Writing – Page 15 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

39 Even More On Working Well With Others from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [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:

Where am I going to find a piece of wood on Christmas Eve that only an angel can deliver that I can’t throw in the trash?

Audience: Christmas tree?

Rosanne: Close. That was the first thought. Christmas tree. Christmas tree is not spiritual. It’s not connected to the Christmas story.

Audience: Cross.

Rosanne: Cross is close but that’s Easter — that’s Easter but you’re close. What involves wood and Jesus and Mary and Joseph?

Audience: The Manger?

Rosanne: Thank you! So I got the idea while I was sitting around the table with everybody but I knew this guy didn’t like to be one-upped and I didn’t want him on my bad side because he helped sign my contract later right, but I got to get this idea out there but I can’t pretend to be smarter than him because that will not make him happy. So I sit there at a table of like 10 people and I got the idea and I thought well luckily I’m a pretty loud person. I’m considered Italian where I come from but clearly not here because my grandparents are from Sicily. So all of a sudden I just went — Uh!

Not the whole table but the guy sitting next to me went what and that’s all I needed was someone to ask me what I was thinking right? I was like oh I just I’ve been thinking about this problem and I had this idea but I don’t know if you’ll like it… Oh, what’s your idea? Well, what if the wood came from the manger and like four people around the table went oh yes and the guy who wrote the story was about to say no. I could see his face but when his colleagues all went yes. he was like oh yeah that’s a great idea. We should — okay that’s what we’ll do. So I wasn’t one-upping him. I was just accidentally having a moment and it allowed me to get my idea out. Now that sounds ridiculous but I got what I wanted out of it right? So you have to learn to read the room. How is it operating? Who are your — who are your allies in the room?

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05 Margaret’s Education from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Tammy: …and it got her all over the place.

Rosanne: It did and I often compare her — when i’m talking to students about her — I compare her to John Quincy Adams, right, who at 10 was translating his own father’s paperwork and knew five or six languages and he’s going to be like — in my opinion — our smartest president. So she’s on par with him but not given the opportunities.

Tammy: Exactly and even in her day she was known as the most widely read woman in America and she talked her way into the Harvard library even though she couldn’t actually attend Harvard you know and she made sure that she could get the education that she wanted. She must have had this like internal drive and curiosity that just kept her going throughout her life.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: ‘Screenwriting research: No longer a lost cause’: A keynote presentation at the SRN Conference 2013 by Jill Nelmes

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

‘Screenwriting research: No longer a lost cause’: A keynote presentation at the SRN Conference 2013 by Jill Nelmes

The article discusses the past, present and future of screenwriting research from a somewhat personal viewpoint, being US and UK in its focus, partly because of my own lack of knowledge of the researchers in other countries in the ‘dark’ years. Yet the pioneering writers and, more recently, the creation of the Screenwriting Research Network and the Journal of Screenwriting have all encouraged the exchanging of ideas and the realization that there are many of us interested in the same subject. More recently the area has proven to be exciting and dynamic with a diverse range of high quality research from many countries.

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.

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Jeanie MacPherson – The Genius Behind DeMille — Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, August 2021

Script contributor Dr. Rosanne Welch shines a light on Jeanie MacPherson, a trailblazing screenwriter from the silent era who would eventually come to write a bulk of famed Hollywood mogul Cecil B. DeMille’s box office hits.

As with many other female Silent Era screenwriters Jeanie Macpherson began her career as an actress (appearing in over 147 films). Then she became a writer/director at Universal (writing 54 films) and eventually met Cecil B. DeMille, for whom she would write the bulk of his box office successes. In 1927, Macpherson became one of only three women, the other two being Mary Pickford and Bess Meredyth (more on her in a future column) who helped found the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (along with thirty-three male screenwriters). She was also a suffragette – and a pilot in those early days of aviation when, like the new world of motion pictures, even the skies were open to female trailblazers.

Read Jeanie MacPherson – The Genius Behind DeMille — Dr. Rosanne Welch, Script magazine, August 2021

Read about more women from early Hollywood

12 90210 & Teenage Lives from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

If you go pre-90210 you’re going to find that teenagers were more often in comedies and more often in kind of doing silly things and very superficial things — getting a date — things like that and from 90210 on they had real lives and real things could happen to them and real problems happen to them and as you said continue through Euphoria exactly exactly. You don’t do a teen show these days that doesn’t look at their lives more in-depth. I guess that’s what I’m going to say.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).

We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.

Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library and Archive by Miranda J. Banks

Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library and Archive by Miranda J. Banks

This article provides an overview of the resources available at the Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson Webb Library in Los Angeles, California. Included is a history of the library, an explanation of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Archive, and discussion of the library and archive’s extensive holdings. The author details resources available online. The article also offers information on how to prepare for a visit to the library and best practices when conducting research or using the Writers Guild Foundation Library and Archive for scholarly or creative work.

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!

* 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!

04 Sex and Marriage from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

Watch this entire presentation

Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

Rosanne: So they knew sex. They talked about sex and they wanted to be careful about it.

Tammy: Right.

Rosanne: Exactly. So funny.

Tammy: Yeah. Well, and Margaret was especially aware of issues about being a woman in a make society and issues of marriage and how it was very hard to actually have an equal balance between two intellectual individuals because it was not something that she had generally seen or that generally happened.

Rosanne: It didn’t. It wasn’t socially acceptable. Women were supposed to accept that, even if you were semi-smart, you had been allowed some learning, which she got lucky because her father believed in that. Then you gave that up when you went home and then you just took care of the kids if you got married.

Tammy: Right and her father started training her when she was a kid. This is not a little thing. He was a strict disciplinarian and wanted her to be translating The Aeneid by the time she was 10 without any hesitation and without any errors and she had nightmares as a child because he was holding her up to such a high standard, but I think she lived by that high standard for the rest of her life.

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Now Available: Gloria Steinem: A Life in American History by William H. Pruden III, Edited by Drs. Rosanne Welch and Peg Lamphier

Good Morning to all our dedicated authors in the Women Making History series for ABC-Clio.

Peg and I wanted to share the nice news that Book #2 has been published and congratulate author Bill Pruden for all his hard work on the life of Gloria Steinem. We can’t wait to see the rest of the books in our series come to publication.

We know (being meant for libraries) that the volumes are higher priced so we can’t ask you all to buy a copy – but you can alert your local public or school library to their existence and ask that they buy a copy for their stacks (or their Kindle offerings). (Download A PDF Flyer for the book)

Stay safe and keep reading! — Rosanne and Peg

11 Even More On Beverly Hills 90210 from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

So those characters became three-dimensional human beings for the five years he ran the show and then he left and a couple of people who mostly worked in — more that’s the word I want — more soap opera kind of things and I like soap operas. I don’t think they’re bad but they’re a different style and they turn the show into who is having sex with who each week but it stayed in the air for another three or four years because of the foundation, the love, for those original characters that the audience had. They just kept wanting to watch them even if the stories got less and less interesting and that’s the power of what he put together in those first two years. So truly believing and caring about those characters — which meant he truly believed and cared about the writing — the stories had to be real and I think that showed. That’s why I mean come on why do you guys still know what Beverly Hills 90210 is? You weren’t around in the 90s right but it’s been around and rerun. There’s a lot of other teenage shows but that one sticks right? There’s a reason for that.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Start me up: Lean screenwriting for American entrepreneurial cinema by Andrew Kenneth Gay

Start me up: Lean screenwriting for American entrepreneurial cinema by Andrew Kenneth Gay

This article proposes a new approach to script development modelled after lean software development practices and entrepreneurial startup principles. First, it argues that the Hollywood mode of production and its methods of project development, when applied to microbudget film-making, are inherently wasteful and fail in the face of extreme uncertainty and unpredictability. Second, it argues that entrepreneurial screenwriters and writer/film-makers can adopt lean thinking in order to eliminate waste from their creative labour and enhance learning at every stage of development and production, adding value for their audience. Finally, it argues that inexperienced writer/film-makers are particularly susceptible to the false security of the ‘blueprint’ metaphor, often clinging to an original plan even as it fails them. The flexibility inherent to lean thinking, on the other hand, not only reduces waste but also enhances creativity and collaboration, increasing a project’s chances of success.

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!

* 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!