, but the publishing company he tries to sell it to tries to rip him off and his musician pals come to his rescue. Lots of fun meta-moments for all the cast.
![Drs. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Sarah Clark discuss The Monkees “I’ve Got a Little Song Here” episode on the Zilch Podcast's Monkees 101 Series [Audio]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Zilch164sm.jpg)
The Zilch Staff drops Tour News AND the “Dolenz Sings Nesmith” track lists before a double-header episode! First up Sarah talks to Nashville musician Walter Cherry about his ambitious 5(!) album Monkees cover project, and then it’s time for Monkees 101! Sarah and Rosanne talk I’ve Got a Little Song here, which aired November 28, 1966. Mike writes a new song, but the publishing company he tries to sell it to tries to rip him off.
Aired 3/22/21
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Nearly two years ago I had the pleasure of being invited to join a panel at the then upcoming SCMS (Society of Cinema and Media Studies) conference set for Seattle. As you know that was canceled due to Covid with the hopes of reconvening in Colorado in 2021. That became a virtual conference but our group decided to reapply our panel and we four were able to ‘meet’ on Zoom on Sunday and present: Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator.
Here you can watch my part of the presentation,
“When Men Forget Women: The Many Ways Male Screenwriters Fail to Mention their Female Colleagues in Oral Histories”
Our intrepid panel leader, Christina Lane (author of Phantom Lady – the new biography of writer-producer Joan Harrison) kept us connected across the time. Other panel participants included Philana Payton (UCLA) who is researching the memoirs of Eartha Kitt and Vicki Callahan (USC) who covered the career of Mabel Normand. I was happy to highlight the many female screenwriters whose histories were left on the cutting room floor thanks to the unreliable narrators of their work who included directors, film reviewers, and husbands – all who left the female writers out of their own memories.
V14 Writing Between the Lines: Feminist Strategies for Historical Absences, Cliché, and the Unreliable Narrator
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”
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![04 The Comedy Writer's Room from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/srn-porto-04.jpg)
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
In terms of the history of writer’s rooms, comedy always sort of had them and we know that going back into the early days of the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. He had a team of writers including his brother who worked with him. So comedy always knew that it needed a group. It was as if they knew the sitcom was an outgrowth of standup comedy or those vaudeville acts they had all been in. Of course, we love The Dick Van Dyke Show taught many people in America — many females in America — you could write for television because there was a female character writing of television, right, in the ’60s. So that taught us we had a place in this business which is a good thing. Neil Simon worked in early TV comedy shows and so he then glamourized that in his play so that’s a way that people learn about writer’s rooms. They see it operate and this was a room that included very famous men. Larry Gelbart who did M*A*S*H. Woody Allen who we can say other things about these days.
For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit
* 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!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS