Broadcast Education Association 2009
Among the various things I did at BEA 2009--I served my various duties as Student Audio Chair for the BEA Festival and participated in a session called Preparing Students for Careers in Spanish Language Media. Students and university faculty doing creative work should enter something in the next Festival -- see www.beaweb.org. The deadline will be early December.
One of the great sessions I attended was the Writing Division’s Top Papers session. Patricia Phalen of George Washington University presented “Writing Hollywood: Rooms With a Point of View” and Mary Blue, Tulane University presented a paper about Amaani Lyle - who filed a sexual harassment lawsuit because of what happened in the writer’s room at Friends—that she claimed as harassment. Blue talked about fantasy chaining –from Gary David Goldberg, maker of Family Ties, which relates to how a sitcom group of writers works to be funny. Hollywood writers Dean Batali (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and THat 70s Show) Skye Dent (Star Trek: Voyager and The Burning Zone) and Jonathan Prince ("American Dreams" Executive Producer) then evaluated he content of the papers and talked about the realities of Hollywood writing. Dean, for example said his opinion of why Lyle struggled with her job with Friends was that she basically just couldn’t do the job.
Other points made by the writers...
Jonathan Prince worked with Witt Thomas Harris then MTM to learn to be a show runner. Those kind of comedy and drama ‘factories’ don’t exist any more, so that kind of training has to be done by people working in the current writing staffs. Writer’s assistant used to be a secretarial position—now they are expected to be able to write. Lot of discussion about ‘what goes on in the room.’ “Breaking the story” – the idea of what a story line might be in the show. Put it on the board, decide where the act breaks are. If you’re brilliant enough in Hollywood they’ll put up with a lot of extremes (Dean made this comment) Jonathan pointed out it’s all about how the show runner runs things – Don Rio and Blossom – Rio wanted to push people to finish at the end of the day and had a ‘don’t order dinner’ policy so people would srap up and leave. Bitter writers – Skye talked about writers’ relationship with highly paid actors on Friends, for example.
Prince in replying to the ‘outsiders and insiders’ that happens when people join the writing room–‘welcome to the real world—not matter what job you go into, there are those kinds of dynamics.’ More opportunities now for writers than ever—because there are so many more channels. Skye noted writers are on the set making sure the director and writers implement what they created in a TV drama. You have to get a writer’s assistant job to become a writer. Writer’s assistant has to get a spec script accepted.
Then, at a session on news convergence... One example of what they’re doing at Northern Arizona University—Big issue is the tech side—journalism students who have issues with using the digital audio recorder, etc. Difficulties in doing convergence, difference in ‘what is convergence’—student who saw it as having a portal. Instead, focus on good storytelling, not on distribution. Colorado State showed video about doing multimedia. See studentmediacorp.com and my tweet (www.twitter.com/tdemars)
One of the great sessions I attended was the Writing Division’s Top Papers session. Patricia Phalen of George Washington University presented “Writing Hollywood: Rooms With a Point of View” and Mary Blue, Tulane University presented a paper about Amaani Lyle - who filed a sexual harassment lawsuit because of what happened in the writer’s room at Friends—that she claimed as harassment. Blue talked about fantasy chaining –from Gary David Goldberg, maker of Family Ties, which relates to how a sitcom group of writers works to be funny. Hollywood writers Dean Batali (Buffy the Vampire Slayer and THat 70s Show) Skye Dent (Star Trek: Voyager and The Burning Zone) and Jonathan Prince ("American Dreams" Executive Producer) then evaluated he content of the papers and talked about the realities of Hollywood writing. Dean, for example said his opinion of why Lyle struggled with her job with Friends was that she basically just couldn’t do the job.
Other points made by the writers...
Jonathan Prince worked with Witt Thomas Harris then MTM to learn to be a show runner. Those kind of comedy and drama ‘factories’ don’t exist any more, so that kind of training has to be done by people working in the current writing staffs. Writer’s assistant used to be a secretarial position—now they are expected to be able to write. Lot of discussion about ‘what goes on in the room.’ “Breaking the story” – the idea of what a story line might be in the show. Put it on the board, decide where the act breaks are. If you’re brilliant enough in Hollywood they’ll put up with a lot of extremes (Dean made this comment) Jonathan pointed out it’s all about how the show runner runs things – Don Rio and Blossom – Rio wanted to push people to finish at the end of the day and had a ‘don’t order dinner’ policy so people would srap up and leave. Bitter writers – Skye talked about writers’ relationship with highly paid actors on Friends, for example.
Prince in replying to the ‘outsiders and insiders’ that happens when people join the writing room–‘welcome to the real world—not matter what job you go into, there are those kinds of dynamics.’ More opportunities now for writers than ever—because there are so many more channels. Skye noted writers are on the set making sure the director and writers implement what they created in a TV drama. You have to get a writer’s assistant job to become a writer. Writer’s assistant has to get a spec script accepted.
Then, at a session on news convergence... One example of what they’re doing at Northern Arizona University—Big issue is the tech side—journalism students who have issues with using the digital audio recorder, etc. Difficulties in doing convergence, difference in ‘what is convergence’—student who saw it as having a portal. Instead, focus on good storytelling, not on distribution. Colorado State showed video about doing multimedia. See studentmediacorp.com and my tweet (www.twitter.com/tdemars)
posted by Tony at 11:22 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home