Wednesday, December 05, 2007

The Banff Worldwide Television Festival has opened its virtual ticket office. The first 100 registrants who haven't already come to Banff are eligible for the Rookie Rate. It's $1000, but that's a sight cheaper than the Early Bird rate of $1425 or the regular festival rate of $2125.

The Banff TV Festival is a great opportunity to meet Canadian producers and network executives. The first time I went, I had thirty set meetings in four days, not counting people I met in the halls and in the bar. Producers and network executives are more willing to meet you (being at Banff means you're serious), and there are also Face to Face programs and Breakfast /Cocktails/Dinners with Dealmakers where you can sign up to sit with execs for ten minutes whether they're interested in meeting you or not.

And lots of parties.

And you are in the absolutely stunning town of Banff Springs, with the Canadian Rockies all around you.

If you're in the Canadian industry, I consider Banff a can't-miss appointment. This year I hope to interview some of the writers who come to give master classes -- stay tuned.

Labels: Banff, breaking in, festivals

9:41 AM

3 Comments:

Any comment on this post?

By  Pythor, at 3:47 PM  

The writer hasn't the slightest clue what he's talking about. Do I need to get into details?

a. TV writers are extremely reliable and work incredibly hard, long hours into the night, work weekends, often have no lives outside of the show.

b. Scripts by book writers are almost all horribly bad, with no visual drama, talky dialog, and no "play" in the scenes.

c. Some shows are written long in advance, but that's not how American networks finance shows. Nothing to do with the writers.

By  Alex Epstein, at 4:19 PM  

Hello!

I'm the writer for this post. I apologize if I came off as too offensive in my post. I was trying to be provocative, but I guess I overdid it.

Here are my responses to your points:

a. I believe it. "Lazy" is the bad word here, I suppose. It was my way to quickly get at the problem I saw with completely drawn-out story arcs.

b. I believe this, too. There are definitely skills that screenwriters posses over book writers (as shown in my point 4). My efforts were to point out how to fix the bad things, however.

c. There's multiple causes to the failures I pointed out, and I note this. The solutions I pointed out are meant to be taken together, which includes a set schedule.

By  Joel, at 5:54 PM  

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