by

IS TELEVISION IS THE NEW COMIC BOOK?

Speaking of everything turning into TV:

by Mike Gold

GothamAs comics and popular culture fans we’ve got a hell of a year ahead of us, and this time it’s in front of our friendly neighborhood teevee sets.

As you know, Arrow and Agents of SHIELD were picked up for their third and second seasons, respectively. DC has no less than three new shows on three different networks: The Flash on the CW,Constantine on NBC, and Gotham on Fox.

The pilots to Flash and Constantine have appeared courtesy of the usual suspects – except this time, I strongly believe The Flash pilot was leaked by Warners or the CW (note: the last time I paid attention, Warner Bros owned only about 45% of the CW) and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the same was true about Constantine…which, by the way, was leaked right after we all had our chance to go nuts over The Flash. Hmmmm.

Both pilots were worthy of attention. The Flash was better than I suspected; the supporting cast is excellent and I’m very happy to see John Wesley Shipp playing Barry Allen’s dad. Whereas theConstantine pilot features a female lead who will not be the female lead of the actual ongoing series (and that’s too bad), I’ll give them serious points for showing us Doctor Fate’s helmet. A policeman named Jim Corrigan, a.k.a. The Spectre, should show up sometime around Thanksgiving.

The pilot I’d most like to see is Gotham. Everything I’ve heard, read and been told has my Bat-sense tingling, and the few people I know who have seen it are quite positive about the series: each one said he or she thought it was superior to the other two pilots.

Read it all

by

MAKE YOUR FEMALE VILLAIN STRONGER THAN HER GUN

So “villainess” is no longer a word, huh? Ah, the PC-ness of it all. Anyway:

UnpolishedVillainessby Rita Karnopp

One of today’s hottest plots is the female villain.  Really?  The killer is always the jilted male, the psychotic male, the bomber male, the fired male, etc.  Now we are introducing the really bad villain female.  She is cunning, touch, intelligent, and twisted.

There’s nothing typical about the female villain, yet she’s believable in every way.  Don’t make her the male version of a ‘bad guy.’  Once you get past that – you have liberty to create her however you want.

The reader hasn’t had a lot of experience with the really bad woman.  We (the writer) have an opportunity to use that lack-of-experience and allow – even manipulate our readers to underestimate what she’s capable of.  Make her believable and the reader is in for a lesson in ‘bad.’

You should make your female villain stronger than her gun.  Keep this in mind and it’ll affect how you present your female villains.

You could easily make your female villain seem weak and vulnerable, yet underneath she’s intelligent, savvy, and coy; fooling everyone.  I would refrain from making her the female Hannibal Lecter unless you can make her believable.

Your female villain can be tough, as threatening as any man, but don’t let the reader forget she’s a real woman.  You can allow her to be hard on the exterior, but when she’s alone show her vulnerability.  Readers identify with a character that cries in the shadows of her closet or under the sheets at night when she’s totally alone.

Read it all

by

TVWriter™ Top Posts for the Week Ending 7/18/14

whosethumb

Here they are, the most viewed TVWriter™ posts during the past week:

2014 PEOPLE’S PILOT Winners

JOHN OSTRANDER: OLD STAR TREK TECH

Careers in Creative Writing

BALANCING WRITING AND LIFE

Inside the development process

And our most viewed resource pages were:

Writing the Dreaded Outline

The Logline

THE PEOPLE’S PILOT

THE SPEC SCRIPTACULAR

The Teleplay

Thanks to everyone for making this such a great week, and don’t forget to read what you missed, re-read what you loved, and, most importantly, come back for more soon!

by

munchman: Whoa! A SAILOR MOON Music Video

…or, uh, something like that.

YouTube Preview Image

In other words, yer friendly webby munchman isn’t sure what the hell this thing is, but it features the SAILOR MOON crew and shows off their new animation style, and, well, I’ve got this friend, let’s call her Amorous Adele, and she – God, this is painful – she’s a big SM fan (Sailor Moon, doods, what were you thinking?) so letting her know that I’ve posted this for could be, you know, a good thing for me.

Unless she hates the new animation style…

Crap! Wish I hadn’t thought of that–

Hi, Adele!

by

Movies Definitely are Turning Into TV

…Except they cost way more to watch. What’re we talking about? Just this:

universal-pictures-100th-anniversaryby Liz Suess

Fans of classic monster movies, beware!

Universal Pictures is extremely well-known for many of their classic movie monsters, including Frankenstein’s monster, Dracula, Wolf Man, and The Mummy. They’ve decided to take all of these classic movies and re-vamp them, while at the same time creating a unified world between films. Recently, they’ve gained a lot of popularity from franchises such as The Fast and the Furious and Despicable Me, so it’s nice to see them going back to their roots.

Early development has already begun on this incredibly ambitious project. It seems like they want to do something similar to the Marvel universe—where all movies can mostly stand on their own but also are interconnecting with characters and plots. Alex Kurtzman (Star Trek) and Chris Morgan (The Fast and the Furious) are reported to be the front-runners on this project, although nothing beyond that is official just yet. There have been a lot of remakes in the past, however none have tapped into the unity that this project entails. There’s a lot of charm to watching old monster films just to see how far movie production has come, but it will be fun to see the monsters re-vamped for the 21st century.

Read it all

Damn you, Marvel! What have you done?

by

Pitching Your Ideas: A Primer

sellingmottoby Scott Berkun

Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder. In many fields the task of bringing an idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch: software feature ideas, implementation strategies, movie screenplays, organizational changes, and business plans, are all pitched from one person to another. And although the fields or industries may differ, the basic skill of pitching ideas is largely the same. This essay provides a primer on idea pitches, and although most of my experience is in the tech-sector, I pitch to you that the advice here will be relevant to pitching business plans, yourself (e.g. job interviews), screenplays, or anything else.

THE NATURE OF IDEAS

Ideas demand change. By definition, the application of an idea means that something different will take place in the universe. Even if your idea is undeniably and wonderfully brilliant, it will force someone, somewhere to change how they do something. And since many people do not like change, and fear change, the qualities of your idea that you find so appealing may be precisely what make your idea so difficult for people to accept. Some individuals fear change so much that they structure their lives around avoiding it. (Know anyone exhibiting the curious behavior of being obviously miserable in their job, their city, their relationship, but still refusing to make changes?). So when your great idea comes into contact with a person who does not want change, you and your idea are at a disadvantage. Before you can begin the pitch, you have to make sure you’re talking to someone that’s interested in change, or has a clear need that your idea can satisfy.

Healthy and progressive organizations make change easier than stinky evil organizations do. Smart organizations (or managers) often depend on change. Leaders in these havens for smart people not only encourage positive change to happen, but expect people at all levels of their organization to push for it. It requires more work and maturity for these managers to make this kind of environment successful, but when they pull it off, smart people are systematically encouraged to be smart. Idea pitching happens all the time: in hallways, in the cafeteria, in meetings.

But since most of us don’t work in these kinds of places, the burden of pitching ideas falls heavily on our shoulders.

Read it all