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AFF panel: The Teleplay
Television writer Sterling Anderson (“The Unit,” “Medium,” “Heist”) joined story consultant, independent producer, writing instructor and Aaron Spelling protege Jen Grisanti to address a room full of Austin Film Festival attendees who had made it to at least the second round of the conference’s 2010 Teleplay Competition on Friday.
After giving some background about themselves, the duo answered questions from the room full of writers who were mostly interested in how to nab a job in a TV series writers’ room.
Grisanti told the competitors they’d need at least four current scripts in their portfolios, two of them “spec” scripts (example scripts they’d written for currently running shows) and two of them original pilots. Shw said the writers should write spec scripts for shows that fall in the genre they would like to pursue as a career. “You never want spec scripts that are more than two years old,” Grisanti said, adding that the moment a show was canceled, any spec scripts based on them would be more or less worthless.
Anderson said that he prefers to work in television, which he says is a writer’s medium, over feature films, which he calls a director’s medium. He also opined that television currently surpasses movies in terms of quality. He talked briefly about the politics of the writer’s room and stressed the importance of learning the pecking order.
Both panelists said writers should expect to be fired, calling it a right of passage and a chance to “write your way into your next job.”
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