: Philip Shelley
: Screenwriting The Craft and The Career
: Nick Hern Books
: 9781788508520
: 1
: CHF 21.30
:
: TV: Allgemeines, Nachschlagewerke
: English
: 352
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
This authoritative, practical guide lays out everything you need to be a successful screenwriter for film and television. Written by one of the UK's leading script editors, consultants and producers with over thirty years' experience - including founding and running Channel 4's acclaimed 4Screenwriting course - it provides essential tips and insider advice on: - Generating compelling story ideas - and finding your own voice as a writer - Understanding the fundamental principles and elements of good storytelling for the screen - and how to apply them in your script - Creating engaging characters - and why they need to drive your story - Crafting distinctive and memorable dialogue - and how less can be more - Presenting your script on the page effectively - with tips on both formatting and language - Building and sustaining your career - including how to break into the industry and successfully promote yourself and your work - Collaborating with key people - including producers, agents and script editors There are detailed analyses of scenes from a wide range of screen dramas, hands-on exercises to help you put it all into practice, and case studies of key contemporary writers such as Russell T Davies, Sally Wainwright, Jimmy McGovern, Abi Morgan, James Graham and Jed Mercurio. Ideal for all aspiring and emerging screenwriters, this inspiring book will equip you with the tools you need to write the scripts that only you can write, and turn your talent and passion into a professional career. 'Inspiring and insightful. Very few people know as much about screenwriting as Philip Shelley' David Nicholls (One Day, Starter for 10) 'A practical and empowering cut-to-the-chase overview from someone who's given countless British screenwriters (including me!) their break' Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch, Doctor Who) 'Philip Shelley's knowledge and guidance is unparalleled: this book is wise, practical, and brilliantly helpful' Charlie Covell (The End of the F***ing World, Kaos) 'A brilliant, highly informative guide... I wish it had been published when I was starting out' Anna Symon (The Essex Serpent, Joan)

Philip Shelley is a producer and script editor who has worked with screenwriters for more than thirty years. He has run the Channel 4 screenwriting course since 2010, and also runs the Greenlight Screenwriting Lab for new writers in Ireland. Philip has run many screenwriting and script-editing courses through his own script consultancy and with BBC Studios, ITV Studios, thinkBIGGER! Channel 4 Production Trainee Scheme, Screen Ireland, BBC Writers, Northern Ireland Screen, Screenskills, University of the Arts London, De Montfort University, Filmnation UK, Baby Cow Productions, and many others. He has extensive experience as a script editor on major drama series for the BBC, ITV and others. He was Head of Development for Carlton TV Drama for seven years, where he also ran the Carlton New Writers' Course, and has worked in script development for BBC TV Drama and several independent production companies. He runs his own script consultancy (www.script-consultant.co.uk) and works with writers of all levels of experience, as well as production companies and broadcasters.

Preface

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I have been working with writers and on scripts for over twenty-five years – Iand this book is a response to that hugely enjoyable experience. Through my teenage years, I had always been passionately interested in dramatic writing through television, cinema and theatre and then, as a struggling actor, I started writing myself. A screenplay, then a stage play which I submitted to Paines Plough theatre company. The literary manager at the time, the excellent Robin Hooper, let me down gently and with great kindness and took me on as a script reader and occasional dramaturg. It was reading my first script professionally and then beginning to talk to writers face-to-face about their work that introduced me to the possibility of script-editing as a career.

Trying to balance the dying days of my thirteen years as a professional actor with an ever-increasing pile of script-reading work eventually led to my first two-week contract in the Granada TV drama department offices in Golden Square, London.

The bridge from life as an actor into script-editing was through this reading work for theatre, TV and film. One of the most interesting jobs I had was for Anthony Hopkins’ acting agent, reading and assessing the scripts he had been sent as job offers. One script I read for this was Dennis Potter’s adaptation of Dickens’The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which I remember to this day as a dark, brilliant, inspiring piece of writing (sadly a film that never got made). Among many other companies, I read for David Puttnam’s Enigma Films, Film 4, Paramount Pictures and the First Film Foundation.

This was pre-internet days and script-reading work often meant coming into London for meetings in which you hand-delivered your (paper) script reports, returned the (paper) scripts and discussed your feedback with the (flesh and blood) development person at the company in question who had hired you. This face-to-face time with such industry luminaries as Laurence Bowen (I remember Laurence talking to me about what ‘structure’ in dramatic storytelling was all about!), Kate Leys, Allon Reich and Tony Dinner at the old BBC Script Unit – the less publicised forerunner of the current BBC Writers – was invaluable. (Tony, for instance, was a brilliant supporter of new writers and budding script editors, one of those people that the industry relies upon.)

I sat at home, between acting jobs, reading scripts – of variable quality – for the best part of two years; and it was the most brilliant grounding in scripts and story, particularly having to write a report on each script – synopsis, comment, verdict – trying to make sense of the pros and cons of every story, and thinking about why the good ones were good and the other ones not so good.

It made me realise that you learn at least as much from the bad as the good scripts. It also made me appreciate the power of genuinely excellent dramatic writing. There are scripts I read in those two years that I remember to this day – or I remember at least the thrill I felt in reading work that was outstanding.

On arrival for my two weeks at Granada to research a drama series idea about missing people written by Paul Abbott (another show that never got made) I remember what seemed like the extraordinary novelty of having my own office. It was a great first job to have as my introduction to the world of TV drama. My wonderful, eccentric bosses, Sally Head and Gwenda Bagshaw, ran a department that created and produced such seminal shows asCracker (Jimmy McGovern),Prime Suspect (Lynda La Plante) andBand of Gold (Kay Mellor). My first script-editing job was on a long-running 9 p.m. medical drama series,Medics, working with many outstanding writers including Neil McKay and Sarah Daniels.

The world of the drama departments at ITV companies, Granada TV and after that London Weekend Television (again with Sally and Gwenda) was incredibly exciting but, in retrospect, something of an emotional whirlwind. Although people probably behave with greater circumspection and courtesy now than they did when I first started, I think this is still to some extent true of a lot of film and TV drama development and production in the UK.

Most producers get to where they are more often for their creative than their organisational skills. To this day, there is too rarely in the production of TV drama a really well-organised system to support the creative endeavours of writer, director, actors, etc., but that’s a whole other story.

I still remember (at this distance, with a smile) some of the more emotionally jagged moments. For instance – the first ever script meeting I attended as junior, observing scr