Tag: TV CAREER TIPS

How Does A Web Series Jump to TV?

Here ya go, peer producers and other entrepreneurial creative sorts – the answer you/we/everybody wants to know:

broad-cityby Aymar Jean Christian

Five years ago, making a web series to get on traditional television was a fool’s game. The few web series producers to secure development deals with networks — from “We Need Girlfriends,” “Quarterlife,” “Private High School” and “The College Humor Show” — either never made it to air or didn’t last long when they did.

But today many more web series have been optioned for TV and made it onto television. Some have even been successful, making it to a second season — like Comedy Central series “Broad City,” which was renewed last night. More series could be coming soon. In the past year hardworking producers like Issa Rae, Ray William Johnson, Benny and Rafi Fine, Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox, Jake Hurwitz and Amir Blumenefeld and have all signed development deals. read article

JOHN OSTRANDER: WRITING TIDS AND BITS

writing-toolby John Ostrander

Absent any overall topic occurring to me, maybe we’ll try the ol’ shotgun approach – a bunch of writing tips with the idea that, if there’s enough of them, some should work. (My friend William J. Norris used to describe my sense of humor that way – if I just kept talking, a certain percentage of it was bound to be funny.)

Da tips.

Cast your characters. This can be short-hand for a character and can help with dialogue. Who would play your character in TV or movies or who would provide their voice if the character was animated? It doesn’t have to be a living actor; heck, it doesn’t have to be an actor at all. It can be somebody you know or knew, friend or foe or relative (the last can be a combination of the first two). It can be a politician or your boss or a co-worker. Somebody you find distinctive and whose voice is inside your head. read article

Writers Guild of America, West March 2014 Calendar

Banner_wga2cwga-march-14-calendar-awga-march-14-calendar-bGo to the online, clickable version

WGA & AMPTP Wrapping Up New Deal?

Deadline.Com seems to think that negotiations re a new deal between the WGA and Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers are all but finished. Sure hope they’re right:

wga-good-guys-logoAMPTP-bad-guys-logo

WGA & AMPTP “Very Close” To New Labor Deal
by Dominic Patten

Four days after returning to the negotiating table, the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers are near an agreement on a new three-year contract, I’ve learned. “We’re not there yet and there are still a few more I’s to dot and T’s to cross, but we’re very close,” one insider told me today. With many of the bulky points already coming together in the first two weeks of talks, the two sides spent some of their two-week temporary recess fine-tuning the agreement, sources on both sides say, before sitting down again at AMPTP’s Sherman Oaks HQ. An official announcement could come as early as the beginning of next week. If you take out the downtime, this year’s talks pretty much follow the timeline of the placid 2011 negotiations, which started on March 3 that year and were all done by March 20. read article

Love & Money Dept – TV Writing Deals for 3/8/14

Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are
by munchman

  • David O. Russell (you know who he is) has left ABC’s THE CLUB, a series his presence helped sell, but co-writer Susannah Grant will remain. (You gotta ask yourself: If a guy like Russell can get dumped from a TV series, how rough must the politics of the medium really be? If yours truly had a mind, it’d be boggling!)
  • Rick Eid (DARK BLUE) is showrunning the new Lifetime drama series, THE LOTTERY, about stuff that happens in, you know, a “dystopian future.” (Sorry, Lifetime, but there’s a show the muncher won’t be watching cuz let’s face it, those of us living in the dystopian present really could use a change.)
  • Hallmark Channel has picked up THE GOOD WITCH, a series based on its TV movies  of the same name. No writer or showrunner has been listed, so excuse me while yrs truly calls his agent. (Not that muncho expect her to answer, but that’s another (sad!)story.)
  • Marco Pennette (KIRSTIE) is out as showrunner of TV Land’s comedy of that selfsame name and is working as a consulting producer on MOM instead. (Cuz the talented writer/creator/sonofabitch is so goddamn rich already why work full-time?)