Category: Resources

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Hit UK series profits to fund TV writers from ‘below stairs’

Meanwhile, in the UK the TV elite looks to be putting its desire for more diversity in creators and audiences where its delightfully metaphorical mouth is:

TV Writers Development Programme Capture

by Vanessa Thorpe

Stuart Murphy, the influential head of entertainment at Sky TV who resigned on Friday, has joined some of Britain’s leading television screenwriters, includingPaul Abbott and Brian Elsley, creators of the hit dramas Shameless and Skins, in calling for a wider social range in British dramas. Telling stories about people from every class is not just a moral duty, Murphy argues, it also makes better television.

Murphy, Abbott and Elsley are supporting a scheme, launched this weekend, which uses funds gleaned from top ratings successes such as Downton Abbey andCall the Midwife to find and then sponsor writers from less privileged backgrounds. read article

Writing is a very solitary experience

Writing is solitary? Uh-oh, don’t tell all those U.S. network and studio execs who keep making producers open larger and larger writers rooms. Here’s a good article from India illustrating a not-so-good truth that American showbiz just doesn’t get anymore:

Filmmaker Habib Faisal
Filmmaker Habib Faisal. Hi, Habib. Need another writer?

by Prashant Singh

When you enter his quiet pad in Andheri’s Lokhandwala area, writer-director Habib Faisal instantly sets the tone of our chat by uninhibitedly sharing his views on the current state of affairs in the country. “We always connect politics to party politics. But it can also be about politics of entertainment or engagement (sic),” says the 49-year-old, as he also talks about his journey in Bollywood, his admiration for Amitabh Bachchan, and more.

You are an accomplished writer and director. What excites you more — writing or directing?
I can’t pick one over the other. They’re both very different experiences. Writing is a very solitary experience; it’s a bigger personal struggle for me. On the other hand, when I direct, I have a script that I have confidence in. But when I am writing, I don’t have anything. Writing is a far more complex process. When it happens, it’s joyful. But when it doesn’t, you hate and curse yourself. read article

Troy DeVolld Tells Us the Secret of Life (& Showbiz) Success

by Troy DeVolld

Last week, I spent a little time watching the Dodgers lose to the Mets with a couple of guys who are really at the top of their game.  One has had a show on the air for more than two decades, the other was a producer who’d had a great career and finally struck real gold on one of the most successful sitcoms of all time.

Neither one had a thing to prove to anyone. They’ve played the game and won it many times over — but if you subtracted their success, they’d probably still be the two most relaxed, genial guys in the room.

Here’s the takeaway: You’ve got to be that person now, on the way in and on the way up. read article

Diana Black Loves the Dark Side – Bwahh

look-on-the-dark-side
by Diana Black

Come on, fess up, who amongst us have ‘loved’ and desired the rebel/bad guy/gal – in school, College, University, on the big screen or in the television show? Be careful what you wish for. You might have married one (or were): daily having to tread a fine line between exhilaration and fear, between violence and bliss. Funny, neither gender seem to be liked/suffered nobly in the workplace – but in that arena, it’s all about being a team player not the lone rebel/psychopath.

So why do they ‘reel us in’ – involving us in their complicated, often dysfunctional lives? And what makes them especially compelling when we view them on the big screen or ‘little box’?

From a biological POV, rebels tend to take risks, live precariously, face danger and either through luck or sheer ‘ballsyness’, often reap the rewards of their daring – but not always. Failures can be spectacular and collateral damage is a given. They live and die by the sword – but they live and life on the edge is strangely intoxicating – if you survive. read article

Why I Regret Going to Film School

The op-ed of all showbiz op-eds. We here at TVWriter™ consider this a “must-read”:

Is-Film-School-Worth-It-865x505by Caleb Ward

Whether it’s terminology, new techniques, or simply how to not do something, every time I step onto a film set I learn something new. Your entire career is going to be spent learning and refining your skills… at no point are you going to sit down and know everything. The industry moves way too fast and it’s simply impossible to know everything.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’ – Quentin Tarantino read article