Tag Archives: Scriptwriting

Bournemouth University Master’s student directing feature film

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Bournemouth University student Norman Gregory, currently reading for a Master’s Degree in Film, has been in Tuscany directing his first feature film ‘A Reason to Leave’.

Film and Television stars Claire King (Emmerdale, Footballer’s Wives) and Mark Wingett (The Bill) take the leading roles in Gregory’s directorial debut. Cast and crew recently completed a fortnight of filming in Dorset, and have travelled to Tuscany for two more weeks of filming – with the film set between both locations.

Originally an actor, Gregory has decided to pursue a career in directing. He chose BU to complete his Masters in Film, as he believed the degree is the ‘best in the country for directing’. ‘A Reason to Leave’ is a part of Gregory’s final project.

The film, described as a ‘tragic redemption’, follows mother and daughter Sarah (King) and Bethany (played by Alice Bird) as they emigrate to Tuscany, and their involvement with Harry Webster (Wingett). Their reasons for their relocation are revealed as the film progresses.

The script was co-written by Gregory and BU Scriptwriting Master’s student James Cottle. Gregory lauded the strength of the script, which attracted King and Wingett. He said: “This is a really exciting project and I am delighted that Claire, Mark and Alice are playing the leads together with Simone Spinazza who joined us in Tuscany. They are all highly respected and established actors and are taking the film to another level. We have a wonderful script, co-written by James Cottle who is on the BU Scriptwriters Master’s course, the strength of which enabled us to attract Claire and Mark.”

A number of BU Master’s students have also had the opportunity to work on the film as crew members, providing vital experience as they finish their degrees.

Gregory’s tutor, Subject Leader in Film and Television Trevor Hearing, is expecting a positive response for ‘A Reason to Leave’.

Trevor Hearing said, “Norman’s debut feature film is the latest in a line of feature films to have come from graduates of Bournemouth University’s Media School in the past few years and this film looks to be just as successful. It is emotionally gripping story-telling at its best, with a recognisable cast who deliver powerful performances. Norman has drawn on his own acting career to get the best from his actors and he has delivered them a script which gives them a lot to work with. The film shows a distinctive directorial voice, combined with international locations and outstanding camerawork from a world class cinematographer. I am confident this is a film which will be talked about.”

Picture: Cast and crew on set in Tuscany, including Norman Gregory, Claire King and a number of BU students.

By Harriet Gilbraith

Harriet is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. She joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from the college with work experience for four weeks over the summer.

The Bourne Legacy: sharing top tips for industry success

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Media School alumni who have gone on to industry success came back to Bournemouth University to give advice and inspiration to current students.

Top directors, writers, radio producers and business owners were among those who returned to talk to third year Media School students as part of the Bourne Legacy event.

The speakers for the day-long event, which is now in its third year, included Richard Senior.

Since graduating from the BA (Hons) Television Production course in 2002, Richard has gone on to become the youngest ever Director of Doctor Who, Lead Director for children’s drama M.I. High and an award-winning promo producer, creating ad campaigns for BBC dramas.

He said that his advice to the current students was to: “Work hard, build good relationships and don’t be afraid of taking risks.”

He added: “I’m here because I wouldn’t have got where I am without Bournemouth University.

“I think some of the most useful sessions when I was here were when industry people came back to tell us about their experience. I wanted to be part of that and I hope that the advice I give is equally useful.”

Bob Fletcher, who graduated from BA (Hons) Scriptwriting in 2007, was also speaking at the event.

Bob is now working as an associate TV Producer, coming up with new comedy formats, as well as a comedy writer – creating sketches for the likes of Miranda Hart, Jack Whitehall and Harry Enfield.

“Bournemouth University has a really good reputation in the TV industry,” he said.

“If you say you went to Bournemouth, people’s ears prick up.

“People who leave here have every advantage, you just need to make sure you sell yourself and make yourself employable.”

His advice included making yourself stand out by creating and sending short films of your work, rather than just scripts, and not being afraid to hound people.

“You just have to make sure everyone knows who you are,” he said.

“Be really enthusiastic and have ideas. You have got to get past feeling bad about being a nuisance.”

He added he wished he made more of the extra-curricular activities and equipment available to him while at BU.

“I wish when I was at university, I’d made more effort to do things outside the course and collaborated with students in other disciplines.

“I wish I could come back and make some more films and sketches and use all the equipment you have here for free.”

Other speakers at the event included MA Radio Production graduate Mog McIntyre, who is now working on Chris Evans’ BBC Radio 2 programme, and Hollywood horror writer and BA Scriptwriting alumni Richard Hobley.

As well as talks, there was a question and answer panel sessions and the chance to network with the alumni.

Gavin Williams set up his own company, Fishrod, after completing the Interactive Media Production (now Digital Media Design) degree in 2010. The company, which develops web applications and interactive technology, now has clients including BskyB and WWE Wrestling.

Gavin said that he hoped his talk at the Bourne Legacy event would inspire current students.

“I hope it gives them inspiration and confidence to go out and do their own thing. They have the skills to do it,” he said.

“The most important thing is to seize opportunities. You do really tiny things and never know what it is going to snowball into.”

Students’ play to be performed as part of Black History Month

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A play by BU Scriptwriting students will be performed at The Winchester pub in Bournemouth as part of Black History Month.

Chaos By Design has been written, directed and will be performed by Benedict Lombe, who is about to graduate from the BA (Hons) Scriptwriting for Film and TV course, and final year student Charlotte Rogers.

The play focuses on the struggles of women in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) – where it is estimated 433,000 women are raped a year.

“The main reason that we wanted to do this whole thing was effectively to raise awareness about something that I think a lot of the time people, especially our generation, have no idea about,” said Benedict, 21.

“It’s such a huge issue and we thought that creating a play was one way that we could make a difference.”

The play follows two women, June and Angelique, as they struggle to survive in the DRC without becoming victims of war, coming across different characters with their own views on the conflict.

Benedict and Charlotte, who have set up The Rat’s Nest Theatre Company, took the production to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August this year, with the help of £1,500 from the BU Projects and Placements Grant fund.

Chaos By Design will be performed at The Winchester, in Poole Hill in The Triangle, on Wednesday October 30, as part of Black History Month.

The performance starts at 7pm and tickets can be bought on the door for £5.

Further details about the performance

A number of events have been organised by Bournemouth University as part of Black History Month. See the full programme of events.

BU leaps up 14 places in The Sunday Times league table

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Bournemouth University has leapt up 14 places in The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2014.

The report on 22 September highlighted the fact that BU is the first university to have been “commended” for the quality of student learning opportunities by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) – the highest award possible.

Professor John Vinney, Vice-Chancellor of Bournemouth University said: “I am very proud that BU has made such a big leap up The Sunday Times League table, especially coming so soon on the heels of the QAA commending the quality of our student learning opportunities.

“We are working hard at the University to provide inspirational teaching, world-class research and strong links with the professions to create forward thinking graduates with the skills and flexibility to succeed throughout their career – wherever it may take them. It is very satisfying to see this work being recognised and we look forward to further advances up the league tables.”

The feature also focused on the fact that every undergraduate honours degree student at BU is promised a work placement of typically 40 weeks and claimed that our degrees in public relations, retail management, scriptwriting and tax law were all ahead of their time.

The Queen’s Anniversary Prize for the National Centre for Computer Animation (NCCA) also was given a deserved mention.

BU was one of the top five universities in the UK to have gained the biggest leaps up in the league table as we moved to 67th.

 

BU graduate goes write way to win BAFTA competition

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By Dean Eastmond

A Bournemouth University Master’s graduate has won a nationwide BAFTA competition to find Britain’s most promising comedy writers.

Christiana Brockbank impressed judges including comediennes Jennifer Saunders and Jessica Hynes to be named one of the winners in the BAFTA Rocliffe New Writing Forum competition.

Christiana, who completed an MA in Writing for the Media at BU in 2010, beat more than 500 entries to be named one of the five winners of the competition, which searched for the UK’s most promising upcoming comedy writers.

She said: “It’s been a bit surreal – you go from trying to get people to read your work to suddenly having lots of people asking you if they can read your script, and that makes every single rejection letter before that absolutely worth it.”

Christiana, 26, will now see her sitcom – Binwomen – performed in front of other comedians, writers and industry bosses at this year’s Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival.

The comedy follows compulsive hoarder Janet as she works on the bins, and the industry panel will include comedian John Bishop and Shane Allen, Controller of Comedy at the BBC.

Christiana will also receive one-to-one mentoring sessions with comedy commissioners and independent production companies and the chance to have a full script commission paid for by the BBC.

Christiana, who is from Bolton and now lives in Ealing, London, said her time at BU helped her develop her creativity.

“What I enjoyed most about the course was being in an environment where you were encouraged to collaborate and be creative. I made some lifelong friends there who I hope I’ll get to work with again,” said Christiana, who currently works in retail while writing in the evenings.

“After graduating from Bournemouth, I continued to keep writing short films, radio sketches and sitcoms before becoming a copywriter and living like a real adult for a while.

“In the end, I gave it up and decided to move to London with the hope of one day doing what felt most right – trying to write stuff that’s funny and maybe even getting paid for the privilege.”

The BAFTA Rocliffe Sitcom Showcase takes place at the Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival on Thursday 22 August.

Find out more about the competition

Dean is a student at Budmouth College in Weymouth, who is working at Bournemouth University in the Press and PR Department. He joined BU on a Sir Samuel Mico Scholarship, which provides 10 students from his college with essential work experience for four weeks over the summer.

Renowned comedy writer inspires students during talk at BU

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Comedy writer Laurence Marks – who helped create some of Britain’s best loved sitcoms – shared his experiences with postgraduate students at Bournemouth University.

Laurence, who created the likes of Birds of a Feather and Goodnight Sweetheart with writing partner Maurice Gran, talked about his career to Master’s students from across BU’s Media School.

Laurence, who was a journalist before moving into writing, said the pair were inspired to begin writing together after winning competitions at a writing and acting workshop that they only attended because it was cheaper than heating their flats.

“I was a journalist, so I was at least writing and putting words on a page but I was a crime reporter, which is a long way from comedy,” he said.

“What I found was that the moment I sat down at my typewriter and started to write, not only did it flow out of me as if it had been welling up, but I had to write comedy. It was just flowing out of me.”

The pair’s first big hit was Shine On Harvey Moon, in 1982, and they then moved to Hollywood – where they were part of the team of writers working on Cheers.

After 14 months, they moved back to the UK and worked with Rik Mayall on political sitcom The New Statesman, which went on to win the BAFTA for Best Comedy Series.

Laurence told the students that, while writing in a partnership could be difficult, he would not want to do it alone.

“That instant feedback in comedy is your first audience,” he said.

“If he doesn’t laugh, ten million people aren’t going to laugh. I like to be in a room where there is somebody with you, crafting something. It’s more fun.”

“It helps if you know the person you are working with for a long, long time, as you have the same reference points.”

He added: “It was very difficult at first. Someone once said a writing partnership should be exactly the same as a marriage – except you never take your clothes off in front of each other.

“We argue all the time – the whole dynamic is argument and debate about what is going to work.”

He also likened writing to building a house – saying that you need an architect to make sure the structure is right before starting to decorate.

“Writing is the easy bit, like decorating,” he said. “But there is a lot of work to do before then in making sure the structure is right – it’s the planning, the story, the characters.”

His advice to the students – who came from Master’s courses including scriptwriting, cinematography and directing – was to find their own voice, and create characters that people wanted to watch.

“It is really first and foremost about character. You are building up this piece of a real person – because without truth, comedy doesn’t work,” he said.

“What we did was acknowledged what was being made and then wrote something different.

“Do what you want to do but it has to conform to what is, after all, a 28 minute show divided into 3 parts with great characters.”

The Bourne Legacy

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Alumni who have done well in the creative industries come back to BU to give advice to Media School students.

Successful Media School alumni were back at Bournemouth University to share their stories and advice with final year students.

Among those speaking at The Bourne Legacy event were BU graduates who have gone on to edit The X-Factor, work on Tim Burton animated film Frankenweenie, and have gained positions at BBC Radio 1Xtra.

The event is now in its second year, and has been organised to inspire current final year students from across the Digital Media Design, TV and Radio Production courses, Scriptwriting and Global Media Practice degrees.

Mark Shufflebottom, Programme Co-ordinator BA (Hons) Digital Media Design, helped to organise the event.

He said: “It is a chance for [the students] to meet people from BU who have gone out into industry and are doing great things.

“It is about meeting these guys and them giving some really good idea of how to get into the industry.”

The first speaker of the day was Dan Mellow, an editor who has worked on TV shows including the X-Factor and Comic Relief, and is now editing comedy programmes.

Dan, who completed a Media Production degree at BU in 1995, said: “There were so many skills that I learnt at Bournemouth University that I have taken into the industry and that continue to be useful today.

He added: “I’ve hugely enjoyed the event. I hope it’s very useful for the current batch of students for alumni to come back and share their experiences and stories of how they got into the industry.”

Also speaking at the event was producer and director Céin McGillicuddy, who has worked on programmes like Made in Chelsea and MTV’s My Super Sweet World Class since completing a BA (Hons) in Scriptwriting for Film and TV then an MA (Hons) in TVProduction at BU, and fellow Scriptwriting for Film and TV graduate Danna Wills, who worked at Aardman Animations and Disney before moving into children’s magazines.

Following the talks, there was a Q&A panel session with the alumni and the opportunity for networking.

Anna Goodridge, who studied TV Production at BU from 2005 to 2008 was another of the speakers.

She is currently working as a Production Coordinator on BBC drama Holby City.

Anna said: “I started off as a runner and worked my way up the old-fashioned way, which is how you’re always going to have to do it.

“I want to let students know that your mum or dad doesn’t have to work in television – with hard work and a bit of research you can get in quite easily but you’ve got to be patient and one day, eventually, you’ll get to where you want to be.”