BEA Panels Prove Fun For Everyone

BEA 2023 Program e1679065597143

Thanks to my friend and colleague, Ed Fink I was invited to join a couple of panels at this year’s BEA (Broadcast Education Association) conference in Las Vegas last weekend.

BEA Panels Prove Fun For Everyone

One panel involved giving feedback on student pitches for TV shows or films and the other was more of a Q&A about careers in screenwriting. On both I was joined by other friends and colleagues from the writing world and the world of academia – David Morgasen (CSUF) and Jon Vandergriff (who teaches at a couple of colleges and happily one of them is the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting).

BEA Panels Prove Fun For Everyone

The stories we heard in the pitches were lively and several were quite unique, as were the questions about how to gain – and then maintain – a career in writing.

Afterward, the panels ended we three stood in the hallway so long continuing to answer questions such that we invited a few of the stragglers to dinner with us. Since we landed at Benihana we were joined by a father and son from Trinidad and Tobago who were in town for the father’s 30th NAB conference. During our conversation when they heard us mention Ted Lasso they had to ask how a country that doesn’t understand soccer/futbol watches a show set in that world. The film students with us were able to explain that from their generation forward, many, many young American children play on soccer teams – largely because they are co-ed in the younger years whereas baseball and softball segregate the sexes. Amazing the way a conversation ebbs and flows over flame-grilled shrimp and steak.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

 

Dr. Rosanne Welch at Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) 2022

Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) 2022

I attended my first Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) conference last weekend on the invite of Dr. Ed Fink, my former department chair, and greatly enjoyed hosting a pitchathon for graduation bachelor students interested in creating their own television shows. 

My co-panelists included two fun colleagues who have become good friends  –  Jon Vandergriff (Stephens College) and David Morgassen (CSUF).  We gave feedback on 9 different pitches and followed it up with a Q&A about the world of being a professional writer.  The audience was so interested and engaged that after our session ended, we all grabbed a table together and kept talking until we closed the venue down for the night.

Dr. Rosanne Welch at Broadcast Educators Association (BEA) 2022

Meeting potential MFA candidates is one reason to attend events like this one – but mostly it’s to make new friends in the academic world and strengthen the friendships you’ve already created; to learn how they approach the teaching of screenwriting or media history and bring those ideas back to my own classrooms. 

On this trip, I met professors from Illinois and Michigan and reconnected with folks I’ve worked with at CSUF and elsewhere.  Having lunch and hashing over which films or television shows to teach and how to best help students learn to analyze these in order to improve their writing is the heart of such a conference.  Meeting the students and hearing their ideas is the icing on the cake.

Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting