Thursday, May 12: The Script-a-Thon Creator Anne Norda

Screenwriters Association
of Santa Barbara

Presents

Filmmaker & Creator of The Script-a-Thon

Anne Norda

Thursday, May 12, 7 pm

Karpeles Manscript Library
21 West Anapamu Street
Downtown Santa Barbara
(805)962-5322
FREE and open to everyone!

Anne Norda is a filmmaker and photographer. Her debut feature film, Red is the Color of with Irina Bjorklund (The American) which she wrote, directed and produced won “Best Feature Film” at both the La Femme Film Festival and the Oxford International Festival, garnered international distribution and is available on Netflix. She studied photography and filmmaking at the Parsons School of Design in Paris and New York and was a Fulbright scholar. Hard to Love, a comedy short she wrote and directed, is on the festival route.

Anne is preparing to direct her second feature film, the comedy/horror Stop, I’m Not Dead Yet! The concept trailer for the project recently won The Bleedfest’s Inana Award. She is a freelance writer for MovieMaker Magazine, has a blog on their online edition, and teaches an ongoing creative writing workshop called “The Write Brain Workshop.” Anne is the creator and co-director of The Script-a-thon, a national screenwriting competition. She is a published poet and a produced playwright, collaborating on her first musical theater piece, Trouble, with Broadway actors, Stephan Stubbins (Mary Poppins) and Arielle Jacobs (In the Heights). Anne holds both a Finnish (E.U.) and US citizenship.


Elections! We will hold elections for our Board of Directors at our August meeting. If you would like to nominate yourself or somebody else for this opportunity to contribute to the Santa Barbara writing community, please email screenwriterssb@gmail.com and let us know.

Townhall meeting in lieu of April Speaker

Townhall Meeting
Thursday, April 21, 7-9 pm
Karpeles Manuscript Library
21 West Anapamu Street
in downtown Santa Barbara

As many of you know, the Goleta Borders will close by the end of May. The Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara is sorry to say a liquidation company took over the bookstore a couple weeks ago and as a result our April speaker was canceled. We are looking into alternative locations for our meetings beginning in May, and plan to continue to host speakers who inspire us in our creative endeavors. We assure you SASB will survive this transition.

In lieu of a speaker in April we will hold a townhall meeting on Thursday,April 21, 7 pm at Karpeles Manuscript Library, 21 West Anapamu Street in downtown Santa Barbara. We want everyone's input. So please come and bring your voice, your ideas and your opinions. Help keep SASB going! We're here for you!

Stay tuned! You will receive an email about our May 12th program in late April.

Please accept our apologies for the interruption in our schedule. We look forward to seeing you all at our townhall meeting.

Meeting minutes for Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara convened in a cozy corner of Borders in Goleta for an evening with screenwriter, director, actor and keynote speaker Perry Lang.

Prior to Mr. Lang’s introduction, association president Rashi Bahri opened the floor to the audience for input on the Association itself in regards to what those present were looking for in future meetings. Email Rashi at rashi.bahri@gmail.com with your input and suggestions.

Also announced was next month’s speaker:

April 14 – Goleta Borders - Leo Brady, teacher and author of The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon.

For those planning to attend, please take note that Borders will be hosting a special event prior to 7pm, therefore there will be no admittance into the store until 7pm.

Perry Lang was introduced and immediately opened up the floor for questions.

As for his current projects, he has created a twenty-one episode web show entitled Blue Bell. The show can be viewed at: 3minutepictures.com. In the past, he has written and directed action, comedy, broad comedy, drama and teen shows.

He is teaching a class at UCSB this summer on making a pilot for a web series, where students learn to write, create and shoot a web pilot.

Perry described his process of writing as being flexible: sometimes he outlines or cards pieces out and sometimes he just starts writing. Once he reaches the stage where he’s writing in script form, he uses Final Draft. Starting out as an actor, it helped him become a ‘detective’, which only helped his writing. He wrote to keep himself engaged while acting; starting out with prose. His favorite genre to write is comedy, stating it’s just more fun.

Right now, it seems the advertising world still thinks television networks are worth investing in, but he thinks eyeballs are going toward the web these days. His idea is to take narrative drama and build sponsorship into that narrative. It’s product placement taken further, very much integrated.

Perry’s tips for your screenplay: Make it as succinct as possible. The people reading your script want to love it. They want to start reading and get through it to the story. How does an idea germinate? The whole narrative can fall off the boat or it can be like pulling teeth. You can always get started by making notes and writing stuff that may not work as a way of moving forward. One of the most valuable things he has learned in his writing are that character and structure are the same thing; they should live together. When you see your structure go awry, it’s usually the character going awry. As for how to work on writing weaknesses? Write, write, write and get a good mentor.

The meeting adjourned at 8:50pm.

Thursday, March 10: Perry Lang at Goleta Borders

Screenwriters Association
of Santa Barbara

Presents

Screenwriter, Director, Actor

Perry Lang

Thursday, March 10, 7 pm*
*Come early to join in interactive discussion, get to know each other, and network with local talent. The speaker presentation will start around 7:30pm
Goleta Borders
7000 Marketplace Drive
(805)968-1370
FREE and open to everyone!

Starting to work in film as an actor at 17, Perry Lang has acted in over thirty films and seventy hours of television. His film work includes Sam Fuller's The Big Red One, Steven Spielberg's 1941, and John Sayles's Sunshine State, as well as Eight Men Out where Perry played one of the indicated eight who threw the 1919 World Series.

His television work as an actor includes M*A*S*H, the title character in the Emmy winning television special Hewit's Just Different, A Rumor of War and numerous guest appearances, including many projects that he has himself either written or directed.

As a writer and director, Perry started professionally writing doing Tales From the Darkside in New York. Among a number of studio assignments, he wrote the first film he directed, Little Vegas then rewrote the second, the action adventure Men of War.

Since then Perry has directed over sixty hours of television including NYPD Blue, ER, Alias, Weeds and NCIS:Los Angeles.

Video meeting minutes for Thursday, February 10, 2011

Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara presented novelist and Santa Barbara Writers Conference owner Monte Schulz on Thursday, February 10 at Goleta Borders.

Monte Schulz, Novelist from dolphingal805 on Vimeo.

Screenwriters Association

of Santa Barbara

Presents

Novelist and Santa Barbara Writers Conference Owner

Monte Schulz

Thursday, February 10, 7 pm*
*Come early to join in interactive discussion, get to know each other, and network with local talent. The speaker presentation will start around 7:30pm
Goleta Borders
7000 Marketplace Drive
(805)968-1370
FREE and open to everyone!

Monte Schulz received his M.A. in American Studies from UCSB and published his first novel, Down By The River, in 1990. He spent the next twelve years writing a three-part epic, which he wrote for his father, the late cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz. The series of novels set in the Jazz Age began with This Side Of Jordan and the second book, The Last Rose of Summer, is due out this March. Monte has been a workshop leader at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference since 2001 and bought the conference last year. The 2011 SBWC will take place June 18-23 at the Hotel Mar Monte.

Literary Gumbo: Monte Schulz from Literary Gumbo on Vimeo.

Meeting minutes for Thursday, January 13, 2011

Screenwriters Association of Santa Barbara convened our first meeting of 2011 at our new venue at the Goleta Borders in the Costco shopping center. Queen of Espionage, and longtime SASB supporter, Gayle Lynds spoke to a captivated group of writers.

It took Gayle 20 years to write her latest novel, The Book of Spies, the beginning of her first series. She did a lot of research before and during the writing process, and enjoyed it. “Research,” she said, “is better than sharpening pencils to avoid writing.” If she hadn’t written about a subject that fascinates her, the book would never have been finished.Gayle knows a fraction of the ending before she starts to write. She doesn’t worry about ending chapters with a cliffhanger, rather she relies on the rhythm of the story to tell her where to break. At the end of a workday she writes one sentence at the top of a new page telling what will happen in the next scene or chapter so she has something to start with the next day.

As a writer she makes a contract with the reader to give them something of value. She warns new writers against creating cardboard characters, and told us to make sure they come across as real people. The hero must be capable of action, plus have one flaw to make him appear human. The villain has to be a worthy opponent who believes in what he wants, not somebody we can ridicule, and he should have a redeeming quality to add to his realism.

Consistency is also important. If there’s violence throughout the story, she gives the reader violence in the end.

Gayle offered excellent advice to beginning writers. “The way you learn to write is to just sit down and do it and make a lot of mistakes,” she said. For example she told us starting a story off with ‘If she’d only known…’ is amateurish. But she told new writers to make their mistakes now because when they get famous, people will know who they are.

A true professional, Gayle is the award-winning author of nine spy novels and she ended the evening by signing her latest, The Book of Spies.