40 years worth of TV writing experience and info, yours for the taking.
As I’ve gone through life writing I’ve heard a whole lot of sayings and quotes on the subject of writing, publishing, screenwriting…you name it, and I’ve stopped to ponder a few I thought were worthwhile. Heck I’ve pondered a lot I thought were full of it.
Here are some I’ve liked; or not.
“You need tools in the toolbox to write.” Yep. All righty. And what might they be?
The Hollywood Reporter shares fascinating financial info that we know is for reals – cuz they got it from the Sony email hack:
by Austin Siegemund-Broke, Paul BondCameron Diaz is a bigger star than Jamie Foxx. At least that’s the way Sony saw it when paying the actress $7.5 million to appear in Annie, $2.5 million more than her male co-star.
To illustrate the state of Hollywood salaries, THR analyzed two full production budgets revealed in the Sony hack — one for a midrange family movie, the other the pilot for Battle Creek, a CBS series that aired this spring — chosen not because they represent excessive spending, but rather because they exemplify what it costs to make an average piece of American entertainment.
Alice Walker wows us with this insightful analysis of the sad love lives of TV superheroes:
by Alice WalkerIt’s been nearly 15 years since superheroes first conquered the big screen — and the small screen is next. Today, almost every major network has a comic book superhero, from Netflix’s critically acclaimed Daredevil to Fox’s shaky Gotham.
Like their movie counterparts, the broad outline of each of these shows is the same: do-gooders trying to save humankind from megalomaniacal villains. Since that’s what the entire genre is based on, that’s pretty much expected. But there’s another, much stranger quality that these shows share, one at odds with the rest of television’s current trends: They have eschewed romance to the point of near non-existence.
Editing for comedy is a very specialized skill. One wrong shot – too wide, too close, whatever – can ruin the laugh. Here’s an excellent primer for new comedy writers, directors, producers, and editors. Read on and avoid all-too-easy to make beginner mistakes:
by Noam KrollNo matter what genre they’re working in, an editor’s job is undoubtably a difficult one. That said, editing comedycomes with its own set of principles and challenges that can often make it that much harder to tackle. Unlike many other genres that have a lot of leeway in terms of pacing and timing, comedic edits need to be extremely tight and specific in order to land well with an audience.
For those of you out there cutting comedy, whether it’s in a commercial or feature-film format — these tips on how to edit comedy scenes are for you!
All kinds of writers (fiction, business, non-fiction, etc.) have all kinds of reasons they need to self-edit.
For starters – well it’s the place to start. Even if you have it in your budget to hire a professional editor or you have friends in the office standing by to do a read through, the fact of the matter is you need to do a self-edit first…and maybe last.
Great news is there are all kinds of helps you can use. But, of course there are advantages and downsides to using those tools.