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TV Calling

Online shows and college love

You know how I talked about The WB’s online launch on August 27?
Well now there’s another, again, new kid on the block.
And his name is Strike.TV

Yes, that’s Kristen Wiig.

The idea for Strike.TV, like Whedon’s Dr. Horrible, was thought out during, you’ll never guess this, the writer’s strike.
Strike.TV allows for screenwriters to create a content that will be filmed and produced, while still maintaining ownership of their work.

The writers behind the site’s content include writers for The Office, How I Met Your Mother and much more (see the above trailer).
Several original series will be available on the website such as Global Warming, with Aasif Mandvi and Kristen Wiig.

The site will be paid, similarly to Hulu, with short ads before the program.
Strike.TV is expected to open to everyone later this month.

And what about that “college love”?
Well you certainly know that ABC, NBC and Coe like to stream their shows online, and also like to cash in the checks they earn with the ads in them.
Fox is soon going to join them with Fringe and The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
On September 8 and 9, both premiere will be streamed simultaneously with their TV broadcast.
The catch is that this stream will only be available to college students, or rather people surfing the web with .edu domains. Why .edu domains in particular you may wonder. Well Bill Bradford (the VP of “content strategy”) saw that .edu domains were among the top visitors for Fox’s website and came up with the streaming idea.
Brilliant.
Especially when you know that “.edu people” are also the number one people to download illegally shows, such as, you know, the leaked Fringe pilot.

TV Books are back from the future (and the past)

TV Books are back from the future (and the past)

Following on the steps of previous book posts, it seems that everyday I discover more and more books about screenwriting and especially, surprinsingly, TV writing.

On television writing I have found several other books that, according to the Amazon peeps’ reviews, seem worthwhile:

Marilyn Webber‘s Gardner’s Guide to Television Scriptwriting. Webber has written other writing books on other specific subjects (such as Sitcom writing, TV Animation, Feature Animation, etc). The book seems to be hands-on although not updated in its examples (West Wing, 24, and Gilmore Girls among others).

Martie Cook’s Write to TV: Out of Your Head and onto the Screen. Cook has dedicated writing sections for each of the areas of TV shows (Comedy, Prime-time Drama, TV-Movies, Reality TV and even TV News Magazines Shows and Kid Shows). The book also contains sections on writing characters, dialogs, pilots, as well as tons of pitch/business advices. An extended preview of the book can be found here.

Ellen Sandler‘s The TV Writer’s Workbook. Sandler has written for shows such as Everybody Loves Raymond (where she was co-exec). Her TV writing book is therefore more focused on sitcom writing, although still touches on drama writing as well as networking.

Also, just for giggles, I’ve found out that there’s a TV Writing book that came out way back in…1990. Notice the high-tech computer on the cover.
The accuracy of the information provided in this bok vis-à-vis contemporary television landscape cannot be guaranteed.

Last but not least, there’s a “how-to” television writing book with the brits in mind. That’s right, a book that covers everything you need to know if you want to write for the BBC. It was written by William Smethurst. And let’s not forget that the BBC is probably the only “serious” television option opened to anyone.

More and more TV Writing books seem to come out every year, which begs the question: Is television writing becoming popular and hype?

Mythic structures and hero psychology

Mythic structures and hero psychology

It has been some time now since my last book checkup and since then I have found other interesting books.

This post will primarily focus, as the title says, on so-called “mythic structures” as well as “hero analysis” and the psychology of characters.
Why this specific theme you ask? Well for starters I like reading/studying/talking about the human nature and specifically heroes/villains and other tragedy-based structures (what a previous post hinted at).
I also believe that to make something “new” you have to make it with some “old” (Faire du neuf avec du vieux as we say in French). What we call “original” is only a mixture so dense of things that we can’t pin-point where it’s coming from and/or what has inspired it.
For instance in storylines, Lost has put a “new” spin on time-travel (or at the very least made it hype) but stories about time-travel has been around for centuries.

Beyond the content is probably something greater: structure.

Structure has been analysed for centuries, even millenniums, way back when Homer wrote (or rather told) his Iliad.
In the last decades, this analysis has been transposed to scripts and screenplays. Scripts and movies were broken down and compared to other literary pieces to try to found out the common links, not the least of which being Robert McKee’s Story.
Besides script acts, and structures, “heroes arcs” and “heroes journeys” have been analysed and also broken down. These mythical archetypes lead obviously to mythic structures.
This is one of the specialties of mythologists, including Joseph Campbell.
Campbell wrote a fascinating book around his theories of the journey of archetypal heroes in various mythologies from around the globe. This book led to a memo written by Christopher Vogler (a development exec) to Disney studios about how to use Campbell’s book for screenwriting. This memo led to various critically-acclaimed movies Disney movies such as The Beauty and the Beast, Aladin and The Lion King. Vogler also worked on a small movie called Fight Club.
Soon after, Christopher Vogler expanded his memo and published a book around it where he explored not only Campbell’s work (and Jung’s) but expanded it to correlate directly to screenwriting.

Vices, virtues and dilemmas should also not be forgotten in the world of screenwriting. Identifying the “moral premise” behind a story is essential to understanding why this particular story touches us, affects us. It is also what will ultimately give dimension and consistency to a great story. Few books deal with this in direct correlation with screenwriting. The Moral Premise by Stanley D Williams appears to be right on target by clearly and easily linking past and present stories, both in theory and practice.

On the other side of mythical stories and structures we have what is inside the character’s head, the character’s psychology. A lot of books have been written on the subject but few aimed at screenwriters. William Indick’s Psychology for Screenwriters seems to be one of the only books I have come across dealing exclusively with this. Comprehending the psyche of your characters can only benefit your writing and your story, especially in the television medium where characters are the medium.