Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops

Spring Session 2010

Develop your writing with the mentorship of an acclaimed professional writer and feedback from your peers.

Workshops take place at the QWF office, Suite 3, Atwater Library unless otherwise indicated.

WRITING FOR NEW MEDIA*

SATURDAY, April 24, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Sam Wendel
$75

This course will look at the world of new media content. It will discuss the unique challenges facing writers who are creating entertainment content for the small screen, as in laptop, and the tiny screen, as in iPhone. It will define how a webisode is unique in its content, production and distribution.

Entertainment content on the web breaks down into three categories. The first is re-purposed media like LOST and other popular shows that play online with commercials on sites like Hula. This is content created for TV. The internet is merely another platform for exploiting the product.

The newest original dramatic entertainment being made can be found on the internet. We are excluding shorts made for You Tube and other social websites, most of which play and look like America’s Funniest Home Videos. There is a nascent creative community of writers and directors creating serious work in the arena of comedy/drama, using creative criteria that are unique to the web. This will be our main focus.

The formula that has defined TV for fifty years no longer applies. The rules for new media production are being made up daily, for things as basic as what to pay the writers, cast and crew. No one has yet determined what the right length for an episode should be. This makes it both an exciting and undefined arena to play in. Still it is noteworthy that the Writers Guild of America held a prolonged strike last year primarily because they see a future for their writers on the internet.

Several webisodes (as in made expressly for the web) series that have gone viral will be discussed. We will also screen the pilot for a soap opera series designed to interface with learning modules created by E2m and McGill University to teach English as Second Language on the internet and as applications on iPhones. Participants will be asked to read the 13 page pilot script in advance.

Led by Sam Wendel, veteran TV writer/producer and screenwriter with 25 years of experience working in Los Angeles. President of E2m Communications, which produces original content for the internet and smart phones.

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