THR: SCREENWRITER’S ROUNDTABLE 2016

Tonight I watched The Hollywood Reporter’s Screenwriters Roundtable for 2016. I always love watching these roundtables as I enjoy seeing people who are all at the top of their craft discuss their process. This roundtable included Amy Schumer for her work writing Trainwreck, Aaron Sorkin for Steve Jobs, Emma Donoghue for Room, Tom McCarthy Spotlight, Meg LeFauve for Inside Out and Nick Hornby for Brooklyn.

In Media 1 this week, we have been discussing story. In this interview, story and structure are discussed at length. One tidbit I found particularly interesting was Meg LeFauve speaking about working with the Pixar ‘Braintrust’ and Pixar’s creative culture as a whole. The brain trust – in short – is a group of people getting together every few months in order to give notes on the work the being done. This may seem like a normal feedback set up but it has two key differences. One being that everyone giving feedback are expert storytellers and secondly the ‘Braintrust’ holds no power.

In Networked Media, we often speak about the pro’s and con’s of new media including social media. This gets brought up quite a bit as well due to Sorkin now having written a movie on not only Mark Zuckerberg (The Social Network) but Steve Jobs as well. Sorkin comes from the opposite view as me and thinks the bad the vastness of the internet does outweighs the good. While at the same time acknowledging that he is technologically illiterate. This comment perfectly encapsulated my thoughts on Sorkin throughout this video while also proving his point that the anonymity of the internet is a breeding ground for bullying (and poor grammar – myself included):

Featured Image from smlp.co.uk