(As outlined in class Tuesday 1 August)

The studio will be run as a Writers’ Room, with all 8 students working on a single serial project. You will still soon become available to collaborate independently with the media students with your own storylines and/or episodes.

By start of class Friday 4 August, we will have a prompt, provocation or stimulus from Media. They’re going to supply this in AV form.

Then we will decide on a hub, a small cast of characters, discuss themes and write our version of a ‘bible’.

After that we will discuss story arcs, beat out the stories (written up as beat sheets), weave these storylines into episodes, write scene-by-scene breakdowns, and, eventually scripts.

Soon the media students will form 3 or 4 groups, each of which will engage in a kind of “dialogue” with you, the writers.  This will involve us sharing with them our developments and specifically supplying them with some kind of text on a weekly basis (see above).  That text might not necessarily be in script form, but it will be indicative of some aspect of our work on the serial and they will respond to that by making something: a sketch, an episode, a casting video, a rehearsal, a soundscape, a location study.  They can, of course respond, additionally with their own comments and text.

Sometime around the middle of the semester we will supply a complete (if not fully polished) script, or set of scripts, for the serial.  In the individual groups we will proceed to produce as many of these episodes as is practicable.

Each group may be assigned individual episodes.  Alternatively, groups may work (“Game of Thrones” style) uniquely in a single location, and the actors come to them.

Inevitably, each group will have its own methodology.  At least one group may choose to experiment with the supplied script(s) in a way that diverges from the script’s traditional status as a blueprint for production.

By this stage you, the writers, may join them  for a different kind of participation.  Individual writers may join a group and offer ongoing “writer services”.  Alternatively, you may take on a production roll.  You will be encouraged to consider script supervision and editing as particularly instructive experiences.  In the case of editing, you would be exploring this role independently of the principal production, i.e. experimenting with your own edit “on the side”.

Along the way we hope to experiment with on-line delivery and audience response.