Screenwriting Panel Recap

We know it's already February and people are beginning to dream of sunny spring break plans (SXSW, anyone?) but we wanted to give a quick recap of our fantastic screenwriting panel. Is it just us, or do we need to find a larger room on campus?! THANK YOU to everyone who attended our screenwriting panel and for asking such great questions to our engaging and hilarious panelists.

We started off the evening with a very basic question for our panelists and received a variety of answers.  Don't ever think there's only path to get to where you want to go!

WIC - What did you go to school for and how did you get to today?  

• Owen - Owen started studying in communications, but that only lasted for a semester.  He graduated with a degree in English then received a MFA in fiction writing.  Currently, he works at the Austin-famous Alamo Drafthouse.  
• Matt - While studying at UT, Matt interned with Austin Film Festival and now runs the competition that he first interned for!
• Michelle - As a young girl, Michelle always considered herself a writer by creating puppet stories.  As she grew older, she realized filmmaking was developed out of her love for writing.
• Jill - Jill studied English at Columbia, but she really wanted to act (she admits that going to Columbia was to trick her parents into letting her live in New York City).  But she quickly found out that acting was a miserable experience.  She then became intrigued by what went on behind the camera.  She tried her hand at directing, but again, she found it miserable.  Her next adventure was in screenwriting and the rest is history.

As the evening progressed, the panelists talked about script rewrites, screenplay competitions, working in LA and with big studios, and how to break into the business.  Below are some of the key takeaways.

Advice for Rewrites

• Owen - Throws around ideas with his two partners until they all catch on to one idea.  They also utilize a beat sheet and are always aware of the three act structure. His best advice? “Hold on loosely to everything you write, don’t put your heart into it.  It’s easier. Cut it and put it in another document for a different project.”
• Jill - 99% of the scripts she reads fails to tell a story.  The scripts usually have a situation, not a story. She says “We get so attached to plot details we cannot see the greater picture and story.”

Common Mistakes

• Scripts try to do much! They try to be the director, they put in camera angles, or the script is put in a binder with a head shot.
• If you’re writing an original pilot, do not take forever to set up the story and situation.
• People do not know what story they’re telling.  Something that was the subplot accidentally becomes the plot. 
• If you don’t know what you’re ending is you won’t know where you’re going.
• Make sure every character has it’s own distinct voice, to the point that if you scribble out their name on the script, you know who was talking.

How to Break into the Business

• Owen - (on the Hollywood system) Make it your goddamn self.  It’s so much easier.  
• Matt - Keep going, write as much as you can.
• Michelle - Agrees with Owen.  She made Preacher's Daughter on her own and that was a risk that paid off. So don't be afraid to take risks.
• Jill - You don’t have to win a competition to get a lot out of it.  Make a short list of screenwriting competitions to apply to, and get your work out there. Also, if you want to be a serious screenwrititer, you should be reading scripts all the time.  Jill reads 50 scripts a year. (You can find free scripts at script-o-rama.com)

Owen, Matt, Michelle, and Jill, we can't thank you enough for sharing your time and thoughts with us!

March Speakers announced!

This just in: Here are our March Screenwriting Guests.

Thursday, March 24th, 7pm - 9pm at Studio 4D in the CMB Building. They'll get here at 7:30pm and go until 9pm. We'll have the 1st half hour for meeting stuff.


DR. BONNIE ORR, writer of over thirty screenplays, two teleplays and three TV pilots, completed the graduate level screenwriting program at UCLA in 1998. Credits include writing and producing The Lights, Corruption.gov and Secret at Arrow Lake at Ranch Studios, where she served as the studio manager for three years. She wrote a script for Fireside Entertainment called Revenge of the Soccer Moms, which was greenlit by the Lifetime Channel and became a series called Inspector Mom. Prior to that she produced her award-winning TV pilot, Poodle Dog Lounge, which is in post production. She wrote a sequel for Contact for Michael Gordon (Narc, The Devil & Daniel Webster). She was a senior staff writer for ScreenTalk Magazine and has received awards in several screenwriting contests, such as Fade In and Script Magazine’s contests. She is a script doctor, and she worked in development for several production companies in LA, such as Nine By Nine Productions and Tony Blain Productions. She is currently in development and preproduction on Texas Venom, The Basement and Hotel Paradise. Agent Mickey Freiberg represents her on several projects and optioned her script Earth on Fire to Lone Tree Productions in Malibu. He is currently working on setting up a TV series called Courtroom Cupcake, co-written with her husband. Dr. Orr has taught screenwriting classes at Austin Community College, GSD&M and the Writers’ Academy. For the last four years, she has taught a seminar on “How to Pitch” at the Austin Film Festival, as well as various seminars on screenwriting and filmmaking across the country.

SUZANNE WEINERT is a screenwriter/producer who previously served as Vice President of Julia Roberts’ New York film production company, Shoelace Productions, where she participated in the development and production of more than 25 projects, including Erin Brockovich by Susannah Grant and Gigi LeVange’s Step Mom, and produced the award-winning wildlife documentaries, Nature Series: Wild Horses of Mongolia for the Nature Channel and Orangutans of Borneo for PBS, as well as the award- winning short film The Call Back starring Sam Rockwell. Prior to that, she interned with director Ron Howard during the production of The Paper starring Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Robert Duvall and Marisa Tomei. Recent screenplays include rewriting Shrinking Violet for Revolution Studios; Road Stories, directed by Steven Seebring and starring Johnny Messner; and Good to the Last Drop, a finalist for Best Comedy at the Austin Film Festival. Her most recent writing/producing project is the dark comedy Ex-terminators, starring Heather Graham, Jennifer Coolidge and Amber Heard, which had its world premiere at the SXSW Film Festival in 2009. It is currently available on DVD and Video on Demand. She also recently completed producing a Western, The Legends of Hell’s Gate, starring Eric Balfour, Henry Thomas, Jenna Dewan, Summer Glau, Robert Buckley and Lou Taylor Pucci. In Spring 2011 she will produce One in A Million Hero, a drama set in the world of NASCAR. Ms. Weinert holds an M.F.A. from the School of the Arts, Columbia University; a Graduate Certificate from The Writing Program, Columbia University and a B.A. in Writing from Columbia University. She is a Professor of Advanced Screenwriting at the School of Visual Arts and Fordham University, both in NYC.