“… Producing a web series is a lot of work. But because I got to set the goal, I also got to ensure that my efforts were in alignment with my goal. I discovered I love producing. I also love owning and controlling my own material, not to mention the feeling of controlling my own destiny….”
Niki on producing a Web series
August 26th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Swanson with Fox
August 26th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
Neely Swanson interviewed 2010 WGA Access Project honoree Melody Fox about her “extraordinarily chilling” Sci-Fi pilot script, “Firefall.”
“… I like to start with the real science and if I considered these ideas as possible truths they became a jumping off point for me in developing the series. I thought, what if some sort of primitive alien organism, frozen inside a meteor and traveling through space for a billion plus years, suddenly made it to Earth now – and our environment, with its sunlight and atmosphere and delicious nutrients in water and soil stimulated the organism and acted like an evolutionary accelerant. But the organism would not be restricted to one area because a meteor exploding in its descent toward Earth would scatter meteorite fragments over an entire continent….”
Reindl on pitching genre to television, and playing by the rules
August 26th, 2010 at 2:16 pm
“… It’s a fine line between something original, and something familiar enough for executives and audiences. Like, it’s SUCH a fine line that it practically exists in a quantum state. Schroedinger’s pitch. And it’s just as hard to pitch an original cop show as it is to pitch a familiar enough genre show. It’s just that cops and all that are what the other networks are buying now. And when you pitch a procedural-type show, you get to spend less time explaining magic to them. Which is refreshing, in its own way….”
Stack and Clague on scriptwriting in the UK
August 26th, 2010 at 2:14 pm
“… We had a fantastic response to our first foray into the podcast world, which we took as ample encouragement to continue. In this episode, we talk about the upcoming London Screenwriters’ Festival, earning a living as a writer, the importance of a script’s first ten pages (inspired by Red Planet entries), and there’s reviews of The Eight Day and TV’s Southland and Breaking Bad….”
Vale on the essential items of story
August 26th, 2010 at 2:13 pm
“… It is necessary to understand that a story is nothing but a series of items of information. The story teller informs the listener about persons and events…. The best approach is to ask: what is essential?…”
Sokoloff on elevating the ending
August 19th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
“… Think about the endings of films and books that stay with you. What is that extra something they have that makes them stand out from all the hundreds and thousands of stories out there?…
“… As a storyteller the best thing you can do for your own writing technique is to make that list and analyze why the endings that have the greatest impact on you have that impact. What is/are the storyteller/s doing to create that effect?…”
Sutter on where the show’s at
August 19th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
“… All 13 episodes are broken.
“A writer’s draft of 313 is being written.
“I am currently working on my draft of 312.
“Adam Arkin is prepping 311….”
August on the easy part
August 19th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
“If you’re having a hard time finding a character’s voice, get him talking about something unrelated to the scene at hand.
“Let your hero knock back a beer with his college roommate. Have your corporate spy meet-cute a potential suitor at a ski lodge. Pick situations that couldn’t possibly fit in your actual movie. You just want to get your character talking so that you can eavesdrop….”
15 Ways to Sell a Screenplay Online
August 17th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
Article on the ScreenwritingU blog — 15 Ways to Sell a Screenplay Online.
Well worth reading and using.
ProSeries writer to produce
August 17th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Kathryn Dahlstrom has joined the team making the upcoming “Beyond Belief” as a producer.
ProSeries writers semi-finalists in Page
August 16th, 2010 at 8:21 am
John Arends’ Trice, Karen Bryson’s Monsoon Season (with Amy Arnold), Cate Caldwell & Matt Pearson’s Myrmidon, John Connell’s Rebecca of Riverside Drive, Nevada Grey’s MacArthur Park, Stephen Hoover’s Brave Little Tailor, and Lee Tidball’s Midnight Princess have been selected as semi-finalists in the 2010 PAGE International Screenwriting Awards.
Bromell on conspiracy thrillers
August 15th, 2010 at 4:48 pm
Denis Faye interviewed writer-producer Henry Bromell (Rubicon, Carnivale, Homicide: Life on the Street, Northern Exposure) at the WGA West site.
“… You don’t start writing until you’ve got really great characters; strong, complicated characters. And then you keep trying to find it in the writing to go along with them….”
ProSeries writer gets assignment
August 13th, 2010 at 10:15 am
Etta Worthington has been hired to write a screenplay for Reel Now Films, the production company of Director Kevin Dalvi and Producer Shahzad Chaudhary.
Levine on Neil Simon
August 12th, 2010 at 11:01 am
“… Name me a comedy writer who got his name above the title of any play or movie he wrote. Or a screenwriter who the studios and directors were forbidden to rewrite. You’ve got to be pretty good and pretty successful to achieve that kind of clout. For God sakes, the man has a Broadway theatre named after him….”
BSR on unlikely places to start
August 12th, 2010 at 11:00 am
“… It was the very definition of a guilty pleasure - a half-hour soap opera/anthology series that mostly focused on the sexual and romantic relationships of teens and college-age characters. Each episode usually had three storylines with different characters and those stories continued across several shows.
“It wasn’t great writing by any means….
“… This is a quote from a writer who worked on the series, ‘We did 150 half-hours. It was an insane process. It really taught me how to write fast under pressure. In that job, you were always writing… After the first season, it became a lot easier because I lost all artistic sense or anything resembling caring about what I was doing….’”