Writing For Pictures Workshop - London, 7 March, 2009

For you who are in London - or England - or anywhere in the UK - anywhere in Europe, for that matter - I'm conducting a workshop for writers, the first week in March...

Writing For Pictures

honing skills for writers of film, tv, games, comics

a workshop by Neal Romanek

Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009

Time: 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Location:

Price: £30 in advance (£50 at the door if spaces are available)

Ealing Friends Meeting House

17 Woodville Road

Ealing, London

W5 2SE

United Kingdom

Register Now:

Phone: 0754 508 7629
Email: workshops@nealromanek.com

Description:

A 2 hour workshop designed to help writers of all skill levels practice and improve their skills for writing scripts for image-based media – film, tv, comics/graphic novels, games.

The workshop is open to anyone interested in writing for film, tv, games or comics – from veterans trying to perfect their skills to people who have never written fiction before.

The workshop will emphasize practice over theory, doing over observing. You will get out of it exactly what you put into it. It's like an intense session at the gym – for media writing.

Price: £30 (payable via cash or check - PayPal link will be available within the next few days)

We are offering this low introductory rate for this first workshop only. Those who attend for this first night will receive a discount on later courses, starting up at the end of March. Spaces are limited. Sign up early.

The facilitator Neal Romanek is a graduate of University of Southern California’s renowned Cinema-TV Production school. Neal has written for the screen, games, and motion picture industry magazines and websites. He has had intensive training from some of the world's best teachers in writing and creative process.

To reserve a place, or for further questions

email: workshops [at] nealromanek.com

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The 20 Things

There's a mime about. Or is that a meme? A meam?

There's this thing floating about: Without overthinking it, tell us 20 Things About Yourself.

Here are 20 Things About Myself - and I haven't told anyone else but you about them:

1.) I used to drink so much coffee that...well, I would sometimes get home late at night and make a pot of coffee to drink before bed.
2.) I love my iPhone as much as I've loved any piece of technology before with the possible exception of my first Macintosh SE
3.) When I was very small I wanted to be a garbage collector, then a paleontologist, then a rock star, then a standup comic, then I turned 7 and outgrew all that.
4.) I was crazy about a Girl In A White Hooded Coat when I was in 1st grade. I didn't know her name or anything about her. Now I have a little girl who wears a white hooded coat who I am crazy about.
5.) I was a national champion racewalker as a teen. I could've gone to the Olympics, but I discovered alcohol and show business and also discovered that I had no interest in going to the Olympics
6.) One of the greatest compliments I've ever been paid was by a USC teacher who worked with Orson Welles' Mercury Theater company. He said: "A lot of these guys still need a lot of work. But you have got it." I spent many years doing my best to prove him wrong.
7.) I believe that the space aliens with gray skin and big black eyes use element 115 to power their spacecraft by amplifying and directing gravity waves to compress space-time between themselves and their destinations.
8.) I believe that the U.S.A. has become a rogue nation that funds terrorism and has abandoned the rule of law and that, so far, the new administration has not changed this.
9.) I wrote and delivered long, crazy, romantic love letters to a girl when I was in 3rd and 4th grade. In junior high, she died of a brain tumor.
10.) The girl to whom I lost my virginity died in a car wreck my/our sophomore year in college. She apparently fell asleep at the wheel. In later years I also would frequently "fall asleep at the wheel".
11.) Though I would like to say that the greatest influences on my creative life have been Shakespeare, Stanley Kubrick, and Vincent van Gogh, the truth is that the greatest influences have been Glen Larson, Gary Gygax, and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
12.) I have never actually read "Hamlet" in its entirety - ashamed to say - but I have seen a lot of the movie versions.
13.) I missed my first kiss - in a game of spin the bottle (though a pen was used in place of a bottle) - because when the time came, I chickened out and ran like hell. In later years, I went out with that girl who I didn't kiss, and then did kiss her then, so...
14.) If I hate you, you will never know it. Also if I utterly love you, you will also never know it.
15.) I was not in a rock band in high school, but wanted to be and pretended I was.
16.) I have never seen a UFO or a ghost or a bigfoot or an angel or any other paranormal manifestation, but I still believe they may exist - which is kind of idiotic, don't you think?
17.) I visited Shakespeare's House in Stratford on Avon and thought: "There is no one here. This is a scam. This is just an ordinary house." This was before I'd ever heard of the Shakespeare "authorship question".
18.) I believe that the works of Shakespeare were written primarily by Edward De Vere, Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, but am willing to accept that a number of other writers contributed with him acting as kind of a "writer-producer".
19.) I am going to start doing Buddhist meditation soon. I have been saying this now for about 7 years.
20.) I have done thousands of "morning pages" and taken half a dozen or more, heavy-hitter Artists Way workshops. I would be hard pressed to say that they helped my creative work to any measurable degree.
21.) I have always wanted to live in London. And now I do. And I'm not quite sure how that happened really.
22.) I was not a cat person. Then my girlfriend/now wife acquired "Cheop, The Very Interesting Cat". Now I am a cat person.
23.) I have read just about every book by Hubert Selby Jr EXCEPT "Last Exit To Brooklyn". Why is that? I think it's about fear of gratification, knowing that once I do, then I will have done it, and it will be over, and then I'll be sad.
24.) I have very very powerful deja vu's where I am convinced that I have vividly dreamed before of what is happening now. I feel confident that this means my brain needs a trip to to Jiffy Lube and that I do not have precognitive abilities. Although I do vividly remember locations from my dreams sometimes months after I've had the dream. I may not remember the dream itself, but the location sticks with me, as if I've been there.
25.) I wanted to go to art school when I graduated high school, but took the road less traveled with film school and that has made...I don't know what difference that made. I mean, it made all the difference. It has made all the difference.

"All The Hells" Flickr Group

A heartfelt thanks to the large number of people who have so positively responded to "All The Hells" in its first weeks on Earth.

I wanted to direct your attention though to the new "All The Hells" image group at Flickr. The "All The Hells" site is "all my own work", but the images in the Flickr group are a collection from a wide variety of photographers and artists, from several different continents, who have provided "All The Hells" some of its inspiration, vision, fuel for its fires.

Some of the images are terrifying, some sublime, some obscene, some inexplicable. They are all, as are the artists who created them, worth repeated study. I hope to provide in-depth pieces and posts on each of these artists as "All The Hells" unspools.

Until then, study them yourselves. I would avoid doing so just before bed, however, or if you're alone, because you may begin to feel like...you're not alone.