Writing – Page 19 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

02 Inside The Writer’s Room from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

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

Transcript:

I did. I did live in several writer’s rooms both as an assistant before I was a full-time writer and then as a writer, so i saw it in both ways through both perspectives. How are those perspectives different? When you’re an assistant, of course, you’re very wrapped up in I’ve got to get down everything they’re saying and make sure we know who told the funny joke or whose idea was the one we went forward with and you’re very focused but you’re also listening to how they banter ideas about and who gets paid attention to and how you learn how to run a room and it doesn’t just mean when you become the show running you’re going to run the room but when you’re pitching an idea, you are truly performing and making sure the other people in the room are focusing in on you. So I got to watch different people do that in their own different way.

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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“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 40 in a series

Garibaldi visited Three Hummock Island, off the south coast of Australia in Bass Strait, then traveled to Australia and its nearby neighbor, New Zealand. Birds and marine animals Giuseppe had never seen swarmed the port in Otago Harbor. Looking through his binoculars he watched albatross fly over the boat and estimated their wingspan at nearly 11 feet, something he could barely believe. He watched them fly over to the nearby hillside and land, feeding their chicks in huge nests more gently than some people he had known treated their own children.

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Mentoris Project Podcast: Building Heaven’s Ceiling: A Novel Based on the Life of Filippo Brunelleschi with Author, Joe Cline [Audio]

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His greatest accomplishment came after his greatest disappointment.

One of the founding fathers of the Renaissance, Filippo Brunelleschi was more than an Italian designer. Brunelleschi made his mark in architecture and construction.

In his early years, sculpting was Brunelleschi’s passion. But after being passed over for a major commission, he set his sights on architecture, and changed the landscape of Italy as it is known today.

Brunelleschi’s most prominent contribution, the dome of Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was the first of its kind, paving the way for bigger and more elaborate domes to come. His invention of machines to facilitate the construction of the dome allowed future structures to not only be imagined, but to be erected as well.

With his imagination, understanding of linear perspective, focus on geometric principles, and intellect for mathematics, Brunelleschi influenced the rise of modern science and architecture worldwide.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: Screenwriting without typing – the case of Calamari Union by Raija Talvio

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 without typing – the case of Calamari Union by Raija Talvio

The first part of this article is a practice-based case study of the making of the film Calamari Union (1985), a Finnish cult classic written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki. I was the film editor of this film as well as of several other features and short films by Kaurismäki in the 1980s. From the point of view of screenwriting research, Calamari Union offers a thought-provoking example: it is a feature-length fiction film that was made entirely without a formal screenplay. In the case study I examine the effects of this method in the production and post-production of the film. In the second part of the article I discuss the definitions of a ‘screenplay’ and screenwriting in the context of alternative film-making practices, and the reasons for and consequences of the choice of such practices. I will also briefly visit the question of authorship in cinema and reflect on the birth of stories.

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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The Civil War On Film – 35 in a series – “Lincoln wasn’t always popular.”

Lincoln wasn’t always popular. His presidency was contentious even in the North, as the contested 1864 presidential election suggests, and most white southerners reviled him. David H. Donald, one of Lincoln’s many biographers, contends that the sixteenth president did not take on heroic, even mythological status until the early twentieth century (Donald 1969).

Movies profiled in this book:

A Woman Wrote That – 30 in a series – Sleepless in Seattle (1993)

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

ANNIE

“Destiny is something that we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.”

Sleepless in Seattle on IMDB
Sleepless in Seattle on Wikipedia
Nora Ephron on Wikipedia and IMDB
Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

01 On Giving Notes from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 [Video]

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

Transcript:

I always tell people you get hired to write on a television show. Look at them. They have eight episodes now or 12 maybe. You’re gonna write one and you’re going to have to give good notes on the other 10 or 11 for people who want you to stick around. It’s your job to make their work better so the show doesn’t get canceled and you don’t keep your job. So notes are one of the most important things to understand how to do.

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

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On Screenwriting: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Title IV, and Today [Essay]

Working on this chapter about how the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was adapted for the screen in On the Basis of Sex, I was reminded of the interview scene in the pilot of The Mary Tyler Moore Show where Lou Grant asks her if she’s married and what religion she is.

In 1970 those questions were illegal thanks to Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But RBG had graduated in 1959 so the Act had not been around to help her. She was turned down because she was a woman and because she was Jewish – despite achievements like graduating first in her class and the distinction of being the first woman to work on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review.

Then I did some searching on the MTM script and found this article about how, though the scene was written in 1970 by James Brooks and Allan Burns, it is still relevant today. Fascinating statistics between now and then including the fact that by 2017 in 38 percent of heterosexual marriages, women outearn their husbands.

3 ways ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ pilot is still relevant today from the Washington Post

After Mary Tyler Moore’s death Wednesday, I watched the pilot episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Though the show was revolutionary for its time for its portrayal of a single woman, working in journalism and living alone — I didn’t expect it to hold up all that well. Forty-seven years after the pilot aired, there are parts that are certainly retro. Louis “Lou” Grant (Edward Asner), for example, flat-out tells Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) during a job interview: “I figured I’d hire a man for it, but we can talk about it.” But there’s a lot in that first episode that’s still relevant for single women today.

Read 3 ways ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ pilot is still relevant today

And watch the scene if you don’t know it…

Dr. Rosanne Welch Talks Worry and Wonder in Screenwriting on the Courier 13 Podcast [Audio] [Video]

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.

Listen to the audio version of this podcast

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

“A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi” – 39 in a series

“If only more men understood, as you do, the value of having women in their ranks. In the military, in politics, in all seats of power,” Manuela mused. She had dedicated the end of her life to the fight for women’s rights to property, position and safety from abuse.

“I can only imagine how far we might have gone if I could have made my Anita the true general she deserved to be,” Giuseppe said.

“It is too late for Anita,” Manuela said. “But not for her daughters. Or granddaughters. Or great granddaughters if you work toward such a goal with as much passion as you bring to the goal of unity.”

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