speaking – Page 18 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

25 Video Game Writer’s Rooms 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:

So the thing about writer’s rooms is they had to evolve over time right? I was — it was interesting to watch them grow. So these are a couple of, you know, empires. I mentioned today. The new thing is that video game writers are using writer’s rooms and that’s huge. These gentlemen, Ralph and George, are with Blizzard so if you know Overwatch, right, and Diablo and those things. They came out of television. They were hired by the video game companies. They are now looking for television writers because they want people who understand how a writer’s room works and they were explaining at their writer’s room — most writers rooms now five six people — theirs go to 10 or 12 because they’ve got guys who are lore experts who are going to remind you of what this character did 15 years ago with his stepsister from the other kingdom whatever that is. They have to have people who are storyboard artists who are going to show you what the new characters look like. What their weaponry looks like. They are the historians who tell you what else should be happening in this village at this time. They have a giant room full of people plus about five or six writers who are creating the story lines for these characters. So it’s really a brilliant thing to be part of.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

24 Diversity Makes Better Product from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

One of the big things about writer’s rooms these days is being as inclusive as we can be. You guys are better at that. I’m always impressed with British shows because it’s always kind of a mix of people — the ones that I get to see in America, all right, but that’s impressive to me and of course, we all know you went so far as to make The Doctor a woman. That’s huge. At least that was huge news in the states. I don’t know if it was huge news here but we’re very happy about that. So finally from the 90s and beyond we’re getting more inclusive writing rooms right, but you might notice we don’t yet have too many Asian American writers I mean there’s a lot of ethnicities not completely being represented but writer/producers are more responsible to that idea now because they recognize it makes the product better because a collaboration of many ideas is always going to be a more layered piece that you’re presenting.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

23 The importance of A Voice in the Room There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

So, for instance, we were doing a story once about a young little girl. She was nine years old and she happened to be a young girl of color. She was lost at a park or something like that and you know the first thing that came to us — what do we do next in the story — well she’s gonna go find a policeman and the two African-American women in her room went “Oh no she’s not. My parents told me never to go to a policeman” and we were like but I was always told to find a policeman if I got lost somewhere. Yeah because you’re not a woman of color. So you can be safe with them. That was a whole new perspective, right? A perspective that I would not have had had I not had that other voice in the room.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

22 People of Color and Television from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

Still, there’s something missing in writer’s rooms in America.

There’s some girls in that picture because it’s executive produced by a girl.

Missing something else. (Audience: people of color)People of color because you know they exist in the world.Isn’t that interesting but they were not yet existing on very many TV shows. Again a whole font of stories not being told — not being told correctly. On my show Touched by Angel we had we had two women of color and you have to remember that you only have experiences until you do research that come from your own life and that’s good and that’s a building block but it’s not everything right?

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

21 Buffy The Vampire Slayer from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

Now. Lack of women. Ta-Da. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Thank god, although we’ve discovered in the states that Joss Whedon, who ran the show and got all kinds of points for being a feminist was, in fact, having sex with every other girl he could meet so apparently not such a feminist. His wife has now left him — ta-da — but I academically am going to interpret to you that the reason the program maintained its level of feminist theory was because of all the women who he hired in his writer’s room. So perhaps subconsciously he knew he was a jerk and he wasn’t going to interpret this right and he wanted to get a room full of people who could give him a real interpretation of what it was like to be a girl in high school who was othered — who was different in this way. So Buffy is a pretty breakthrough and I highly recommend that show

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

20 More On Russell T Davies from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video]

Transcript:

This book here, I highly recommend if you like Doctor Who, but if you like writing, Benjamin Cook, the writer, the journalist asked Russell Davies in the last season of David Tennant’s era, could I email you across this year and just ask you questions like — what are you thinking of today and Russell was like sure and so it’s this it’s the collection of their emails as he wrote the last season. So you’ll start with something like well today I’m thinking what if water was deadly? I don’t know what to do with that but that’s on my brain today and a few weeks later it was — what if some astronauts were on Mars and Martian water was deadly and by the time you’re done we have an episode called Waters of Mars right? So he watched the progress and development of a story through these emails with Russell Davies.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

19 Russell T Davies and Doctor Who from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)

Transcript:

I got a beloved chance to interview Russell Davies who came to the states to do the fourth season of Torchwood and the editor Written By knew how much I love Doctor Who, so he asked me if I’d like to interview him? Which I did and this was something that he said that meant a lot. Again you probably know he’s an openly gay man and it bothered him what he was seeing on television. So obviously, he invented Queer As Folk, and from that, he invented and revived Doctor Who and invented Torchwood, which allowed us, Captain Jack. it was just so adorable. I can’t stand it, but not on my team. So there you go. So this is really important. He was recognizing that in what he was creating for television and again made the programming more inclusive.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

18 Where Are The Women? from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (40 seconds)

Transcript:

Kenny moved into The Incredible Hulk really the first superhero show on tv that ever survived and then he did “V” which was redone a few years ago and then he did Alien Nation which is where I met him. I worked on that show. So but in all these early drama rooms, there’s something missing. Who’s not in that picture? Audience: Any woman. Thank you. There you go. That’s the problem because most all these stories are being funneled through the minds of guys and you can’t blame a person for writing about what they know and what means something to them. That’s what writers do and that’s why a room wants as much inclusivity as possible right? So we don’t have any girls.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

17 The Bionic Woman from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)

Transcript:

And better than, that she was the last episode of the first season of this show and the studio killed her so that there’d be a great tragic ending and Kenny, who was a young writer then, said this is like the middle of the second wave of the feminist movement. You can’t kill the most engaging woman that you have had on your program and the network said yes we can. Nobody wants a love interest for the lead character because women want to imagine he’ll fall in love with them and they don’t want to get in some of the girl’s way. That’s rude, right? So they killed her and the mail — because there wasn’t yet email — that they got complaining that they had the audacity to kill the most accomplished woman who had ever appeared on that show meant that miraculously at the beginning of season two she wasn’t actually dead. They had bionically saved her and then she got her own program and Kenny became an Executive Producer of his own program because of his creativity because he had come up with that character. He now owned that character.

Watch this entire presentation

Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Dr. Rosanne Welch Presents “Female Creatives & A Star Is Born” [Video]

Connections at conferences matter! Through the most recent SCMS, I met Vicki Callahan, whose film history focus right now is on Mabel Normand. When she learned I could put together a lecture on the importance of the female voice in the A Star is Born franchise she asked me to give that lecture to her master students.

It made for a great opportunity for me to hone the ideas I’m working on for a chapter on that franchise that I’m writing for a new book from Bloomsbury: The Bloomsbury Handbook Of International Screenplay Theory. It’s always nice when one piece of research can be purposed in other ways – and it’s always fun revisiting such a female-centric film franchise – one that drew the talents of such powerful performers as Janet Gaynor, Judy Garland, Barbara Streisand, and Lady Gaga.

Find out why in this lecture!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS