Posts Tagged ‘BBC’

Making a good script greater – the answer is Linda Seger

Sunday, July 4th, 2010

It has been an interesting few months (you know the Chinese curse – may you live in interesting times?) in which INNOCENT, the film I exec produced, was completed against the clock (accepted for the National Arts Festival in SA) and without the money to pay for it. The Festival was amazing! Don’t ask but do check the website www.innocentthefilm.com.

Having decided that the scope for new writers, especially writing television drama, was contracting I started taking on book writers at about the same time as the sub-prime mortgage fiasco, which caused publishers to cut back on their lists just as the broadcasters had cut back on the number of soap and series slots that were available (Brookside, Family Affairs, Crossroads, The Bill). So like others in the industry, we are all having to run in order to keep walking.

Then the WGGB had the drama luminaries from the BBC for a session and while the BBC does produce some outstanding drama, it would appear that more of it is being written by fewer writers.

The BBC Writers Academy is an excellent idea for the BBC and for the writers who are fast-tracked. But there is a problem rising rapidly that confronts all of us who write or work with writers: it is a question of supply and demand. The Academy writers get a significant number of episodes at the same time as the film schools and universities are turning out increasing numbers of graduate scriptwriters looking for works, fuelled by Skillset’s own Academies.

There are too many people trying to get work as writers; agencies are reeling under the weight of submissions; so I suppose are the broadcasters? What can writers do to overcome the problems (and the competition)? Five ideas come to mind:

1. Make sure you have some talent. This is boring but helpful since if you find that you do not you can ignore the next four points.

2. Choose the right genre and stories to write: too many writers either indulge in semi-autobiographical backstories or write in the genre they like reading or watching even if they have no real talent for it. What are you best at?

3. Do you need the discipline and networking camaraderie of a degree course? Not all writers do and some degree courses are better than others. But for many the right degree is a serious advantage if only you knew which course was right for you.

4. The wonderful Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festivals will not take place this year so whether you went or not, don’t miss the new scriptwriting festival in London at the end of October. It will be three days of very intensive networking and expertise that should help you answer some of the questions above. www.londonscreenwritersfestival.com

5. If you don’t want to wait that long you can do something about it this coming weekend. In a rare and very welcome visit, Linda Seger will be doing one workshop in London on Saturday. Linda has an extraordinary clarity in the way she enables writers to see how to make good scripts better or good characters great. Her approach tends to be more psychologically-based than structurally-based and when I first heard Linda teach and read her books it was as if much suddenly became clearer. You will get a great deal from a day with Linda and you could find the answers that will make a difference in the very competitive world we are all in. Even better news, the costs are far lower than usual for someone as significant as Linda!! Don’t miss it. http://gettingitoffmychest.co.uk/making-a-good-script-great/

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The BBC and the WGGB: some great ideas

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

I was thinking about blogging about the BBC’s apparent changes when I saw Bernie Corbett’s incisive thoughts in the WGGB weekly newsletter. I couldn’t say it better so I would like to spread the wisdom and common sense that makes the WGGB an organisation well worth supporting. Are you a member? You should be if not.

Statement by Bernie Corbett

General Secretary, Writers’ Guild of Great Britain

2nd March 2010

In eight plain words – “The BBC should not attempt to do everything” – Mark Thompson has overturned a philosophy that has been central to the BBC since it was founded 87 years ago.

If it sticks, the new policy that the BBC can no longer provide something for everybody but must instead concentrate on high quality and areas where others can’t or won’t provide, will have profound implications.

While we take no pleasure in the destruction of Radio 6 or the Asian Network (both of which would appear to be high-quality services that no one else will provide), nevertheless this is a revolution that could have its sunny side for writers.

If it is true that £600 million will be freed to go into more and better programmes, then the Guild can make some immediate and obvious suggestions.

Original drama: For several years everyone has been asking why Britain can’t produce brilliant series like The Sopranos, The Wire, etc. Here is a chance for the BBC to create its own in-house HBO.

New writers: Fresh talent and new ideas don’t have to be developed to death – here is an opportunity to take some risks. Five out of every six TV drama scripts commissioned and paid for by the BBC never get made – now that ratio can be radically improved.

Make me laugh: We long for brilliant new sitcoms. Use some of this money to give them room to grow. Many of the true greats were into their second or third series before they achieved classic status.

Something for the kids: Build on the success of CBBC and CBeebies by reinventing real, meaty drama and comedy for kids – there is more to children’s TV than running-around-shouting-and-playing shows and endlessly repeated animations – brilliant though they are.

Rescue radio: A tiny fragment of the money would not only restore but reverse the shameful cuts in BBC Radio drama that in recent years have seen the abandonment of World Service drama, the crazy cancellation of terrific soaps like Westway and Silver Street, the imminent demise of the Friday Play and the dumbing-down of the Woman’s Hour drama slot into little more than a reading with interludes of dialogue.

Comedy: While we’re at it, let us have the reintroduction of topical sketch shows like Week Ending or the News Huddlines – these shows have enabled generations of brilliant writers to get started and write their way out of their bedsits and into the ratings.

Britain’s broadcasting heritage: At long last here is a realistic source for the huge sums required to digitise the BBC archive and put it online, where everyone can access every TV or radio show that was ever made in the UK (or at least, those that still survive). And please will the BBC not give our heritage away for nothing, but charge a reasonable pay-per-view or subscription price. Doing so will avoid the iPlayer mistake of setting up impossible competition for other, commercial providers, and it will bring in revenue to fund even more programme making and to ensure fair payment for the writers and other creators who made those shows. Never forget, the BBC did not buy or pay for these rights at the time the programmes were made and it cannot rewrite history now.

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If you can’t join them, beat them.

Friday, December 18th, 2009

The Writers’ Guild blog has an interesting and important debate over the assertion that the BBC Writers’ Academy favours its trainees so that other writers get less of a chance. This blog is partly my response to the debate in the WGGB blog.

http://writersguild.blogspot.com/2009/12/bbc-writersroom-update.html

A couple of years ago I interviewed John Yorke, BBC TV series supremo:

http://www.twelvepoint.com/files/Interview%20John%20Yorke_Julian%20Friedmann.pdf

john-york1

It was clear then that the Academy made sense from the BBC’s point of view: they would get a better-trained cadre of writers, who would deliver more usable scripts in less time, thus saving time and money.

Other writers (such as my own clients) would probably get less access to slots even though some of them have had many years of diligent service in writing dozens and dozens of soap and series scripts.

There cannot be enough to go round for everyone. As a result of the increase in degree courses for scriptwriters over the last 5 years there are also now many more writers with some experience (even if it is spec academic scripts) trying for the decreasing number of slots. Inevitably there will be fewer writers getting a piece of the pie.

On top of that the BBC like the other broadcasters are having to cut the budgets of their shows. This is a reality they would be negligent not to deal with. Using equally talented writers who have been trained in the in-house hothouse of the Academy is pragmatic and sensible even though the Beeb admits a kind of sadness that they can’t please all the people all the time. But I don’t see anyone protesting at the ever-increasing new degree courses in scriptwriting that will turn out hungry and ambitious writers also after those slots.

The key – which I have encouraged through the pages of TwelvePoint.com and as an agent is to be flexible and adapt. There have been several long-running series and soaps cancelled in the last 4 or 5 years: between 500 and 600 episodes have disappeared; add that to the Academy writers and the new graduates and any scriptwriter who assumes that they can behave as they have in the past will end up probably out in the cold for a lot of the time.

Writers have to be more proactive; they have to start partially being like producers; they have to write saleable and commercial spec scripts; they have to consider other formats like novels – I had amazing feedback in Cheltenham on a session about novel writing for scriptwriters.

They way we were has gone. Like the ice shelf at the North Pole. As an agent I have had to make changes to the way I work to deal with the changing business in which we all work: so writers need to make changes. If you are a storyteller and want to earn a living by telling stories then tell stories for people who want to buy them in the format that they want to buy them. Don’t worry so much about the format. I would not recommend novelists start writing scripts (without training and experience); but most scriptwriters I talk to have read more novels than they have read scripts. You see where I am going with this. Watch out for my Cheltenham talk as a forthcoming article in TwelvePoint.

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Product placement is good for your health

Sunday, September 13th, 2009

Some time ago ScriptWriter Magazine published a strong plea against product placement in TV. Christina Kallas, at the public hearing on the Audiovisual Media Services Directive of the European Parliament in June 2006, President of the Federation of Screenwriters in Europe, addressed her fellow writers on the question of the review of the Television Without Frontiers Directive and, in particular, the question of the proposed loosening of the rules on product placement. *

Her view was that the legislation was inadequate and that there was a risk that writers would only get produced if they agreed to promote a product in their scripts.

Part of me agrees that drama should have higher ideals than advertising subliminally and that writers should not be turned even more into tarts than they are already.

But is it very different from bowing and bending to the whims of script editors, producers and directors who impose their ‘agendas’, intellectual, moral or aesthetic, on the writer? This is often done simply because they are in a more powerful position than the writer: do what I say both because I am right and because I am more powerful than you and can fire you. Frequently they are not right. Ce la vie.

I recall a client being fired off Doctors by a 23 year old because the kid didn’t believe that a character – 12-year-old boy (I might have the ages wrong) – wouldn’t wet a bed. The writer and father of children was clearly wrong; the script editor must be right? The story has since been made into an award-winning short.

Because there is a financial crisis hitting commercial TV in Britain the government relaxes the law on product placement. Presumably it is still as detrimental to our fragile minds and hearts as it was before but capitalism must succeed, so let’s corrupt those who watch commercial television?

Or it might have never been bad for us. I believe that we do need intelligent rules but this is not one of them. Product placement is seen by British audiences in US TV and movies (indeed in our own movies). If the moral decrepitude we are now seeing in society, with drunken teens and high levels of social displacement, are due to the insidious influence of product placement on our screens from movies and US TV, then we should not allow it at all.

If it is not likely to be having any effect at all (or so insignificant to be relatively harmless) then let’s have it on the BBC and in children’s telly too. But regulate it intelligently, make sure that junk foods and sugar-based drinks are not allowed, but that healthy options are; make sure that a small percentage of the profits of the shows goes into educating children to understand how the media works, so that when they are subject to lies and distortions, as in party-political broadcasts, they know not to believe all that they hear, see or read.

Or are the politicians afraid of facing the truth themselves?

* http://www.twelvepoint.com/files/Product_Placement_Hijacking_Script_Christina_Kallas.PDF

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The BBC – one stop shopping?

Saturday, September 5th, 2009
Kate Harwood at work in the BBC Drama office

Kate Harwood at work in the BBC Drama office

This week in TwelvePoint we have Kate Harwood’s interview: I think that despite the slap on the wrist (that is all I think it was) from James Murdoch (SKY) the BBC seems to be in rude health. Perhaps that is why so many people attack it: competitors for audiences and those who have their submissions rejected by the BBC in particular.

I am not a fan of everything the BBC does in drama. Thankfully, since my tastes are certainly not a benchmark and anyway they must appeal to a wide audience, as Kate makes clear.

So should they simply expect a bad press because they have as near a monopoly as any broadcaster could have. They are like Royal game: the licence fee gives them a margin of comfort their competitors simply do not have.

Kate, Controller of Serials and Series at the BBC, makes no bones about the difficulties new writers have in accessing her department: there are other access points for newer writers. She tends to use experience, which for her are writers who have learned by seeing their work produced. She says:

‘It’s hard for people to get what I call ‘flying hours’ because in the end, as a writer you can do a tremendous amount on your own but if you can’t get beyond a certain stage, you don’t participate in the process. If you want to be a professional television writer you need to see your work produced because that is the only way you really learn.’

How do writers out in the wilderness, even those with agents, get to meet Kate and Ben Stephenson and other luminaries of the broadcasters: easy – many will be (as they are every year) at the Cheltenham Screenwriters’ Festival at the end of October.

There is so much happening at the BBC that we all need to understand it (which is why the interview with Kate is very long and will appear over three weeks). It is not ‘our’ BBC as is sometimes said, but it commissions more hours of drama than anyone else. How Kate’s department relates to the Writer’s Academy and the Writersroom at the BBC is also interesting, as is her relationship with Manda Levin and the powerful John Yorke.
Knowledge of the personalities and power structures in the major broadcasters is as vital as understanding the three-act structure, beats, sequences and whatever other craft skills are deemed necessary. But reading the trades is seldom demonstrated by writers as a priority (hence the Buzz provided in TwelvePoint to provide that kind of industry information about who is commissioning what and what the trends are).

I would not recommend treating the BBC as one-stop shopping for drama writers, but I would suggest that they are the most important place to get to know well if working in the UK as a drama writer is what you want to do.

Making drama at the BBC: an interview with Kate Harwood – part 1

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Gissa job

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009

Spent sometime this weekend thinking about training because of the upcoming Screenwriters’ Festival at Cheltenham and all the publicity about the television festival in Edinburgh especially the Murdoch attack on the BBC and the belief that profit is the main motivator of good telly in a free society.

Well, I didn’t actually hear the speech but it was a big promo for SKY, who thankfully (and belatedly) are doing drama, so let’s be grateful for small mercies. I guess the big battleground is about news not drama (though I do hope SKY’s drama makes profits so they will do more). For screenwriters and those who work with them, however, declining budgets and fragmenting audiences means write smart.

The demise of Big Brother is leading C4 into increasing its drama budget overall, an excellent thing when you look at some of the brilliant drama they are doing. I wonder how much money they made from Slumdog Millionaire? Probably not as much as they deserved.

Back to training: Skillset has undoubtedly focussed many good minds on training and I believe that it is getting better than it was say five years ago. What remains unresolved is the vocational nature of scriptwriting. It is simply not like writing novels.

When you look at the stats (take the Rogers’ Report, which found that over a couple of years the average identity of those who write British films is white, male, over 50 and having had no formal training to write), it makes you think.

When we set up the MA in Television ScriptWriting at De Montfort University in Leicester a number of years ago, one aspect we all agreed on (there were aspects on which the academics at DMU did not agree with those of us from the industry who designed the course) was the intensity of contact with the industry: apart from the opening and closing weeks we wanted industry speakers every week. We paid the speakers well so that every year out of some 24 terms days a year (the third term was not on campus) there were about 20 top industry visitors, ie 40 over the two years.

Even this we felt was not enough but I believe it is the highest in the country. Bournemouth makes the undergrads do six weeks work experience in the industry at the end of their second year, which is an important experience for them. Many of those students spend their time at my agency. Bournemouth has also had the recent addition of the very smart Craig Batty as a senior lecturer in scriptwriting: his book (with Zara Waldeback) is an excellent introduction to screenwriting.

My conclusion from all this is that actually working in the industry in almost any capacity might be as good – better for some, not for all – than doing a degree. In other words learning to write is done by doing it as much as studying it. It requires participation in an industrial process and working under pressure, different from the somewhat laid-back life of most degree courses.

I have come round to favour a combination of gap-year thinking – get your hands dirty and work in the business; if that goes well then get your employer to fund a part-time MA in scriptwriting. Would Skillset provide bursaries to help those companies losing a staff member for a day while they studied for the industry they were working in?

It could be the fast-track to industry-savvy, script-literate professional writers who know what the industry wants and don’t have to guess. In the meantime, where can you get an exceptionally prescient insight into the film and television industry in four days, more information than you can possibly take in, more contacts with the industry than you will make in any year of your life outside of Cheltenham? The Screenwriters’ Festival is worth a year at any higher educational institution. And which university always takes the largest number of students to Cheltenham? De Montfort.

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