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Eleanor Ball

6 Important Female Characters On TV

When you’re us, enjoying TV can be exhausting. We’re always on high alert, you and me, ready to roll our eyes, vent our spleens or just feel a bit sad when we find for the billionth time that female characters are barely being treated like characters at all. So it’s a pleasure when we get to watch female characters with agency, scope and realism. And it’s a pleasure to celebrate them! That’s one of the purposes of my new blog, Good Characters and it’s also the reason why I’m all up in your face at Lucy’s kind invitation, to make a song… Read More »6 Important Female Characters On TV

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8 Things Life As A Writer Teaches You

And there it was, finally mine! A scriptwriting master’s degree from Goldsmiths, University of London. Printed on that posh, bumpy beige paper, because, for some reason, the more beige a piece of paper is, the more important the printed matter. Degree in hand, I then marched to my desk, sat down, and phoned the BBC to ask if I should start work on Monday. Or maybe it was Pinewood Studios I phoned. Hang on, no – it was Universal Studios Hollywood. (Or is that a theme park?) Obviously my lovely degree on its bumpy beige paper didn’t guarantee me a… Read More »8 Things Life As A Writer Teaches You

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#scriptchat Stephen Gallagher Q & A with Eleanor Ball – Ellie’s last post!

This is Ellie signing off! I’ve had a great time interning for Lucy over the last few months, meeting people I’d never usually have the chance to meet and learning things I’d never usually have the chance to learn, and I’ll consider myself a bona fide Bang2writer for years to come. For my final blog post I’ve been given the wriggle-worthy chance to pick the brains of Stephen Gallagher. He’s the screenwriter, novelist, director, and all-round Man of Many Bowstrings who created and wrote ITV’s Eleventh Hour and NBC’s Crusoe. He’s also written Doctor Who episodes from the Tom Baker… Read More »#scriptchat Stephen Gallagher Q & A with Eleanor Ball – Ellie’s last post!

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Sitcom: Friends Vs Seinfeld by Eleanor Ball

You know TV programmes used for whimsical padding? Those you watch without scheduling, and when you’re exhausted; like Deal or No Deal or Family Guy, the TV equivalents of toast and jam? Those type of programmes take up a significant portion of my life (oh what a busy girl), so I was one of the loudest mourners as repeats of Friends ended last week. I was hammering tearfully on its already well-pummelled gravestone. Friends has to be the ultimate whimsical padding. For most it doesn’t result in any great frenzy of emotion; it doesn’t abuse the tear ducts or evacuate… Read More »Sitcom: Friends Vs Seinfeld by Eleanor Ball

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Q & A: Eleanor Ball asks Industrial Scripts about Talent Connector

The friendly souls over at Industrial Scripts have recently launched a new service: Talent Connector. So I pinned them to a wall and asked them what it’s all about. 1. Hello! Who are you? We are Industrial Scripts, a London-based script consultancy comprised of some of the UK’s leading script editors and backed by Paramount Pictures and the Curtis Brown talent agency. 2. What makes Talent Connector different from other script development services? There are a number of script development services open to UK writers but ours is the first free talent promotion service backed by major companies. As the… Read More »Q & A: Eleanor Ball asks Industrial Scripts about Talent Connector

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Rom Com Guilty Pleasures by Eleanor Ball

Love, Actually has got to be one of the nation’s favourite guilty pleasures. The other week, over on the Bang2write Facebook page, I asked what you think of Richard Curtis’s shameless Christmassy love fest and I got some interesting answers. We had one or two people take away Brownie Points for its Christmas setting! Bah, humbug. Sure enough there is a jingle-jangle fairytail lightness to Love, Actually, and I imagine the film reel smells of fruitcake, but it’s watchable any time of year. At least, any time of year you feel like an indulgence. I think we all put on… Read More »Rom Com Guilty Pleasures by Eleanor Ball

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Fans of Fiction: cool or uncool? By Eleanor Ball

Fans of fiction. Are they cool? A lot of fan culture takes place online, and we’ve established now that the internet is cool. See, we’re on it as we speak, and we’re super-cool. The Social Network is one of the biggest films of the past decade; it seduced critics, hustled massive audiences, and rolled around in Oscars the way Colin Firth rolls around in melted chocolate (which he does, by the way, and often). And in The Social Network the geeky jabbering and lines of code are perpetually melded with beer, parties, and Victoria’s Secret models. These things are cool,… Read More »Fans of Fiction: cool or uncool? By Eleanor Ball

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What Makes "Star Quality"? By Eleanor Ball

I’ve been hearing a lot of things about Jennifer Aniston recently, which got me thinking. What kind of noise do you make when you hear the name “Jennifer Aniston”?I hear “urrrgh” or “yaaaay!” or “gaaaah” or “squeee!” or “SHHH”. Turns out that for such a supposedly vanilla streak of innocuous American camera-fodder she’s quite a controversial figure. (This blog post, by the way, is about her career, not her personal life.) I’ve been asking folk what they think of her, and the noises do indeed come before the coherent verbal opinions. Sometimes it’s a non-committal “mehh”, usually meaning they remember… Read More »What Makes "Star Quality"? By Eleanor Ball

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The Great Characterisation of Hayao Miyazaki by Eleanor Ball

I recently saw Ponyo! It’s a cute and fantastical animated children’s film based on the story of the little mermaid. When people think of Hayao Miyazaki they often think of the beauty and mythology of his films. If you’ve seen Spirited Away I’d be surprised if you haven’t been genuinely moved by the scene in which a train ripples softly over a one-inch deep lake. His films, both written and directed by him, are perhaps too beautiful, because it can overwhelm some sparks of genius that normally we’d be appalled to miss. Namely the strength of the protagonists. Miyazaki’s girl… Read More »The Great Characterisation of Hayao Miyazaki by Eleanor Ball

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Swearing: New ****ing Rules! By Eleanor Ball

Beware! The below post is about swearing, so it contains a good deal of norty language. Remember South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut? I was 12 years old when that came out so I could relate to the movie’s plot about a bunch of kids going to see a R-rated movie. But while I was watching it, my aunt was in the background. Ironing. Stony-faced as the song “Uncle Fucka” blared from the TV… I cowered in embarrassment and couldn’t enjoy the movie. And sometimes, these days, I see people I’M watching a film with cower at swearwords! And it’s… Read More »Swearing: New ****ing Rules! By Eleanor Ball

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Screenwriting Tip: Audio Description For The Blind By Eleanor Ball

I’ve just discovered a brilliant new source of writerly inspiration. And if you’ve not already discovered it yourself, I recommend you plunge right in: Audio description for the blind.It happened the other day when I was checking out old episodes of The Apprentice (yep, I’m still livin’ large and workin’ hard). The recent series is the first I’ve ever seen, and I’d noticed no sign of Alan Sugar being anywhere near as abrasive as people warned me, so I thought maybe he was worse in previous series and wanted to sample this for myself. Anyway, it took me a few… Read More »Screenwriting Tip: Audio Description For The Blind By Eleanor Ball

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Write What You Know? Then Write About Being A Writer! : P by Eleanor Ball

If you were at the Goldsmiths MA Scriptwriting Showcase last Thursday, thank you for attending! It was wonderful to see so many people there. The showcase was a great success, and we’re especially proud of it because we’re the first year to do it and we organised the lot on our own, from the casting to the gaffer tape. If you have any queries about the writers, actors or scripts, please hit me up here or on Facebook. Anyway, enough about my class’s brilliant initiative that makes you want to hire us instantly (which it does). There were lots of… Read More »Write What You Know? Then Write About Being A Writer! : P by Eleanor Ball

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