More on Adapting The Hobbit from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (0:44)

You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library

Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch this entire presentation

More on Adapting The Hobbit from A History of the Art of Adaptation

 

Transcript:

Lots of true Tolkien fans – deeply angry that such a thing should happen and there should be focus on a character when other stuff was being thrown out. This is a choice for screenwriters and directors as they try to decide to bring something to film. The Hobbit had been made in animation several years earlier — 1977 — and it’s only 77 minutes long. So, would you rather have that version or the new version with an extra elf that doesn’t really exist. Now make up your mind. What I love about this is that made by Rankin-Bass the same company that gave us Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Who himself was an adaptation of a song. A song turned into a beloved Christmas story. So, you can adapt from anything.

About this talk

Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.  In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University.  She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

A History of Screenwriting – 10 in a series – Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)

I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus.  As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era  who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order  to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch


Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)

Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)

The earliest surviving copyrighted motion picture, the Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze is a short film made by W. K. L. Dickson in January 1894 for advertising purposes. Often referred to as “Fred Ott’s Sneeze,” this is is one of the world’s earliest motion pictures and America’s best known early film production. The star is Fred Ott, an Edison employee known to his fellow workers in the laboratory for his comic sneezing and other gags. This item was received in the Library of Congress on January 9, 1894, as a copyright deposit from Dickson.

Two other Edison experimental films on the Library’s YouTube site – DICKSON GREETING (May 1891) and NEWARK ATHLETE (May or June 1891), predate The Sneeze. The Sneeze was submitted for copyright as 45 frames from the motion picture printed as positive prints on paper rather than as a reel of film. The prints were mounted on cardboard and submitted to the Copyright Office in this form. The video of the Sneeze on loc.gov and YouTube was later rephotographed and turned into a moving image from these mounted frames.

SUMMARY
Film made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in Harper’s weekly.

OTHER TITLES
Sneeze 
Fred Ott’s sneeze 

CREATED/PUBLISHED
United States : Edison Manufacturing Co., 1894.

NOTES
Copyright: W. K. L. Dickson; 9Jan1894; 2887. 

Performer: Fred Ott. 

Camera, William Heise. 

Filmed ca. January 2-7, 1894, in Edison’s Black Maria studio. 

SUBJECTS
Sneezing.
Publicity.
Motion picture industry–Public relations–United States.
Actuality

RELATED NAMES
Dickson, W. K.-L. (William Kennedy-Laurie), 1860-1935, production.
Ott, Frederic P., performer.
Heise, William, camera.
Thomas A. Edison, Inc. 
Hendricks (Gordon) Collection (Library of Congress) 
Paper Print Collection (Library of Congress) 

DIGITAL ID 
edmp.0026A http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/edmp.0026A

Learn more about Thomas Edison and Early Movies with these books and videos

* 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! 

Wrapping Up The Monkees from 1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees [Video] (1:26)

Watch this entire presentation

Monkees ceWrapping Up The Monkees from 1960's TV Censorship and The Monkees nsorship 22 conclusion

 

“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…  

Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references.
Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016

Transcript:

They had a couple of other big names come in. And then this was Treva’s explanation to me about why they got away with it. Network guys thought they were hip and cool, but they had no idea what was going on. And these guys knew it. She defined herself as a hippy as did Peter Meyerson like I said and she said she started smoking pot during the course of working on the show and when she went home to New York to visit her relatives they were like, ahhh…scandalized. She said, “Well, that’s just what everyone is doing.” So, I wanted to mention that we’re not done with censorship on television briefly. If you know Amy Schumer recently had this sketch canceled from her show. It was censored. She wasn’t to air it and it was anti-gun thing based on all the mass shootings. We still obviously knew about the “wardrobe malfunction” and what can and can’t be shown of a woman on television and of course, George Carlin went to court over The 7 Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television. Dexter, of course, think how violent that is. We worry so much about what sex we show on TV but look how much violence we show and I think Gilda Radner, who I love dearly, is pretty brilliant because she talked about the violence on television back in the day. So we’re still not done with that. If you’re interested in censorship on TV, these are some books that are fun to look at that talk about this period of time. And so, if you want to look into that, that’s what they are. And that’s the flat out presentation. 


Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

 Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

 

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Other books/DVDs mentioned in this clip


About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.  In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University.  She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Adapting Tolkien from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (1:02)

You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library

Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch this entire presentation

Adapting Tolkien from A History of the Art of Adaptation

 

Transcript:

Of course, we all know, gee whiz, the biggest adaptation of the last ten years has been the whole set of Tolkien books. I’m just going to look at The Hobbit for a minute because when it became a movie they invented an entire character who doesn’t appear in the book at all. Just made her up, because there weren’t enough chicks involved in this story, right? They thought “Oh no, we need to do something about that.” So Tauriel doesn’t exist in the books, but they wanted to have a little bit of a love story. They wanted to have a female character largely because one of the more popular female characters in The Lord of The Rings adaptation is Eowyn, right? Everybody — well that’s Tauriel. Excuse me. She’s so important she got on one of the posters. It’s Eowyn, right? And she stood out in the whole Lord of the Rings saga because of what line? (Laughs) “I am no man!” Wham. What a great moment, right? That’a a moment  everybody…so, they knew in making The Hobbit a film, they had to have some sort of female character who could bring that to the new production. 

About this talk

Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.  In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University.  She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

A History of Screenwriting – 9 in a series – Men Boxing, William K. L. Dickson, William Heise – Edison Manufacturing Company, 1891

I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus.  As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era  who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order  to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch


Men Boxing, William K. L. Dickson, William Heise – Edison Manufacturing Company, 1891

A History of Screenwriting - 9 in a series - Men Boxing, William K. L. Dickson, William Heise - Edison Manufacturing Company, 1891

Men Boxing is an 1891 American short black-and-white silent actuality film, produced and directed by William K.L. Dickson and William Heise for the Edison Manufacturing Company, featuring two Edison employees with boxing gloves, pretending to spar in a boxing ring. The 12 feet of film was shot between May and June 1891 at the Edison Laboratory Photographic Building in West Orange, New Jersey, on the Edison-Dickson-Heise experimental horizontal-feed kinetograph camera and viewer, through a round aperture on 3/4 inch (19mm) wide film with a single edge row of sprocket perforations, as an experimental demonstration and was never publicly shown. A print has been preserved in the US Library of Congress film archive as part of the Gordon Hendricks collection.[1][2] — Wikipedia

Learn more about Thomas Edison and Early Movies with these books and videos

* 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! 

Sunset Strip Riots and The Monkees from 1960’s TV Censorship and The Monkees [Video] (1:09)

Watch this entire presentation

Monkees censorship 21 sunset strip

 

“1960s TV Censorship and The Monkees” gives a brief overview of where censorship standards were in the era – and how The Monkees pushed the envelope with its mentions of the Vietnam War – and Sunset Strip riots – and even with the outrageous storytelling behind “Frodis Caper”, the episode that celebrated the saving of an alien plant that very closely resembled a marijuana plant…  

Writer Treva Silverman said the staff got away with such jokes because the network executives were just old enough not to understand any of the references.
Presented at Stephens College MFA in Screenwriting classes on Friday, August 5, 2016

Transcript:

And this is the Sunset Strip Riots which had to do with Pandora’s Box which was a club down in Hollywood and the curfew was that kids under 21 had to go home by 10 o’clock and so there were marches and protests and stuff and these guys were part of that. But they had been told when they went to press events they weren’t allowed to talk about any of this stuff. And they didn’t, at the press events, but they did in the show all the time. Which I think is hilarious. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote most of the songs for the first 2 years of the show and I love this, in the early 70’s they started this protest, Let Us Vote, the L.U.V. protest and it contributed obviously to lowering the voting age from 21 to 18. I think that’s really cool. And Peter Tork said, probably, one of the most intelligent things “the show probably garnered a larger audience for their point of view than The Beatles did” because TV comes into your house for free. You had to buy The Beatles albums. You had to pay to go to a concert. TV came into your house whether your parents allowed it or not and the parents just thought these were just a bunch of goofy guys and, by the way, who’s he sitting with at the Monterey Pop Festival? Janis Joplin. She was going to guest on the show in the 3rd season but it was cancelled.


Buy “Why The Monkees Matter” Today!

 Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

 

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition


About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.  In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University.  She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

Watch Now: Rosanne Welch talks about “Why The Monkees Matter” with Jean Hopkins Power [Video] (45 mins)

Show Description

Today Jean Powergirl takes the host reigns and welcomes her guest Rosanne Welch, PhD to the show! They’ll be discussing Roseanne’s book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture.”

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy. Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.

This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers. Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

Rosanne Welch, PhD has written for television (Touched by an Angel, Picket Fences) and print (Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space). In the documentary world she has written and produced Bill Clinton and the Boys Nation Class of 1963 for ABC NEWS/Nightline and consulted on PBS’s A Prince Among Slaves, the story of a prince from West Africa who was enslaved in the 1780s, freed by order of President John Quincy Adams in the 1820s and returned to his homeland.

Some Final Words on Argo from A History of the Art of Adaptation [Video] (0:53)

You Can Please Some of the People Some of the Time… None of the People All of the Time: A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More!

Dr. Rosanne Welch speaks on A History of the Art of Adaptation in Movies like Dune, The Godfather, Harry Potter and More! at the California State University, Fullerton Library

Part of the program series for Dune by Frank Herbert: A 50th Anniversary Celebration.

Watch this entire presentation

Some Final Words on Argo from A History of the Art of Adaptation

 

Transcript:

So they invented this huge chase on the tarmac where the cars come chasing after the plane, but we all know the cars will never catch the plane. It’s stupid, but in their defense, it provided the audience with that last minute feeling of tension that was true to the feelings that the hostages had even on the plane — until they took off and were in the air, they still felt it was possible that they might be captured — re-captured. So, I think that’s an interesting choice. They, of course, knew it was the big, climactic moment in the movie. They needed a big visual. What’s better than a car chase on a tarmac. So, people have to read the book to understand what was — and wasn’t — part of this operation. There’s so much inside the book as well. He talks about previous affairs that he was involved in. It’s fascinating what this man could do and to not go and get that extra information is a loss because this movie opens up a story that it can’t possibly give us the rest of.

About this talk

Dr. Rosanne Welch (RTVF) speaks on the craft of history of film adaptations from the controversy of the silent film Birth of a Nation (protested by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1915) to Breakfast at Tiffany’s (to which author Truman Capote famously said, “The only thing left from the book is the title”) to The Godfather . Naturally, the behemoth in adaptation – Harry Potter (which depended on the relationship created by adapter Steve Kloves and author J.K. Rowling) will be discussed, as will the subject of this month’s celebration: Dune.

Date: Wednesday, October 14, 2015 Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm

About Dr. Rosanne Welch

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a professor in the Low Residency MFA in Screenwriting Program from Stephens College, California State University, Fullerton, Mount San Antonio Community College and Cal Poly Pomona.  In 2007, she graduated with her Ph.D. in 20th Century U.S./Film History from Claremont Graduate University.  She graduated with her M.A. in 20th Century United States History from California State University, Northridge in 2004.

Welch is also a television writer/producer with credits for Beverly Hills 90210 , CBS’s Emmy winning Picket Fences and Touched By An Angel . She also writes and hosts her own podcasts on 3rdPass.media, her first one titled “Mindful(I) Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch.”

Her upcoming book, “Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture” will be published in Fall 2016

Three Ring Circus: How Real Couples Balance Marriage, Work and Kids and The Encyclopedia of Women in Aviation and Space are two books she has written. Los Angeles Times and the Journal of Screenwriting hold some of her published articles.

Dr. Rosanne Welch Web Site and Blog

Follow Dr. Welch on Twitter

Dr. Rosanne Welch on YouTube

From The Research Vault: Monkees Romp 1967 Behind The Scenes

Yet another research resource for Why The Monkees Matter

From The Research Vault: Monkees Romp 1967 Behind The Scenes

This silent footage from behind the scenes of a real beachside Monkee romp highlights how they were working with the crew of the show – imagine being the new teen idols on hand among a bunch of cameramen, prop men and other crafts people who had had long careers. The balance actors have to strike to make sure everyone’s happy on the set and not jealous. It was easier then since actors weren’t making the outrageous money they tend to make today – but still stars were stars.

Someone laid “Saturday’s Child” over this assorted footage – some from the romp, some from behind the scenes of filming the romp – and then, for fun, at 2:48 Micky begins singing the show’s theme song in Italian.  

 


Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

Order Your Copy Now!

Previously in Out of Research Vault:

A History of Screenwriting – 8 in a series – Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Auguste and Louis Lumiére, France, 1896)

I teach several classes for the Stephens College Low-Residency MFA in Screenwriting, including History of Screenwriting. In fact, I created the curriculum for that course from scratch and customized it to this particular MFA in that it covers ‘Screenwriting’ (not directors) and even more specifically, the class has a female-centric focus.  As part History of Screenwriting I, the first course in the four-class series, we focus on the early women screenwriters of the silent film era  who male historians have, for the most part, quietly forgotten in their books. In this series, I share with you some of the screenwriters and films that should be part of any screenwriters education. I believe that in order  to become a great screenwriter, you need to understand the deep history of screenwriting and the amazing people who created the career. — Dr. Rosanne Welch


Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Auguste and Louis Lumiére, France, 1896)

A History of Screenwriting - 8 in a series - Leaving Jerusalem by Railway (Auguste and Louis Lumiére, France, 1896)

Départ de Jérusalem en chemin de fer (translated into English as Leaving Jerusalem by Railway) is an 1897 film directed by Alexandre Promio and released by the Lumière brothers. Lasting for roughly 50 seconds, it shows the goodbyes of many passersby – first Europeans, then Palestinian Arabs, then Palestinian Jews – as a train leaves Jerusalem.

Leaving Jerusalem by Railway contains what is possibly the first depiction of camera movement in the history of film. Some instead credit The Haverstraw Tunnel with this innovation,[1] but only the year of release is available for the two; therefore it is unknown which came first. — Wikipedia

Learn more about the Lumiere Brothers 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!