Collaborative Presentation - Notes

Head Writer

Role responsibilities

As a head writer, my main responsibility was to put the different stories each
director had into a cohesive whole, with the help of the other writers. During each
writer’s room, we would read, analyze and reevaluate each storyline, first fixing
issues within each script and then proceeding to consider its role within the entire
script.

Furthermore, it was also important to act as a mediator, with the help of Dagny our
producer, especially when we would vote story choices that would affect the story
at large.

Other technical role requirements consisted of creating the script document with all
the scrips together and meeting dead-lines for rewrites.

I also edited some dialogue and gave notes on character development.

Required skills

The main reason I wanted to be Head of Department for the writing team was due
to my interest in screenwriting, specifically dialogue and dramatic structure. I was
aware of the fact that the vignette-like structure would prove to be a challenge since
it was harder to apply the three-act structure to a script that had multiple narratives
running parallel to each other. Some tools that helped me and the other writers to
narrow down a structure were story rhythm and building suspense for the audience.

Even though we had worked on a web-series before were we also had a writer’s
room and had to agree on a style, this was different as it is a long form format and
issues such as cohesiveness and smooth transitions from one story to the next
were even more important.

It was imperative to make the characters feel like they all belonged in the same
universe, even if some never interacted with each other. We had to make multiple
character adjustments because at the beginning some of them felt like they
belonged to different films and the tone was highly inconsistent, but with the help of
our tutor and our writer’s room we smoothed it over.

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Progress and challenges

The development of our script took a long time, starting as characters and scenes
we developed through improvisation, then using the transcripts from those scenes
as a blueprint for our storyline. Moving forward, each storyline had to go through
multiple changes to build a cohesive script. Some writers had to change entire
characters while others had to make minor adjustments. The main challenge of
coordinating this script was trying to accommodate each writer's vision while
thinking of the bigger picture. Each writer is intimately attached to their story, but
ultimately the nature of this project was collaborative.

Another skill I learned during this process was the ability to step back and view the
story from an objective perspective, taking into account issues such as theme and
audience engagement. I had to separate my role as a writer and think about how to
connect the at first disparate storylines that were only loosely connected.

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 Roberto Brand
Met Film School Berlin
BAF-B09

Screen Business & Integrated Production - Long Form

Collaborative Head Writer

Presentation
 Role Responsibilities

❖ Cohesiveness for the script

❖ Group Coordination (mediating)
❖ Script Analysis (story, arcs and character)
❖ Technical arrangement of script
 Required skills

❖ Dramatic Structure: fitting the vignette format into a

Three-Arc structure
❖ Rhythm and building suspense for audience
❖ Dialogue: fine-tuning for a naturalistic feel
❖ Cohesiveness for tone and genre
 Challenges

❖ Supporting each writers vision and creative choices

❖ Making adjustments for the story and not personal
preferences
❖ Objective view of the story as head writer
 Progress

❖ Building a blueprint out of improvisation scene

transcripts
❖ Success in interweaving storylines
❖ Being able to have smooth transitions for the storylines
❖ Developing scripts with necessary information for other
Departments (set design, sound, DoP, costume etc.