Screenwriters.
Chris Chibnall
Chris Chibnall is a screenwriter known for Torchwood and Broadchurch, and will be next to work on Doctor Who in 2018.
I decided to study Chris Chibnall because I really enjoyed Broadchurch on ITV when it first aired in 2013. The murder drama follows the Latimer's and detectives Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) as they discover the murder of the Latimer's son.
Before he wrote Broadchurch, Chibnall started with stage plays that were shown in the Soho Theatre and Southwark Playhouse [1]. Even before then he was a "writer-in-residence at a tiny pub theatre in Hampton Wick" [1] which just shows how far he had come and that he had stuck to it.
=In order to get a better understanding of how to please the audience, Chibnall sat in on "pretty much all" of the performances to study what made them laugh, and at what points they got bored, to try and figure out why. [1]
He moved on to write for the Sci-Fi Torchwood and Life on Mars, before his ITV hit Broadchurch.
Torchwood is a spin-off from historical series Doctor Who, whom Chibnall is going on to write for the new series in 2018, which will include the first female Doctor, making his writing for it a marker in the history of the TV programme.
Torchwood was popular internationally and made itself a home in sci-fi drama, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Primeval. The audience was slightly different to that of Doctor Who's- I considered it to have an older target audience. It will be interesting to see how much this will rub off on the new Doctor Who.
I found Chibnall's work and interviews interesting to read and watch, because of his advice he gave for future writers (he was very supportive towards beginners in the job, which I found inspiring), and although I'm more invested in the production side of television, his advice still stuck with me. In Writer's Room for the BBC, Chibnall described how he overcame writer's block, and discusses the future of TV drama [2]. I enjoyed the pace of Broadchurch, as it fit the setting by not being too fast-paced and building tension, rather than being constantly melodramatic, it was honest about the lives of detectives when something so dramatic (the death of Danny) happens in a small town. I enjoy more honest portrayals of characters found in British television, rather than the American style of everything being 'big', and I think this is something well thought about in Broadchurch. Although Torchwood is a science-fiction, it still fits this and doesn't 'over-do' characters and plot lines. Chris Chibnall has inspired me to be more subtle with my stories. My first script I wrote, Closet, was a big story in a little script, and it didn't fit or flow. However I've hopefully improved on my second, Lunch. I tried to make the story much more simple and less bulky in details that are needed. Despite Broadchurch being a fairly long-running show, he mentions that for TV, there shouldn't be even 30 seconds of the script that aren't developing the story. [1]
I decided to study Chris Chibnall because I really enjoyed Broadchurch on ITV when it first aired in 2013. The murder drama follows the Latimer's and detectives Alec Hardy (David Tennant) and Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) as they discover the murder of the Latimer's son.
Before he wrote Broadchurch, Chibnall started with stage plays that were shown in the Soho Theatre and Southwark Playhouse [1]. Even before then he was a "writer-in-residence at a tiny pub theatre in Hampton Wick" [1] which just shows how far he had come and that he had stuck to it.
=In order to get a better understanding of how to please the audience, Chibnall sat in on "pretty much all" of the performances to study what made them laugh, and at what points they got bored, to try and figure out why. [1]
Torchwood is a spin-off from historical series Doctor Who, whom Chibnall is going on to write for the new series in 2018, which will include the first female Doctor, making his writing for it a marker in the history of the TV programme.
Torchwood was popular internationally and made itself a home in sci-fi drama, shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Primeval. The audience was slightly different to that of Doctor Who's- I considered it to have an older target audience. It will be interesting to see how much this will rub off on the new Doctor Who.
I found Chibnall's work and interviews interesting to read and watch, because of his advice he gave for future writers (he was very supportive towards beginners in the job, which I found inspiring), and although I'm more invested in the production side of television, his advice still stuck with me. In Writer's Room for the BBC, Chibnall described how he overcame writer's block, and discusses the future of TV drama [2]. I enjoyed the pace of Broadchurch, as it fit the setting by not being too fast-paced and building tension, rather than being constantly melodramatic, it was honest about the lives of detectives when something so dramatic (the death of Danny) happens in a small town. I enjoy more honest portrayals of characters found in British television, rather than the American style of everything being 'big', and I think this is something well thought about in Broadchurch. Although Torchwood is a science-fiction, it still fits this and doesn't 'over-do' characters and plot lines. Chris Chibnall has inspired me to be more subtle with my stories. My first script I wrote, Closet, was a big story in a little script, and it didn't fit or flow. However I've hopefully improved on my second, Lunch. I tried to make the story much more simple and less bulky in details that are needed. Despite Broadchurch being a fairly long-running show, he mentions that for TV, there shouldn't be even 30 seconds of the script that aren't developing the story. [1]
Bibliography
[1] Truman, M (2014) Tony Marchant and Broadchurch's Chris Chibnall on Screenwriting. The Guardian. Available From: https://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network/culture-professionals-blog/2014/apr/24/tony-marchant-broadchurch-chris-chibnall-screenwriting [Accessed 28 November 2017]
[2] BBC (2013) Chris Chibnall: BBC Writersroom interviewed Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch, United, Doctor Who, Torchwood) at the TV Drama Writers' Festival in July 2013. Available From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writers-lab/be-inspired/chris-chibnall [ Accessed 28 November 2017]
Other reading:
[2] BBC (2013) Chris Chibnall: BBC Writersroom interviewed Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch, United, Doctor Who, Torchwood) at the TV Drama Writers' Festival in July 2013. Available From: http://www.bbc.co.uk/writersroom/writers-lab/be-inspired/chris-chibnall [ Accessed 28 November 2017]
Other reading:
Lawson, M (2017) Chris Chibnall: The man who Reinvented the Cliffhanger. Available From: https://www.rts.org.uk/article/chris-chibnall-man-who-reinvented-cliffhanger [Accessed 28 November 2017]
Gray, J. & Johnson, D. (2013) A Companion to the Media Authorship. John Wiley & Sons. Chapter 10
Gray, J. & Johnson, D. (2013) A Companion to the Media Authorship. John Wiley & Sons. Chapter 10
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