The Writers Room

Download or read book The Writers written by Miranda J. Banks and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-14 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Screenwriters are storytellers and dream builders. They forge new worlds and beings, bringing them to life through storylines and idiosyncratic details. Yet up until now, no one has told the story of these creative and indispensable artists. The Writers is the only comprehensive qualitative analysis of the history of writers and writing in the film, television, and streaming media industries in America. Featuring in-depth interviews with over fifty writers—including Mel Brooks, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, and Frank Pierson—The Writers delivers a compelling, behind-the-scenes look at the role and rights of writers in Hollywood and New York over the past century. Granted unprecedented access to the archives of the Writers Guild Foundation, Miranda J. Banks also mines over 100 never-before-published oral histories with legends such as Nora Ephron and Ring Lardner Jr., whose insight and humor provide a window onto the enduring priorities, policies, and practices of the Writers Guild. With an ear for the language of storytellers, Banks deftly analyzes watershed moments in the industry: the advent of sound, World War II, the blacklist, ascension of television, the American New Wave, the rise and fall of VHS and DVD, and the boom of streaming media. The Writers spans historical and contemporary moments, and draws upon American cultural history, film and television scholarship and the passionate politics of labor and management. Published on the sixtieth anniversary of the formation of the Writers Guild of America, this book tells the story of the triumphs and struggles of these vociferous and contentious hero-makers.

Download or read book Making Crime Television written by Anita Lam and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book employs actor-network theory in order to examine how representations of crime are produced for contemporary prime-time television dramas. As a unique examination of the production of contemporary crime television dramas, particularly their writing process, Making Crime Television: Producing Entertaining Representations of Crime for Television Broadcast examines not only the semiotic relations between ideas about crime, but the material conditions under which those meanings are formulated. Using ethnographic and interview data, Anita Lam considers how textual representations of crime are assembled by various people (including writers, directors, technical consultants, and network executives), technologies (screenwriting software and whiteboards), and texts (newspaper articles and rival crime dramas). The emerging analysis does not project but instead concretely examines what and how television writers and producers know about crime, law and policing. An adequate understanding of the representation of crime, it is maintained, cannot be limited to a content analysis that treats the representation as a final product. Rather, a television representation of crime must be seen as the result of a particular assemblage of logics, people, creative ideas, commercial interests, legal requirements, and broadcasting networks. A fascinating investigation into the relationship between television production, crime, and the law, this book is an accessible and well-researched resource for students and scholars of Law, Media, and Criminology.

Download or read book Unsustainable written by Jessica Restaino and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unsustainable: Re-imagining Community Literacy, Public Writing, Service-Learning, and the University, edited by Jessica Restaino and Laurie Cella, explores short-lived university/community writing projects in an effort to rethink the long-held "gold standard" of long-term sustainability in community writing work. Contributors examine their own efforts in order to provide alternate models for understanding, assessing, and enacting university/community writing projects that, for a range of reasons, fall outside of traditional practice. This collection considers what has become an increasingly unified call for praxis, where scholar-practitioners explore a specific project that fell short of theorized "best practice" sustainability in order to determine not only the nature of what remains--how and why we might find value in a community-based writing project that lacks long-term sustainability, for example--but also how or why we might rethink, redefine, and reevaluate best practice ideals in the first place. In so doing, the contributors are at once responding to what has been an increasing acknowledgment in the field that, for a variety of reasons, many community-based writing projects do not go as initially planned, and also applying--in praxis--a framework for thinking about and studying such projects. Unsustainable represents the kind of scholarly work that some of the most recognizable names in the field have been calling for over the past five years. This book affirms that unpredictability is an indispensable factor in the field, and argues that such unpredictability presents--in fact, demands--a theoretical approach that takes these practical experiences as its base.

Download or read book Television Drama from Germany written by Florian Krauß and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Every Idea Is a Good Idea written by Tom Sturges and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Access a level of creativity you never thought possible, using techniques Tom Sturges—former head of creative at Universal Music Publishing Group—learned in his 25-plus years in the music industry. Everyone is innately creative. But many of us—especially those trying to develop careers in music and the arts—wish we knew how to better tap into our creative potential. Is there a way to more easily connect with the part of our minds that knows how to complete a song, finish a poem, or solve a problem? Music industry veteran Tom Sturges argues that there is. Sturges—who, in his 25-plus-year career, has worked with artists including Carole King, Paul Simon, Elton John, Neil Young, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins and Outkast—has developed dependable techniques to help you recognize and harness your own creative power, whenever and wherever you need it Get insight and knowledge of the creative process from Sir Paul McCartney and other. . Every Idea Is a Good Idea invites readers to find the pathway to their own creative endeavors.

Download or read book Now That's Funny! written by Peter Desberg and published by Square One Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2017-06-07 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a feeling of pure delight that comes from laughing out loud while watching a hilarious movie or a TV show. Yet as funny as these lines may be, they are the work of people you will never see. The magic behind any comedy hit begins when an idea is hatched in the mind of a comedy writer and is then put down on paper. And while few of us are privy to this fascinating process, for writers Peter Desberg and Jeffrey Davis, the challenge of observing and understanding how comedy is born has culminated in a unique new book, Now That’s Funny! Desberg and Davis provide an intimate look into the minds of twenty-four of Hollywood’s funniest comedy writers, who have given us such shows as: Saturday Night Live Monk Everybody Loves Raymond The Simpsons Frasier Maude Home Improvement Valerie Modern Family Cheers There’s Something about Mary The Honeymooners Suddenly Susan Newhart Sabrina the Teenage Witch Archie Bunker’s Place The Tracey Ullman Show Wings Who’s The Boss? and more How do you get to see the creative wheels turn? The authors’ premise was simple: Using a Q and A format, they provided each writer with a story idea and let them run with it. Each of the writers was told there were no rules, no boundaries, and no limits! Because everyone started with the same concept, the authors could see how some writers jumped in and began creating, while others asked lots of questions; how some writers stuck closely to the premise, while others turned it on its head. What emerges is an entertaining look—illuminating and hilarious in turn—at the creative process behind hit TV shows and movies. If you’re one of the millions who have enjoyed watching the work of comedy writers, here is an opportunity to go behind the scenes and see the madness unfold. Now that’s funny!

Download or read book Show Me the Funny! written by Peter Desberg and published by Union Square & Co.. This book was released on 2010-12-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enjoy a unique glimpse into the intelligent and quirky inner workings of the comedic mind! This special e-version of Show Me the Funny! presents 28 top comedy screenwriters--including three bonus interviews not in the original print book--from the revered figures of televisions “Golden Age” to todays favorite movie jokesters. Authors Desberg and Davis put an innovative spin on the traditional interview: each writer was given the same loosely structured comedic premise and asked to develop it in any way he or she wanted-no rules, no boundaries, no limits! The result is a hilarious and illuminating look at the comic process. INCLUDES: o Leonard Stern (co-creator of Get Smart) o Sherwood Schwartz (Gilligans Island, The Brady Bunch) o Peter Casey (co-creator of The Jeffersons, Cheers, Wings, Frasier) o Phil Rosenthal (co-creator of Everybody Loves Raymond) o Ed Decter (co-writer of Theres Something About Mary) o plus three e-book only interviews: Marley Simms (Home Improvement, Sabrina the Teenage Witch) Dan O’Shannon (Modern Family, Frasier, Cheers), and Charlie Hauck (Maude, Cheers)