Lesson 1

[Rhonda Burnaugh]

When an aspiring musician is diagnosed with cancer, he becomes determined to create a meaningful legacy for those whom he might leave behind.

[Deleted User]

Logline:

During the Gilded Age, a light-skinned black woman, passing as white, scores the job of a lifetime as the private librarian to J.P. Morgan.

As she becomes one of the most influential women in the art world, she must navigate the precarious balance between her success, her secret, and her father’s disapproval over her decision to hide her racial identity.

[Deleted User]

One page:

While professional jobs for women are virtually unheard of
In the early 1900s, Belle Da Costa Greene lands the most enviable position for any man or woman.

When her father leaves the family to pursue his passions, she convinces her mother that they must change their names and enter themselves as white in the next census so they will have better opportunities.

While working in the Princeton University library, she has the good fortune of meeting Mr. Junius Morgan, the nephew of J.P. Morgan, who requires a private librarian, and she signs on for life. These two cut an impressive and notable path across Europe at the height of the Gilded Age, ransacking valuable collections and terrorizing dealers.

As her star rises, she struggles to keep her racial identity a secret. This is complicated by the fact that her father, also a light-skinned negro, does not approve of her disregard for his views. They repeatedly clash on this point.

She becomes the most powerful woman in the art world with the influential backing of Mr. Morgan and creates a stellar reputation for his library and collection.

Through it all, she never lets on that she is a black woman and the daughter of the first black man to graduate from Harvard in 1870.

This is a story about a woman’s struggle in a man’s world and a woman of color daring to dream above her station in life.

It speaks to determination, personal power, and doing what you believe in.

[Tita Beal Anntares]

ASSIGNMENT 1

Tita’s Project Pitch

What I learned doing this assignment: Well, I know more clearly what I know about my script… for now. Glad to see the main structural elements in it. But I know I will learn a lot more and make many improvements.

Elements for a Pitch – because I will be wordsmithing this I have not boiled it down to a 1-3 minute elevator speech. Just did the 3+ minute race through the key elements of a pitch suggested in the assignment:

A. Genre: Historical Drama

B. Title: Sam’s Rabble

C. High Concept:

Soon after two friends celebrate victory in their war together for democracy, Sam and Dan are ready to kill each other, both sure they are saving their new democracy from the other – and terrifying all 13 new nations into uniting under one Constitution that doesn’t dare mention the rights both Sam Adams and Captain Daniel Shays risked their lives to win.

D. Main Conflict:

Shays and his thousands of indebted veterans close courts at gunpoint to stop their government from throwing them in debtors prison, but Sam hears calls throughout the 13 new nations for an American monarchy to control the new mob-o-cracy so Sam demands the rebels wait for the next election to vote for change – or be shot dead by the army or arrested and hanged.

E. Transformational Journey: Sam, “man of the people”, loses faith in the people’s ability to govern themselves, deploys his army against the rebels and refuses to give amnesty to Shays and others arrested and waiting to be hanged… but realizes he too reacted from anger and fear and wanted to impose his views with the violence of the army.

F. Opposition :After the war, Captain Daniel Shays sees his neighbors unfairly suffering because of government actions and his trust in Sam Adams, now a government leader, to redress their grievances immediately or his armed “regulators” will take up arms against their new government’s betrayal… realizing only after the killing starts again, that he has only caused more suffering by his impatience and his refusal to use the vote not violence.

[birgit keil]

What I’ve learned doing this assignment is that focus is key.

RELATIVELY NORMAL

LOG LINE

A successful big city marketing executive is forced to return home to take care of her ailing parents and finds out she may not be able to get back to the job she loves.

ONE PAGE

RELATIVELY NORMAL is comical look at what happens when eldercare gets in the way of your dreams.

Relatively Normal is a multigenerational situational comedy that explores the life of a woman (Riley) who, through circumstance, is forced to return home and leave the high-powered job she worked so hard to get. Professionally, Riley is at the top of her game as a creative director in a New York ad agency. But now she must suddenly return home to care for her ailing parents, fix the situation and get back to the job she loves. Fate has placed her squarely confronting life-changing events.

As if this were not enough, she discovers things have changed drastically back home. Riley must now diplomatically deal with the challenges of her aging parents, her self-centered sister, and a controlling, buttinsky next-door neighbor. She is barely holding on to her dream job and her sanity amidst the overwhelming stress of attempting to navigate two very different worlds, allowing us to witness her tumultuous, yet hysterical predicaments.

For a red-hot minute working remotely works, until she realizes that she’s being undermined by an ambitious brown-noser and, because of him, is losing the trust of her employer and clients.

She realizes that she must return to the office but has no choice other than to work out of her parent’s dining room.

ASSIGNMENT 1

Genre: Sitcom Dramedy

Title: RELATIVELY NORMAL

High Concept: A woman at the top of her career puts it on hold to care for her ailing parents

D. Main Conflict: The fight between a daughter and her parents belief that they are well enough to live on their own.

Transformational Journey: She finds that she must change her mindset in order to maintain her sanity.

F. Opposition: Internal struggle of feeling the need to take care of her parents but longs to be back in the corporate world doing what she loves.

Main Conflict: A successful big city marketing executive is forced to return home to take care of her ailing parents and finds out she may not be able to get back to the job she loves.

Opening:

Riley is in a board room in the middle of a chaotic pitch prep session.

Inciting Incident:

Riley’s sister shows up at her office and casually says that their dad has been missing for 3 days.

First turning point at end of Act 1:
Riley returns to her childhood home to get things in order with her parents.

Mid-Point:
Looking for in-home elder care

Second turning point at end of Act 2:
Crisis: Co-worker is conniving to take over her job

Climax:

Dad returns home

Resolution:
Riley needs to stay with her parents a while longer

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by  birgit keil.
• This reply was modified 2 years ago by  birgit keil.

[Katherine Davis]

<div>Logline</div>

The Secretary

Mary must find her boss’s killer before anyone suspect she tried to kill her boss.

One Page

The Secretary

Mary Colston is secretary to the Mayor of Silver Springs, an affluent city in the Atlanta suburbs. Elizabeth Stone, the mayor, has been found dead on the Silver Comet Trail. Mary must dispose of any evidence she was trying to kill the mayor and divert suspicion to the four people the Mayor was blackmailing.

Mary retrieves the blackmailing evidence from the Mayor’s office before the Chief of Police can confiscate it. That evidence includes a thumb drive on the Chief of Police himself. The other suspects include a city commissioner who likes underage girls, the Plant Manager of the largest employer in the city, who likes his step daughter in a non-familial way and the owner of one of the largest funeral homes in the area. A married man the Mayor was having an affair with and pressuring to leave his wife.

The other person who had to be considered was also one of the most powerful men in the country. The Honorable Lucas J. Bennett, III, Mayor of Atlanta. Mayor Bennett was controlled by a select group of businessmen in Atlanta who in turn, controlled mostly every major project in the Atlanta area. They wanted a regional hospital built in Silver Springs.

Mayor Bennett and Mayor Stone’s history went back to their college days. Stone was blocking the vote. She had a hold over him and he would comply with whatever she required of him. Too, she was suspicious who was behind the project and who on the city commission was bought to push the vote through. Part of the last day of her life was to vote no on the project at the City Commission meeting.

There was a fifth suspect, the City Manager, Richard XX. Richard was Mary’s lover and the reason Mary was getting rid of Liz in the first place, so he could become Mayor. She spent years grooming him for the job. Mary’s secret plan included marrying Richard so she could become First Lady of the City.

Upon Liz’s death, Richard did become Mayor Protem and immediately terminated Mary. Mary knew he didn’t have the balls to get rid of Liz, and not really a viable suspect. However, his hospital vote was likely bought and paid for to push the hospital project through. Mary kept him on the list to pay him back for firing her. Not just from her job, but from his bed as well.

Mary figures out who killed the mayor. The killer was one of the suspects and the punishment should fit the crime in Mary’s mind.

[Julie Dod]

What I learned in this assignment: That I am writing a simple story about one woman’s emotional journey from failed dreams to fulfilling herself.

A. Genre: Drama and Comedy

B. Title: Come By This Way

C. High Concept: In 1995, Molly, a young wife and mother, leaves her husband when she is reunited with her former lover.

D. Main Conflict: Once Molly is free, the former lover disappears from her life by disconnecting all his phones.

E. Transformational Journey: Alone, reeling with guilt and shame, Molly is forced to learn who she is and where she is going.

F. Opposition: Having lost control of her life, Molly realizes she is her own opposition to becoming the person she is meant to be.

[ZhiMin Hu]

What I learned:

Prioritize my message.

· Genre: Supernatural drama

· Title: Under the Red Umbrella

· High Concept:

A chronically depressed doctor bonds with a ghost without knowing that the spirit is her estranged mother.

· Main conflict

The spirit of an angry mother obstructs her estranged daughter to unearth her unspeakable past.

· Transformational journey

A pessimistic and self-destructive doctor and her estranged ghost mother change their perspectives and their relationship as they learn about each other’s true colours and hidden secrets.

· Opposition:

The mother’s sense of shame and anger as a rape victim.

Under the Red Umbrella is about a mother’s struggle to raise a child, a result from a rape. Although it’s a fictional story, the elements are real, and it has been through intensive research.

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by  ZhiMin Hu.

[Renato Rosenberg]

Assignment 1

Renato Rosenberg’s Logline and One Page

What I’ve learned doing this assignment is to focus on what’s really important.

Title: The Spirit of Science

Logline: Shaken by his brother’s death, a proud english scientist from 19th century investigates and confirms the psychic phenomena, and has to struggle against the religious scientific community, which wants do ban him.

One Page: William Crookes, an eminent physicist and chemist, discovers thallium in 1861, and is admitted as a member of the Royal Society. Phillip, his younger brother, who wants to be a scientist, too, is radiant! With 21 years old Phillip is very happy at the SS Narva, that will set sail to Havana, to lay submarine cables to Florida. But he dies at sea, and Crookes sues the Captain for mistreat and loses the process.

Crookes is depressed, and by suggestion of his colleague he goes to see a médium, that transmits a message from Phillip. Crookes, then, announces that he will investigate the psychic phenomena. The Royal Society reacts negatively, and Carpenter, a trickery-hunter, is on the warpath immediately! Crookes investigates several médiuns and files reports to the Royal Society that Carpenter intercedes to not be accepted.

A young woman goes to see Crookes to be investigated by him, and produces a series of strange phenomena. Eventually a woman (totally different from the medium) appears to everyone’s surprise! Crookes and his colleague make a series of tests with her, and Crookes even sees the medium and the other woman together! Then he writes a book confirming the apparition and the Royal Society wants to cancel his admission!

The mother of one of the mediuns investigated by Crookes suspects of his intentions with her daughter and spread rumors about it, and the husband of another medium gives Crookes a beating!

Crookes decides to concentrate in others scientific matters: he demonstrates his invention, the radiometer, to the Royal Society, and they concede him the Royal Medal; he presents his work about the fourth state of matter, receives more medals and money prizes. He is indicated eleven times for Nobel Prize, is knighted “sir” by Queen Victoria and receives the Order of Merit, the highest honour royalty could bestow upon a commoner.bHe becomes President of the Royal Society, and celebrate, with Ellen, their golden wedding anniversary a month before Ellen’s death. Crookes, shaken, secedes from the council of the Royal Society after 18 years of continuous service.

He sees, with pleasure, the psychic phenomena take over Europe, where scientists and physicians came around, and dies at 86, sleeping in his bed.

Crookes’ spirit writes down some things that happened after his death.

• This reply was modified 2 years ago by  Renato Rosenberg.
• This reply was modified 2 years ago by  Renato Rosenberg.

[Renato Rosenberg]

Excluded

[Renato Rosenberg]

Assignment 1

[Renato Rosenberg]

Please, where’s the forum “Partner Up Here for Feedback”, that Hal said he would put up on 23th,? Thank you.

[Renato Rosenberg]

Assignment

[mickey Gonzo]

What I learned doing this assignment is to rewrite, to rewrite takes me to work at it. Include clarity, storytelling be specific.

Subject: (Mickey Gonzalez) Project Pitch

A. Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Crime

B. Title: An Unfortunate Event

C. High Concept: The Theft of a collection leads to encounters with strangers and characters.

D. Main Conflict: a continuation of setbacks puts this young writer in situations where deadly force has to be used, because the thefts won’t stop.

E. Transformational Journey: Mark changes when his collection is stolen. He obsession to get his work back will take him on a path to retrieve it, at any way or means

F. Opposition: At the police precinct, Capt. refuses the young writer’s request to bring in a news anchor and crew to air his plead for the return of the collection.