Category: Video

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, we have Stephen Bochco who really started the idea of multiplicity in storylines in Hill Sreet Blues which is a very famous show. We have Dick Wolf who gave us the Law & Order franchise that was on for 19 years. Didn’t quite make 20. This show’s made 21. I saw it just airing on Sky TV the other night so it’s something available in Britain and of course, there was a British version of Law & Order. They actually did one where they took early scripts and they transferred them here. Didn’t do great but what do you know? Don Bellisario gave us basically military heroes which were pretty big in the states but he himself had been in the military during Vietnam War and so he came out. People may not know it but the Magnum story was that right? He was a Vietnam War vet and then as Bellisiario moved through and these shows all ran a good ten years apiece. so long-running programs.

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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:

The writer-producers and again they were mostly guys in the 80s and early 90s right mostly guys. I did a big article on these gentlemen as well because I had once worked for Kenny Johnson who’s a marvelous man in the corner with the Incredible Hulk. He did the first tv superhero which was the Incredible Hulk show back in the day. So all these guys came out of the Universal writer’s pool right? Stephen Cannell was so beloved that when he died he was NOT running a show called Castle which ran for nine years on network television but the people who ran this show had been trained by him and when he died at the ending of their program, they ran this logo which was how his tv shows in the 70s and 80s used to end and in honor of him they ran this and called him a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. That’s a big deal in Hollywood where mostly we say nasty things about people. So it tells you something about his personality.

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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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

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