Exclusive TONY McHALE interview
Hugely successful TV screenwriter TONY MCHALE, who has written on so many of the top UK TV drama shows of the last 20 years, answers my questions about his career, the state of the industry and tips for new writers. Tony is passionate about the industry and writing and I’m sure you’ll agree his passion […]
Rewrite course Edinburgh Oct 2nd
A brief reminder that the REWRITE course I am doing in Edinburgh on Oct 2nd is now less than two weeks away! Apologies if you’ve already booked a place, but if you haven’t, there are a few spaces left, it’s not too late (yet)! Look forward to seeing you there, All the best Philip Philip […]
New course for script editors and writers in Edinburgh October!
On Saturday October 2nd, I will be running this course, designed for both writers and script editors, with Adrian Mead’s company MeadKerr in Edinburgh. I hope to see you there! For full information go to:- http://rewrite.eventbrite.com/ REWRITE – THE INSIDER’S GUIDE TO WORKING WITH SCRIPT EDITORS AND PRODUCERS No doubt you have heard that getting […]
Screenwriting industry panel
A bit late in the day to report back about this but better late than never. On Thursday May 27th I was part of a panel discussion, along with Ceri Meyrick from the BBC Writers Academy and literary agent Rob Kraitt (AP Watt Ltd.), organised by Euroscript, to discuss ‘How To Get Into The Industry […]
‘Rom-Com’s
Running this website has given me a deep fasination into what makes a good ‘romcom’ as I have been sent several examples of the genre, some very good. It’s such a tricky genre to conquer because we all know how the story’s going to end but the writer’s trick is to nevertheless keep the viewer […]
BBC Writers Academy
Here is information from Ceri Meyrick about how to apply for this year’s BBC Writer’s Academy. Good Luck! The next generation of TV writers are being sought by the BBC for its prestigious Drama Writers Academy, a unique course that equips writers with the skills to work on BBC flagship continuing drama programmes. Now in […]
SCRIPT EDITING COURSE
I am running a one day intensive ‘Insider’s Guide To Script Editing’ course in Central London on Saturday April 10th, in association with Initialize Films. Guest speaker is writer PAUL FARRELL, who, among other shows, has worked on SILENT WITNESS, WAKING THE DEAD and PRIMEVAL. You can find out everything you need to know about […]
Screenwriting – cutting with Cutting
Here’s a link to a paper by the very aptly named American academic JAMES CUTTING which discusses the differences between our perception of film shots and scenes, and how we perceive things in reality. http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/cutting%20%280%29%20perceiving%20scenes%20in%20film%20and%20in%20the%20world.pdf Yes! More mathematical approaches to screenplay writing! I’m not sure how practicable this is – I think if you were […]
Film Critics
FILM CRITICS Seeing the recent critical pasting received by the film The Boys Are Back made me think about how much we all rely on film critics to inform us about what films we should and shouldn’t see – and how badly served we often are! This is what I said about the film in […]
screenwriting – the mathematical approach!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/dec/01/research-tv-drama-csi Here’s a link to an interesting article from The Guardian. Some boffins try to apply a scientific \ mathematical approach to script analysis. Interesting how they quite successfully boil down the plot of a CSI episode to 30 keywords(!) and allow writers to identify sub-conscious themes in their work. It also reminded me of […]