On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch
Writing, Film, Television and More!
In this presentation given at the 2023 San Diego WhoCon I talked about what really happened at Pompeii on volcano day; the agricultural knowledge of the Aztecs; when Robin Hood began appearing in literature, and the bravery of Noor Inayat Khan and Rosa Parks.
If you love seeing dinosaurs come to life on screen and you think they first appeared on screen in Jurassic Park, think again. In 1926 renowned screenwriter-director Marion Fairfax adapted Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel The Lost World to the screen complete with the most advanced special effects of the time. It was an amazing feat for a filmmaker born in Richmond, Virginia, just ten years after the Civil War (October 24, 1875). While screenwriter Marion Fairfax lived into her 9th decade, seeing the administration of a second President Johnson, she only worked in Hollywood from the eras of Woodrow Wilson through Calvin Coolidge (1915-1926) despite being a powerhouse writer-director of her day.
Read Marion Fairfax Put Dinosaurs on Film Before Spielberg or Crichton Were Born
Read about more women from early Hollywood
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I was quite honored when Script Magazine editor Sadie Dean asked me to write a monthly column giving short biographies of female screenwriters across the decades – those who came before us as I like to say – so imagine how shocked I was to find out this is my 30th one to date. Meet Bella Cohen Spewack, born in Romania, a journalist who grew up to write movies that satirized her new career as a screenwriter.
1899 saw the birth of two future American screenwriters: Bella Cohen in Romania and her future husband and co-writer, Sam Spewack in Ukraine. They each experienced the childhood of an immigrant brought to New York City and each worked as a newspaper reporter in their early careers, Bella for The Call and Sam for New York World. Eventually, they moved to Hollywood to adapt their own play to the screen and much of their later work involved adapting Broadway plays into films.
Read Married Immigrants Mock Shakespeare for Movie Fame
Read about more women from early Hollywood
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![Join Dr. Rosanne Welch for a Free Web Conversation on Writing as Activism, Friday, April 7, 2023 [Online]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/WritingAsActivism.png)
I’m pleased to have been invited as a guest panelist for a Kopenhaver Center Conversation as I share in their goal to “empower both women and non-binary professionals and academics in all the fields of communication, in order to develop visionaries and leaders who can make a difference in their communities.”
Along with my friend and colleague Rashaan Dozier-Escalante we discussed “Writing as Activism: Creating for Inclusion
We empower women in all fields of communication
As a satellite location of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication, we share the organization’s primary mission: To empower both women professionals and academics in all the fields of communication, in order to develop visionaries and leaders who can make a difference in their communities and their profession.
On Friday, May 5th I had the honor of delivering the commencement speech at the 2023 Stephens College Commencement Ceremony for Graduate & Continuing Studies as part of having received the Distinguished Faculty Award for the year. The full commencement ceremonies for the 2023 Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting include speeches by MFA student commencement speaker Natalie Cash Petersson and Stephens College President Dianne Lynch.
Together we covered the gamut from “How Watching 1970s TV Gave me the Female Role Models to Succeed in Life” through “How to Channel your Knowledge into Action” and “How to be a Lifelong Learner – After a Well-Deserved Break”.
You can listen to the short ceremony here (the audio is a series of slides but the audio is smooth).
Rosanne’s Speech
Complete Commencement Video
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![14 Inspector Morse, Young and Old from The Doctor Who Changed the TV Universe – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/sdwhocon-2022-dwtv-14.jpg)
Transcript:
Since that other, of course, shows have exploded more. We were talking with some folks the other day about these guys but you start with “Inspector Morse” which again was on PBS in the 70s and then that became the spin-off of “Lewis”. So “Lewis” who is the original assistant now becomes the head guy and there’s a “Doctor Who” connection because the guy who played Hathaway was married to Billy Piper and then, of course, they blended that into doing the prequel the “Endeavor” show which is really Morse as a young man right because his real name was Endeavor but he never liked that as a name so they used it for the new show but now that’s something that Americans know a lot about. I have friends who’d never heard of Morse but they all watch “Endeavor” and so then they’re like oh let’s go backwards and see what this guy you know what happens to him later in life.
In this presentation given at the 2022 San Diego WhoCon I had the chance to trace the many ways Doctor Who changed the TV universe. By focusing on the interesting and innovative things the many writers did with the show across the years we were able to see the Who footprint by becoming the first narrative program to reach 50 years on the air, the first to create a spin-off across the ocean, and a show alongside Star Trek that created the Con-craze that brought the world of cosplay to the mainstream. Perhaps most importantly, a love of Doctor Who lead more Americans to watch programming from other countries – from Korean dramas to Mexican telenovelas – which has so enriched our culture.
Watch this entire presentation
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![13 Writing and Acting Crossovers from The Doctor Who Changed the TV Universe – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sdwhocon-2022-dwtv-13.jpg)
Transcript:
We tend to forget that actors are sometimes also writers. The same thing happens when I teach something with Emma Thompson. She wrote Sense and Sensibility and then won the Oscar for that and people don’t realize that. She wrote The Nanny McPhee movies. So she adapted the books into film and also starred in them. So Sherlock has gone Global. Again the books always did but shows done earlier no one had paid attention to in the same way. Of course, our Doctor Who connection to Victoria is that it was the next piece that Jenna Coleman did and that became something that everybody was paying some attention to. So the power of Doctor Who and for all these characters is amazing.
In this presentation given at the 2022 San Diego WhoCon I had the chance to trace the many ways Doctor Who changed the TV universe. By focusing on the interesting and innovative things the many writers did with the show across the years we were able to see the Who footprint by becoming the first narrative program to reach 50 years on the air, the first to create a spin-off across the ocean, and a show alongside Star Trek that created the Con-craze that brought the world of cosplay to the mainstream. Perhaps most importantly, a love of Doctor Who lead more Americans to watch programming from other countries – from Korean dramas to Mexican telenovelas – which has so enriched our culture.
Watch this entire presentation
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![12 Downton Abbey, Sherlock, and Doctor Who from The Doctor Who Changed the TV Universe – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/sdwhocon-2022-dwtv-12.jpg)
Transcript:
As we know Downton Abbey became this huge explosive again filmed in England is a very culturally English story with an English cast and that has a Doctor Who connection because Hugh Bonneville shows up after that on Doctor Who. That’s how powerful now Doctor Who is this worldwide let me see let me have everyone see me here right? So I think that’s a beautiful connection. Sherlock went Global and it has its Doctor Who connection because we know it was written by both Moffat and Gatis who a lot of people don’t take seriously or don’t realize he’s more than an actor. He’s also a writer. He actually has a wonderful – it’s still on YouTube – It’s a three-part documentary on his love of American horror films and so he goes to the history of early horror films. The classic here and then he does one about the modern and in the middle he does one about English horror films but it’s a three-part really fun piece and I show that the students and they recognize him from Sherlock but they don’t know that he wrote it.
In this presentation given at the 2022 San Diego WhoCon I had the chance to trace the many ways Doctor Who changed the TV universe. By focusing on the interesting and innovative things the many writers did with the show across the years we were able to see the Who footprint by becoming the first narrative program to reach 50 years on the air, the first to create a spin-off across the ocean, and a show alongside Star Trek that created the Con-craze that brought the world of cosplay to the mainstream. Perhaps most importantly, a love of Doctor Who lead more Americans to watch programming from other countries – from Korean dramas to Mexican telenovelas – which has so enriched our culture.
Watch this entire presentation
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What a Great Week!
I started out last week bright and early Monday morning (6 am LA time/ 1500 Paris time) giving a Zoom lecture to the Masters students of the Professeure au département Cinéma et Audiovisuel at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – yep, the Sorbonne.
Department Directrice Kira Kitsopanidou had a Ph.D. student who was using the book I edited – When Women Wrote Hollywood – so they looked me up online and found all those marvelous lecture clips that Doug posts for me and decided to ask me to deliver a lecture on Early Women Writers and Writers Rooms in the U.S.
They wanted an international focus for their students who already know some of the great French female screenwriters in history so they ask academics from other countries to speak about their industries. It was lovely and will result in having an article I wrote for them translated into French, which will be a new experience for me.
Then I capped the week off as an online guest panelist for one of the Kopenhaver Center Conversations along with my friend, colleague, and MFA mentor Rashaan Dozier-Escalante as we discussed Writing as Activism: Creating for Inclusion on the Screen. Moderated by Dr. Bethanie Irons of Stephens College we discussed the lack of representation for writers of different genders, races, ethnicities, and abilities and how writers can make the needed changes because we all recognize that Representation Matters.
The Sorbonne lecture was a private event but you can find the Kopenhaver Center Conversation here. It will be hard to top a week like that BUT then again this weekend I’ll be at the BEA (Broadcast Education Association) conference in Las Vegas on a panel about Writing as a Career and 2 weeks later I’ll be mentoring new writers at this year’s Cinestory weekend workshop in Idyllwild, California – followed by our MFA commencement at Stephens College and a weekend at the SeriesFest in Denver where I’ll have the honor of introducing this year’s Jan Marino Scholarship recipient at their annual Women Creatives Brunch.
So I guess I can top last week!
![11 Gloalizing The Story from The Doctor Who Changed the TV Universe – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video]](https://rosannewelch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/sdwhocon-2022-dwtv-11.jpg)
Transcript:
Then the fact that you simulcast the newest Doctor. Simulcast because as we got it we always knew the show aired at this hour and you got it and then you had to wait eight hours to see it here etc. Then they realized no that audience with the internet and the explosion of the internet there’s no possible way we can keep the secret it’s going to disappear before we have the chance to enjoy it. So they literally put in the effort to simulcast that moment of changing the character – changing an actor on a show. How could that become so important because Doctor Who. I think that’s really cool. Now slowly because of Doctor Who it’s that long tail thing now other shows you’re being able to sort of jump on that bandwagon and people are saying oh let me look at that. So for instance of course there’s the new All Creatures Great and Small. What I love is all of a sudden by accident some of the shows I chose as examples they all have connections to Doctor Who right? So, for instance, this is the new All Creatures Great and Small but in the top corner I have the original All Creatures which I watched on PBS originally and that’s connected to Doctor Who because… Peter Davidson came to us from that show and then moved into Doctor Who. So I think that’s fun and actually, the bottom picture is how much fandom gets you. When we happened to be lucky enough to go to an event in Leeds we took a train to Thirsk and that is the home of James Herriot and that is the James Herriot Museum. It’s the smallest and most popular little Museum in the whole of that section of England and it was kind of fun and they had a little area where they showed you the set from the original show because we were here before the new show had started. So I’m kind of interested to know how they’ve expanded their Museum but that’s the power right of now globalizing the story.
In this presentation given at the 2022 San Diego WhoCon I had the chance to trace the many ways Doctor Who changed the TV universe. By focusing on the interesting and innovative things the many writers did with the show across the years we were able to see the Who footprint by becoming the first narrative program to reach 50 years on the air, the first to create a spin-off across the ocean, and a show alongside Star Trek that created the Con-craze that brought the world of cosplay to the mainstream. Perhaps most importantly, a love of Doctor Who lead more Americans to watch programming from other countries – from Korean dramas to Mexican telenovelas – which has so enriched our culture.
Watch this entire presentation
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS