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IT COULD BE a scene from a television drama: five Germans, three Frenchmen, a Briton, an Italian, a Bulgarian and a Hungarian, all cooking up a plot together in their London hideout.
But this not-so-dirty dozen are on the other side of the small screen, as they are taking part in Europe’s first postgraduate programme focused on writing and producing TV series.
Dubbed “Serial Eyes”, the nine-month course running between Berlin and London is a response to the new generation of TV series such as “Breaking Bad”, “Mad Men” and “The Killing”.
“Watch as many TV shows or movies as you can and you show us what you like,” special effects expert Erik Ellefsen tells the class at the London Film School in trendy Covent Garden.
The 12 students listen intently as Ellefsen uses a video sequence to demonstrate how to show a person shooting himself in the head in close-up. He then talks about special effects budgets, and about the working relationship with writers and directors.
“Collaboration is the key word,” adds Ellefsen, who created the effects in the British series “Misfits” and “Utopia”.
The writers’ room
The course gives intensive training in the writing and production of series with a focus on European markets, but with elements of the “writers’ room” culture that lies behind many of the top US shows.
The collaboration between the Deutsche Film und Fernsehakademie (German Film and Television Academy) in Berlin and the London Film School was launched in January 2013 at the “Totally Serialized” television festival in London by the German academy’s boss Jan Schuette.
“There was a realisation that there is a lack of training about how to make TV series in Europe,” Lorraine Sullivan, the director of the “Totally Serialized” festival, told AFP.
Adaptation
She said that “working in a group doesn’t exist at all in Europe,” unlike in the United States where most major series have writers’ rooms gathered around a ‘showrunner’ where ideas can be bounced around in a high-pressure creative environment.
“The idea is not to import the writers’ room to Europe wholesale, but to bring in a bit of that culture of cooperation,” Sullivan said.
That will fill a gap, says Dominique Jubin, assistant director of drama at the French channel Canal Plus.
In France it is difficult to find “experienced writers who are able to work on developing a series that they have not necessarily created themselves,” says Jubin.
Whatever works
Laurent Mercier, one of two French writers on “Serial Eyes”, which costs €4,500 to take part in, said the course helped teach “a sense of what works and what doesn’t internationally.”
“It gives you an edge,” said Mercier, who graduated from a Paris-based TV screenwriting school in 2010 and has worked for French channels.
Anna-Katharina Brehm, a student from Germany, praised the quality of the lecturers, including Frank Spotnitz, one of the key figures behind the hugely popular US science-fiction series “The X-Files.”
“One of the best things I have ever, ever done,” she said.
The students are ideally between 25 and 35 and must have written or produced at least one television drama themselves to be accepted on the course.
Over the nine months, they must collaborate in groups of four to create a drama series and write one of their own.
Intensive
Mercier’s group wrote a police drama while his individual project was about football match-fixing, but done in the style of pioneering US crime drama “The Wire.” Brehm meanwhile came up with a series focusing on a community with hidden secrets, along the lines of “Twin Peaks” or hit French series “The Returned”.
The students spend six months in Berlin before returning to London for intensive work with Britain’s television professionals behind shows such as the award-winning country-house drama “Downton Abbey”.
“You meet the creme de la creme here and the idea is to take on board the American model, while adapting it for Europe,” added Mercier, who hopes to set up his own production company next year.
After London, the young screenwriters headed to Cannes this month for MIPTV, the world’s biggest media sales event — while Lorraine Sullivan is taking applications from the next set of Serial Eyes hopefuls with stars in their eyes.
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The sooner these bottom feeders are brought to justice the better.
Just seems like a no brainer that if you want to tackle crime at a high level you just target the proceeds of crime. I can’t fart without the taxman knowing and yet these lads can build empires by laundering money … less detectives and more accountants should sort it out.
@Pablo: What’s the going rate of tax for a fart these days? I could be in trouble
I suspect that more people are driven into poverty and maintained there by loopholes to protect the wealthy than are affected by the targets of this.
Yes, the drug culture and those who profit from it and the crime generated by their greed needs to be sorted but the consumers in a lot of cases are so called respectable members of society who don’t seem to see the link between recreational use of white powder and murder on the streets – usually on streets that are seldom visited by such people.
Drug dealing is a crime against society but so is creating loopholes to allow wealthy people to avoid their proper contribution to society from which they get a lot more benefit.
I opened a credit union account for my daughter a couple of months ago, the length of the form to fill out was unbelievable. My daughter said she never signed her signature as many times. Yet these people are able to acquire money from crime and very few questions asked.
have your say