ON-DEMAND COMING SOON!
This webinar had a live screening session recently and has not yet been converted into a video format.
Creating a unique, interesting character to anchor your television series is one of the most important things, if not THE most important thing, to focus on when developing a pitch or writing a pilot. Executives, agents, managers, and showrunners insist on compelling, complex and dynamic characters that leap off the page. Yet writers often get bogged down with story and plot, losing sight of the fact that it's characters we care deeply about that cause us to tune in to our favorite TV shows week after week.
But how do you create a three-dimensional character that audiences will fall in love with, invest in and root for?
In this Stage 32 Next Level Webinar, host Tawnya Bhattacharya will teach you how to create memorable characters with drive, characters that provoke emotion and characters that stay with the audience long after they’ve disappeared from the screen. She will show you how to craft compelling and multi-dimensional characters by crafting their backstory, stage of life, flaw, core wound, dilemma and goal as well as how to design dynamic catalyst relationships and polarities, how to a unique world helps you create an interesting character, and how to design meaningful and emotional journeys and character arcs.
As points of reference, writers should familiarize themselves with the pilot episodes of Bloodline, Jane The Virgin, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and Breaking Bad which, despite the fact it’s now off air, is an excellent example of where the bar is set.
You will leave this webinar with a game plan and clear tools to use while building what just might be TV's next iconic hero or anti-hero!
Tawnya Bhattacharya is a working TV writer, writing instructor, and founder of Script Anatomy. Her teaching career began at Writers Boot Camp from 2005 – 2008.
Having seen writers struggle through the process there, it became apparent what was missing, so she created Script Anatomy, a unique curriculum to give writers practical development, writing and rewriting tools based on her own process.
She launched Script Anatomy in 2010, just as she was embarking on her own television writing career. Bhattacharya brings both a ten-year teaching background and professional writing experience to Script Anatomy’s curriculum.
She is currently a Writer/Co-Producer on NBC’s The Night Shift and formerly wrote on TNT’s Perception, Lifetime’s The Client List, and USA’s Fairly Legal, with her writing partner, Ali Laventhol. Repped by ICM Partners, they are former NBC Writers on the Verge fellows, winning one of 8 spots out of 1200 applicants and also made semi-finalists for the Disney | ABC Writing Program before getting a job that took them out of the running. Tawnya was also a FOX Writer’s Intensive fellow (FOX optioned her semi-autobiographical pilot).
Bhattacharya is a graduate of Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.
“Tawnya’s tools for structure and story pushed me to take my work to the next level. She showed me how to channel my ideas in an organized and systematic way. Because she has worked as a TV writer for years, Tawnya brings her experience and all the lessons that she’s learned into class and gives you the tools to navigate the room. Tawnya’s approach is keenly-sharp and nurturing in a professional and enthusiastic way, all while keeping an eye on delivering the best story possible.” – April Fitzsimmons (Staff writer on ABC’s Secrets & Lies, ABC Family’s Stitchers, 2104 Disney | ABC Writing Program)
“Tawnya is a dream to work with. She is a very talented writer! I believe her creative process will take her very far in this business. Her writing is poetic, lyrical and shows depth and complexity. She is every bit as strong on the page as she is in the room. She gives excellent notes to others on their creative process. She clearly understands the craft of writing. Her writing and her ability to connect with others will take her very far in the entertainment business. I highly recommend Tawnya.” – Jen Grisanti (Story/Career Consultant Jen Grisanti Consultancy Inc., Writing Instructor with NBC for Writers on the Verge)
“As a working television writer, Tawnya understands the inner function (or dysfunction) of “the writer.” This, coupled with her innate gift for teaching, make her class stand out in the overly saturated arena of TV writing classes, books, and seminars. Not only was her class informational, enhancing both my story and structure skills, but it was inspirational, fun, and offered a supportive environment for every participant. But, what really matters is this: Tawnya made my work better.” – Eva Taylor (2015 NBC Writers On The Verge Fellow, repped by Rain Management Group)
“When I’m stuck in the writing bubble, need guidance and a fresh set of eyes on my pilots, there’s no one I trust more than Tawnya. I always walk away from our sessions with a clear plan, and solutions to the problems I couldn’t quite crack on my own. Most notably she does this without ever taking over the proceedings. My pilots still feel like my own. She helps respectfully guide the ship home, elevating the work with her effective tools and clear, cogent thought process. She has become my secret weapon and a trusted ally.” - Shannon Fitzgerald (Former Sr. VP of Scripted Development at MTV)
“In a very simple, straightforward way, Tawnya is able to demystify the overwhelmingly isolating process of pilot writing by giving you tools you can take away and use forever. It is an outstanding class for non-working and working writers. I will definitely be going back.” - Wendy Straker Hauser (The Client List and Beauty and the Beast)
“Tawnya is the real deal. When I expanded my writing to include TV as well as features, Tawnya’s class gave me the insight and expertise to elevate my craft in a medium that was foreign to me. What I like most…is that she’s a consummate pro and not afraid to tell you what you need to hear. Tawnya’s instruction is both insightful and personable – it’s the reason so many writers use her services again and again and it’s the reason I continue to use Tawnya as a coach to fine-tune whatever I’m working on”. - Chandus Jackson (Writer/Director, Repped by Verve, 2014/2015 Universal Emerging Writing Fellow)
Webinars take place online, in Los Angeles, California, USA time, using a designated software program from Stage 32. You can participate from the comfort of your own home and you will be able to communicate directly with your instructor during the webinar. If you cannot attend the live webinar, you can still participate! The webinar will be recorded and you will have on-demand access to the audio recording within about 48 hours of the live webinar, which you can view as many times as you'd like for a whole year.
Tawnya Bhattacharya
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We're kicking off the final month of 2020 in the Writers' Room with a another member-inspired Breakdown Webcast! This month we will be talking about writing Theme in your feature scripts. Every well-conceived and executed story will have a theme, which is the "controlling idea", underlying essence, or deeper meaning of film script. And yet, because themes are often buried deep within a story’s structure, it can be hard to articulate or even recognize them. That is why we will be breaking down story structure to find out exactly which scenes typically explore theme. As always, we will be utilizing scenes from some of our favorite films to discuss how they handle theme. We pull clips from classics such as Jurassic Park, Shawshank Redemption, The Exorcist, Saving Private Ryan, and more!
Learn from an entertainment and intellectual property lawyer who's worked with HBO, NBCUniversal and Lionsgate how to protect your film or television project's future. PLUS! Receive Handouts Including A Production Rights Cheat Sheet and Sample Location Agreement In today’s marketing world, your project’s title and content is its brand. You’ll use your film or television project’s title for social media handles and the website URL. It’s one of the most vital tools for getting the word out about your project. It can also be something that grows much bigger. For example, HARRY POTTER started as a book series, but the franchise includes movies, spin-offs, toys, clothing, theme parks, and so much more. When determining the title for your project, you need to think of the bigger picture and how best to protect you title, and brand, to ensure it doesn’t conflict with other brands so that you can capitalize on your project from all angles. In this exclusive Stage 32 on-demand webinar, you’ll learn everything you need to know about title clearances and how to protect your project’s title and brand. You’ll also cover script clearances to ensure that you’re safe to include the people, places, real events, and existing material and brands you want to use without fear of reshooting your project from legal issues. Without the necessary title and script clearances, your project could receive legal notices to halt marketing because of a conflict with another project. You might have to reshoot valuable footage if the script isn’t cleared. But you can avoid these stressful legal and financial setbacks by doing the work correctly now. Walking you through these legal processes step by step is Kennington Groff, an attorney who launched her own firm, Lilenfield PC, to focus on entertainment and intellectual property. Kennington has extensive experience with clearances and has worked with top entertainment executives at HBO, NBCUniversal, and Lionsgate. Kennington will show you how to protect your title and the differences with the process in the US versus internationally. You’ll cover error and omission insurance (E&O), the differences between copyright and trademark protection, finding out if your title isn’t available, and more. Save yourself the time and frustration later by joining Kennington for this invaluable webinar, and protect your project’s future.
This week we welcome playwright and TV writer who is the author of over forty plays! His television credits include Executive Story Editor on Season 2 of the Starz drama "MAGIC CITY", and serving as Executive Story Editor on two seasons of the HBO television show "HUNG". He wrote and directed the film EXILES IN New York, which played at the A.F.I Film Festival, South by South West, The Santa Barbara Film Festival and The Latin American International Film Festival in Havana, Cuba. He has also has sold his original television projects to Starz, Amazon and AMC, among others. During this incredible Executive Hour, Eduardo talks about working with Oscar-winner Al Pacino on the film SCARFACE in his early 20's, how to write compelling characters for stage and screen, what it is like being in a writers room for HBO, and offers a exercise in breaking character and story that brought one of our members to tears!
One of the most useful things a writer can do is to team up with a mentor to help them on their journey. Too many writers try to navigate through the script writing process without guidance. Wouldn't you want a mentor that develops and sells material for a living to help you take the mystery work out of your journey? The most successful writers in the industry have their own mentors to make sure they are going in the right direction - do the same for yourself. Stage 32 Happy Writers is thrilled to bring back our 8 Week Working Writer's Lab. This is one of our most hands on, prestigious and talked about labs and we only offer it a few times a year. To find the perfect teacher we go through our rolodex of 400 executives and hand pick an executive that is one of the most raved about from our writers. Your teacher for this lab will be Patrick Raymond, creative executive at Mandalay Pictures! Patrick has assisted a number of our writers on strengthening their scripts and he is excited to help you bring your concept to life. With interactive lectures and weekly homework assignments directly geared towards bringing your concept to life, PLUS ongoing contact with Patrick in between classes, your experience writing has never been easier. Under The Guidance of Patrick Raymond you will: Pick a unique and commercially viable concept. Craft engaging, unique characters that pop off the page. A solid structural skeleton that successfully carries your concept. Cinematic set pieces that will give your story that much-wanted theatrical feel. A fully realized outline highlighting every major plot point in your script. The Objective of the Lab is: To take the mystery work out of picking a concept that can sell. To match you with an executive that will assist you with making sure all your script's elements is as strong as possible. Give you an experience on how development executives develop projects that are now on their company's slate. Class ScheduleWEEK #1 – The Story of Me; Your Questions; Your Stories General class overview. Patrick's history and experiences. What Patrick loves writing about and why. What he looks for in a good story/screenplay. Any initial queries raised in the pre-class questionnaire. NOTE: Given the online format, Patrick will use this week’s “office hours” to more personally respond to/discuss the ideas you are contemplating working on during the Lab. WEEK #2 – Character Creating strong, unique memorable characters. How to have them best serve your story, the genre, themes, etc. Dialogue and voice. Patrick will cover some examples, including personal experience. WEEK #3 – Act I; Premise into Story How to make the leap from basic premise/concept and characters into a full-blooded story. Where to start. What to include in Act 1. Where does Act 1 end and Act 2 begin? Creating a world and setting a tone. Patrick will discuss examples of strong (attention-grabbing and/or smartly-chosen) and weak (meandering, overstuffed, unfocused, etc.) beginnings. WEEK #4 – The Story So Far (Consultation) No on-line class this week. Instead, you will submit premise, Character Bio(s), and Act I outline for review; Patrick will discuss the materials individually in 30 minute phone calls and advise any changes/concerns. WEEK #5 – Act II; Structure and Plotting Plotting and development of your story across Act 2. Examples of structure (midpoints, end of Act 2, Internal/external conflict, etc. WEEK #6 – Theme; What’s it All About? How to ensure that your script isn’t just an escalation of events, but is a rich narrative experience that is hopefully actually about something. Topics to include Theme, Topicality, Relatability, Universality. WEEK #7 – Act III; Sticking the Landing Why 'when and how' to achieve a strong finish is arguably one of the most difficult parts of writing a screenplay. Examples of scripts/films that have accomplished this, as well as those that have not (and why). WEEK #8 – The Completed Outline (Consultation) No on-line class this week. Instead, you will turn in your completed outline for review; Patrick will then discuss with you over a 30-minute consultation. About Your Instructor, Patrick RaymondPatrick Raymond is a Creative Executive at Mandalay Pictures, Peter Gruber’s decades-old production company responsible for films such Sleepy Hollow, The Score, The Jacket, Into the Blue, When the Game Stands Tall and Horns. At Mandalay, Patrick gets to work on his passion every day: cultivating amazing stories and working with great writers.Prior to joining Mandalay, Patrick studied business and film production at the University of Southern California. He worked in the financial services industry for four years before transitioning to entertainment, where he worked as a production assistant in television for four years.After that he transitioned to working at Gersh in the production department but he also gained exposure to the literary world, working with writers and story. He then moved over to LD Entertainment for three years, where he was a Creative Executive, working with writers and helping build scripts and acquire ideas for new projects. Here he had the opportunity to work for Tate Taylor on a James Brown biopic entitled, Get On Up, and learned about assembling large studio films. He has since transitioned to the Creative Executive position at Mandalay Pictures. Patrick was born in Alaska and raised in Seattle prior to moving to LA.
With all the recent success for true story dramas including Oppenheimer, Maestro, Nyad, Ferrari, Irishman (among many others), it’s an exciting time in the marketplace for non-fiction. If you have found a story that truly inspires you and know it will make a great film, sometimes it’s hard to know where to start to make that happen. The easy part is finding the right story, the hard part is knowing what to do with it. Whether it’s a book, a newspaper or magazine article, a documentary subject, or even if it’s the story of someone you’ve met or are related to, understanding how to get the rights and put the project into motion is paramount. To cover all your bases from the legal aspects to development to filming to distribution, you need someone who has been in the trenches time and time again. And we've got just the person, one of the most experienced independent film producers working today, to help you make sense of it all. Jim Young of Animus Films has created a successful career working in the true story space with films such as The Catcher Was a Spy (Paul Rudd) based off of the life of Moe Berg, Life of a King (Cuba Gooding Jr.) based off of the life of Eugene Brown, The Man Who Knew Infinity (Dev Patel) based off of the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, Lovelace (Amanda Siefried) based off of the life of Linda Lovelace and the upcoming The People vs. Vegas Dave based off of controversial gambler Vegas Dave. Jim is a leading independent non-fiction producer, with almost two dozen films under his belt. And now he's bringing his extensive knowledge exclusively to the Stage 32 community. Jim will take you through the steps of acquiring the rights to a particular article, book or other printed material about, or the life rights of, a given person (or persons). From there he will cover writing and developing the script, getting buttoned up legally to avoid pitfalls in the pre-production and production phases, and help you navigate the process of releasing and distributing the film. He will provide real life case studies using some of his own films as examples to help you gain real world experience and make the process painless. PRAISE FOR JIM'S TEACHINGS: "Jim was an excellent educator. He really broke down the process of getting life rights in an easy to understand way and opened my eyes to some huge pitfalls I need to avoid along the way. Great examples from someone who's actually doing it right now, which is important. Thanks Jim!" -Jonathan R.
Every successful filmmaker has, at some point in their career, written, directed, and/or produced a short film. For filmmakers who are just starting out, a short film is the best calling card to showcase their unique talent and vision. It is important to remember that short filmmaking is different from feature filmmaking, with challenges unique to the process. Even so, producing a short film may seem daunting, but there are several key secrets to getting the most out of your project. This intensive 5-week course will give students the tools and techniques necessary to produce a world class short film. Each week will be dedicated to a different aspect of the short filmmaking process, including, concept development and writing of your short, budgeting and scheduling, understanding and drafting production agreements, pro-tips on directing actors, and how to get the most out of the post production process. Students are strongly encouraged to come with ideas for a short film, which will be developed over the course of the 4 weeks, so by the conclusion of the class, the should have a screenplay ready for production.