Hours before their Sundance premieres, we spoke with the writing fellows of Women Write Now, Hartbeat’s annual comedic screenwriting fellowship for Black women in partnership with the Sundance Institute.
In addition to hearing from the writing fellows Danielle Solomon, Mayanna Berrin, and Kiana Butler, we were joined by Hartbeat’s Head of Film, Candice Wilson-Cherry, who takes us through how the program is designed to directly address the lack of BIPOC women in leadership positions like showrunners and in writers’ rooms; and actor Logan Browning (The Perfection, Dear White People) who discussed her directorial debut working on the short Hey Boo, alongside the two other directing fellows, Tika Sumpter and Nicole Byer.
In this episode, we discuss…
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How the Women Write Now program is filling a void in the writing space
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Their process for finding writers and directors for the program
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The development process of each of the shorts
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Fitting the script into only 10 pages
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Having to adjust things for the budgets
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Finding mentors who would guide fellows in nurturing yet realistic ways
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Doing table reads versus chemistry reads
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Letting go of control by trusting actors
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Hitting deadlines so you don’t hold up production
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