Jane Espenson

I went to the Scriptwriters Network TV Panel on Saturday at the Raleigh Studies. I tend to be wary of these kinds of things. Often they lack specificity and tend to regurgitate basic information that most people have heard countless times before. Anyone who’s serious about breaking into writing for TV is constantly digging for information. So questions like "How can I get a writer’s assistant job?" are really just missing the point.

Sometimes I have to wonder if a lot of the people who attend these things used to work in practical careers, like engineering or something. It’s like they expect the system to make sense.

And it’s not the fault of the guest speakers. They’re usually very entertaining — and that was definitely the case on Saturday. The panel consisted of the wonderful:

Jane Espenson (Battlestar, Buffy, etc.)
Amy Berg (Threshold, The 4400)
Dawn DeKeyser (Ugly Betty, Samantha Who?)
Jeanette Collins (Dirty, Big Love, etc.)
Melody Fox (Flash Gordon)

They were fantastic and managed to entertain regardless of the questions. The problem with these events is often the moderators. More often than not they push the questions in a predetermined, bland direction, instead of exploring new issues or finding things that the panel is really responding to.

And, for anyone that doesn’t already know this, there’s no such thing as a good Q&A with the audience. It just doesn’t exist. You always get people asking ridiculous or inappropriate questions, or someone’s asking a question that’s so slanted to their situation that it’s like eavesdropping on two people who met up to get coffee or something.

I just think Q&A’s connected in any way to entertainment are practices in futility. But maybe that’s just me.

Regardless, there were some interesting moments in the talk. There was a debate among the panel about the relevance of specs vs. pilots. They disagreed about the current value of specs, but, interestingly, they all agreed that if they ever got the chance to run their own show, they would insist on reading specs for existing shows. By the panel’s opinion, it’s because:

1. They’re harder to write than pilots.
2. They’re the only way to judge if someone can mimic another showrunner’s voice. 3. It’s too hard to judge a writer’s range off of something so purposely slanted to their voice and talents.

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http://ourmaninlosangeles.blogspot.com/2008/06/swn-tv-panel-egg-timers.html