University of Rhode Island instructor, Ashton Avila, hosted a virtual event titled “Industry Professional Zoom Panel: The Writers Room” on Sunday.
The panel was for Avila’s FLM 220: Topics in Intermediate Film Production: TV Producing & Development course but was also open to the URI community. Four guest speakers from the film industry spoke on the panel, Sarah Sellman, Grant Moore, Ryan Kahn and Rochan Liu.
Avila asked the speakers to share some background information about how they got into the film industry and where they are now.
Sellman grew up in Colorado making movies as a child. She went to New York University to study film and moved to Los Angeles, California and is currently a TV writers assistant for “Black Summer” and “Z Nation.”
Moore grew up in Dallas, Texas and went to Chapman University for directing before becoming a TV writers assistant for the “iCarly” reboot.
Kahn knew he wanted to be a screenwriter at around 15 years old and wrote a feature film in high school. After going to the University of California, Berkeley, he went to the University of Southern California and decided to switch from film to TV and became a TV staff writer for the “Gossip Girl” reboot.
Liu also went to Chapman and focused on directing and writing. She’s worked as a script coordinator and TV writer for “The Conners,” “Single Drunk Female” and “Pretty Freekin Scary.”
While talking about her experiences in the industry, Liu said that trying to switch pathways, like moving from producing to writing, is difficult but it’s important to fight for the career you want.
“I feel like people in Hollywood want you to do the thing that you’ve already done and you’re always trying to battle against that, trying to say ‘no, I want to do the next thing, I’m prepared to do the next thing,’” Liu said.
A student asked the speakers if they had any advice for new screenwriters and people at the very beginning of their film careers.
“I think it’s really important to write everything down,” Sellman said. “One of the best things that anyone ever offered me as a tool was a tiny, tiny notebook that I carried around in my pocket for the first few years of my career, just to write down everything that sparks your interests or inspires you.”
Kahn echoed Sellman’s words about writing all the time, even if what you’re writing isn’t perfect. He added that consuming other types of media is helpful in putting screenwriting into perspective.
“Just read,” Kahn said. “It’s so helpful because screenwriting is its own format, its own medium. It obviously shares a lot with other disciplines, but just the actual way of describing everything visually, the way to get the mechanics of scenes down, the way to know how to rent a reader’s attention… is so valuable in every script.”
Moore stressed the importance of not taking criticism personally because, at times, the industry can be discouraging.
“The art industry is still full of rejection and it’s going to be rejection that you don’t expect in certain ways,” Moore said. “So, you know, just make sure that you are enjoying what you’re doing because they’re gonna chip away at you piece by piece at times, but then other times it’s really rewarding.”
Another student asked about Kahn’s and Moore’s experiences with reboot shows and how the previous shows and their audiences impacted the newer versions.
“One specific challenge of the ‘Gossip Girl’ world was, the original ‘Gossip Girl’ upon a 2023 rewatch, there’s some tough stuff in there,” Kahn said. “We were very mindful of wanting to do things a little bit differently and luckily we were granted the ability by Warner Brothers to also really broaden the scope of diversity of the characters that we were showing versus the original, which was a pretty limited point of view.”
Moore alluded to Jennette McCurdy’s negative experiences with the original “iCarly” show that she wrote about in her memoir “I’m Glad My Mom Died” and how the reboot wanted to be a positive space for everyone involved.
“[iCarly] was intended to be a very lighthearted show, but obviously some things have come out since then about the original show, in particular books being written,” Moore said. “And a big difference that’s kind of unique to our revival is literally the only people back on the show are the cast who wanted to come back, and everyone else is new. So it’s been very interesting to create this new show that ties in very heavily to this old show.”
Before the panel ended, the speakers gave students parting advice about starting to make connections while in undergraduate school because the industry is fueled by networking.
“It might sound super simple, but [the film industry is] all about who you know,” Moore said, “So develop connections.”