writing – Page 28 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

Where’s Her Movie? Educator, Salomé Ureña – 13 in a series

“Where’s HER Movie” posts will highlight interesting and accomplished women from a variety of professional backgrounds who deserve to have movies written about them as much as all the male scientists, authors, performers, and geniuses have had written about them across the over 100 years of film. This is our attempt to help write these women back into mainstream history. — Rosanne

Salomé Ureña (October 21, 1850 – March 6, 1898) was a Dominican poet and an early proponent of women’s higher education in the Dominican Republic.

Around 1881, Salomé with the help of her husband opened one of the first centers of higher education for young women in the Dominican Republic, which she named “Instituto de Señoritas”. Within five years, the first six female teachers had graduated from the Institute, something uncommon at the time. — Wikipedia

04 The Comedy Writer’s Room from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

In terms of the history of writer’s rooms, comedy always sort of had them and we know that going back into the early days of the George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. He had a team of writers including his brother who worked with him. So comedy always knew that it needed a group. It was as if they knew the sitcom was an outgrowth of standup comedy or those vaudeville acts they had all been in. Of course, we love The Dick Van Dyke Show taught many people in America — many females in America — you could write for television because there was a female character writing of television, right, in the ’60s. So that taught us we had a place in this business which is a good thing. Neil Simon worked in early TV comedy shows and so he then glamourized that in his play so that’s a way that people learn about writer’s rooms. They see it operate and this was a room that included very famous men. Larry Gelbart who did M*A*S*H. Woody Allen who we can say other things about these days.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 2: Unknown spaces and uncertainty in film development by Margot Nash

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

Unknown spaces and uncertainty in film development by Margot Nash

This article examines a discovery-driven process to script development as opposed to a formula-driven one. It is an investigation into the uncertain nature of the creative process in general, and the all-pervasive quest for certainty in film development in particular. Development strategies that value a discovery-driven process are few and far between, as are strategies to explore the gaps, or elisions, within a screenplay where subtext thrives, yet these are transformative spaces that invite an active and creative response. In this article I engage in practice-based research as a writer/director and as a teacher, and investigate two particular areas of film development. The first is early-stage script development where ideas are still struggling to find form; the second is latter-stage script development where a screenplay is refined in order to create spaces where others might respond imaginatively. I advocate risk taking, and the use of unconventional models, in order to create new spaces for students to explore their creativity, and I examine the ‘unknown’ and the ‘uncertain’ as active spaces, both for a screenwriter developing new work and for those who engage creatively with a screenplay as it transforms into a film. I argue that gaps or spaces within a screenplay offer opportunities for directors, actors, key creative crew and eventually an audience to actively participate, and that a development process that values the unknown offers the screenwriter a gateway to adventure and innovation. Screenwriting textbooks rarely enter the unknown and uncertain spaces of creativity yet, as many artists (albeit working in less-expensive mediums) seem to know instinctively, it is within the interplay of the known and the unknown, of passion and reason, and of logic and intuition – that creativity lies.

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 – 23 in a series – “Many historians and critics consider Glory the best American Civil War movie ever made.”

Many historians and critics consider Glory the best American Civil War movie ever made. The film shatters the great taboo of Civil War movies—making race and slavery central to the story and using black characters to do so (Chadwick 2001).

Movies profiled in this book:

15 More On Writers-Producers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (51 seconds)

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:

Likewise, we have Stephen Bochco who really started the idea of multiplicity in storylines in Hill Sreet Blues which is a very famous show. We have Dick Wolf who gave us the Law & Order franchise that was on for 19 years. Didn’t quite make 20. This show’s made 21. I saw it just airing on Sky TV the other night so it’s something available in Britain and of course, there was a British version of Law & Order. They actually did one where they took early scripts and they transferred them here. Didn’t do great but what do you know? Don Bellisario gave us basically military heroes which were pretty big in the states but he himself had been in the military during Vietnam War and so he came out. People may not know it but the Magnum story was that right? He was a Vietnam War vet and then as Bellisiario moved through and these shows all ran a good ten years apiece. so long-running programs.

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† Available from the LA Public Library

A Woman Wrote That – 19 in a series – You’ve Got Mail (1998), Writer: Nora Ephron

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

KATHLEEN

When you read a book as a child, it becomes a part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your whole life does.

You’ve Got Mail on IMDB
You’ve Got Mail on Wikipedia
Nora Ephron on Wikipedia and IMDB
Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting

Dr. Rosanne Welch hosts a Master Class With Executive Producer/Showrunner Gloria Calderón Kellett — Athena Film Festival 2021

Each year, as a sponsor of the Athena Film Festival, the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting hosts a Master Class interview with a major television showrunner.

For this year’s virtual festival, I had the privilege of interviewing Gloria Calderon Kellett, co-creator and executive producer of the beloved reboot of One Day at a Time.

In our interview, Kellett shared how much she learned about running a show from her earliest days as a writer’s assistant, how earning an MFA was an investment in her future, and how much joy she’s had in using the power of her position to Write, Reach and Represent.

Please enjoy this Master Class with Showrunner, writer, and actress Gloria Calderón Kellett.

Gloria Calderón Kellett is a Showrunner, writer, director, and actor best known for the critically acclaimed reboot ONE DAY AT A TIME. She is currently on a deal at Amazon Studios where she is developing new shows and movies.

Sponsored by Stephens College MFA Program on TV and Screenwriting

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Where’s Her Movie? Actress, Maria Montez – 12 in a series

María África Gracia Vidal (6 June 1912 – 7 September 1951),(known as the “Queen Of The Technicolor” and “Maria Montez”) was a Dominican motion picture actress who gained fame and popularity in the 1940s as an exotic beauty starring in a series of filmed-in-Technicolor costume adventure films. Her screen image was that of a seductress, dressed in fanciful costumes and sparkling jewels. She became so identified with these adventure epics that she became known as “The Queen of Technicolor”. Over her career, Montez appeared in 26 films, 21 of which were made in North America and the last five were made in Europe. — Wikipedia

14 Writers-Producers from There And Back Again: Writing and Developing for American TV [Video] (56 seconds)

Transcript:

The writer-producers and again they were mostly guys in the 80s and early 90s right mostly guys. I did a big article on these gentlemen as well because I had once worked for Kenny Johnson who’s a marvelous man in the corner with the Incredible Hulk. He did the first tv superhero which was the Incredible Hulk show back in the day. So all these guys came out of the Universal writer’s pool right? Stephen Cannell was so beloved that when he died he was NOT running a show called Castle which ran for nine years on network television but the people who ran this show had been trained by him and when he died at the ending of their program, they ran this logo which was how his tv shows in the 70s and 80s used to end and in honor of him they ran this and called him a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. That’s a big deal in Hollywood where mostly we say nasty things about people. So it tells you something about his personality.

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03 Managed Chaos from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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Transcript

So that’s kind of my philosophy. I really don’t like the auteur theory and neither do a lot of other writers. This particular quote comes to us from the gentleman who gave us, in America, Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan. So I want to talk about writer’s rooms and his is considered one of the most organized so perhaps the less chaotic but still what happens in the room has its own form of chaos. So I think it’s really interesting that he is willing to defend the idea that writers are more important than directors. He’s certainly got an Emmy to prove he’s an important writer but I appreciate very much what he had to say. The room is about making people as comfortable as possible and this can be a difficult task but it’s the task of the executive producer or the showrunner to make sure that the people in the room are open to sharing as many of their interesting ideas as possible right? So chaos but managed chaos. You have to allow for much conversation but you’re the one managing what’s being said so you don’t run off on a tangent and of course Vince was brilliant at that.

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