{"id":981,"date":"2017-10-31T09:38:13","date_gmt":"2017-10-31T13:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/?p=981"},"modified":"2017-10-31T09:38:13","modified_gmt":"2017-10-31T13:38:13","slug":"hollywood-producer-chats-with-film-and-video-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/2017\/10\/31\/hollywood-producer-chats-with-film-and-video-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood Producer Chats with Film and Video Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nPictured: FVS Guest Speaker Ligiah Villalobos<\/p>\n

From: Dennis Conway \t\t\t\t\t\tDate: Oct. 22, 2017<\/p>\n

How does it feel to start your career as a dancer, then become a television executive, a producer, a comedy show writer, a children\u2019s show head writer, a screenwriter, a consultant, and an educator? Hollywood veteran Ligiah Villalobos explained her multifaceted life for over an hour in a candid interview to Mass Media\u2019s Film and Video Society via Skype on Wednesday, Oct. 18. FVS Advisor Dennis Conway moderated the opening interview, while President Jonathan Bice relayed questions from the audience thereafter.
\nVillalobos is perhaps best known for writing an independent feature film, Under the Same Moon, which earned $23 million worldwide. She also served as a writer for NBC\u2019s situation comedy show, Ed, and as Head Writer for Go, Diego, Go, a children\u2019s show on the Nick, Jr. cable network. More recently, Villalobos won a Humanitas Prize in 2013 for her writing of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movie, Firelight, produced by Alicia Keys and Mary Martin, which aired on ABC. She has served as consultant on the Pixar movies, Planes and the upcoming Day of the Dead project, Coco.
\nVillalobos was born in Mexico and grew up in Los Angeles, where she attended Antioch College for her B.A. and M.F.A. in Creative Writing. She explained that the current writing opportunities in Los Angeles are good and improving, since more cable outlets are creating their own programming, and online show producers such as Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon have created even more writing opportunities.
\nVillalobos feels that currently the \u201cquality of storytelling\u201d is better in TV than in film, claiming that \u201cTV kicks ass.\u201d She explained that writing for TV can be very lucrative. A TV writer can earn $24,000 for a 30-minute episode, and $60,000 for a 60-minute episode. But it can be a \u201chard life,\u201d she says, and unpredictable. Someone \u201cmight earn $500,000 one year, and then $30,000 a year for the next two years.\u201d She said that young writers need to \u201clive in a way to save your money.\u201d
\nShe also thought that Hollywood films at present were somewhat narrow in their focus, saying that \u201cHollywood only wants to make broad comedies, action films, and comic book stories\u201d right now. Villalobos claimed that she would like to see more work produced with themes about the lives of \u201cwomen, Hispanics, and LGBT people.\u201d She claimed that the only studio summer film she really liked was \u201cWonder Woman.\u201d
\nVillalobos explained her unique career path by saying that she started as a studio executive at the Walt Disney Company, where she oversaw television production in Latin America for five years, launching eight children\u2019s shows in seven countries, and then supervised their Writer Training, and later, Directing Training Programs. After that she served as Current Programming Executive at the WB network. Still, she longed for even higher-quality shows to produce, and that made her want to become a writer, and develop her own projects.
\nWhen asked what made her low-budget feature film, Under the Same Moon, a hit at the Sundance film festival, where she watched five studios engage in a weekend bidding war for its rights, she answered that it was \u201cauthentic.\u201d Ironically, she claimed that her career as a writer received its biggest boost in status and publicity from that film, even though in one night, \u201c8.5 million people watched Firelight,\u201d her Hallmark TV film.
\nWhen asked what the major differences were, regarding writing for film or TV, she answered that the production pacing in TV was much faster. Her feature film script was written in 2001, started shooting in 2006, and was released in 2008. However, in the TV industry, a script may be written in weeks, shot a few months later, and broadcast quickly thereafter. For special projects, \u201cthe writer knows in 9 months if it will be moving forward\u201d (being produced). Villalobos also said that the pressure in TV can be great. She recounted a co-worker\u2019s suicide, saying that \u201cNo job is worth your life.\u201d Happily, Villalobos explained that she is at a stage of her career in which people come to her with jobs, and that she is paid \u201dbeforehand\u201d for her work.
\nVillalobos offered more advice for young screenwriters who wish to work in Hollywood. When asked what types of writing samples they should submit, she said they should submit one original piece, and two \u201cspec\u201d (speculative) scripts for existing shows, comedic or dramatic, but not in both genres. She said industry people prefer short scripts, and that writers need to \u201cstay in your lane,\u201d meaning that agents and executives prefer that writers be categorized as either a comedic or dramatic writer, but not both. She also said that young writers should develop a \u201cwriting regimen,\u201d to hone their skills.
\nWhen asked about \u201cdemo disks\u201d (a sample of clips from students\u2019 video projects), Villalobos said these were helpful to those who wish to be directors. She also said that in Hollywood, \u201ca 20-minute student film would be considered long.\u201d Students should concentrate on making films that last \u201cten minutes or less.\u201d Villalobos also said that for young writers, sometimes working a \u201c\u2019brainless job\u2019 might be better than one which requires intellect, because the latter might drain their \u2018creative energy.\u2019\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t be a reader in a studio,\u201d she said, \u201cTake a temp job or be an Uber driver. Save your mental power.\u201d
\nWhen asked about film producer Harvey Weinstein, the subject of numerous accusations by women for his predatory behavior, Villalobos had absolutely no sympathy. She claimed sadly that \u201cIt\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg,\u201d and that in the film and TV industries \u201csome things are accepted that absolutely shouldn\u2019t be accepted.\u201d
\nWhen asked if she has met many Hollywood celebrities, Villalobos regaled the audience about being a close friend of Jennifer Lopez in their early days as dancers, and hobnobbing in Las Vegas at a prizefighting event, in a VIP tent with Kevin Costner, Denzel Washington, and Jack Nicholson. Years later, she regrets that at the party, she did not have the nerve to speak with one of her idols, dancer Gregory Hines.
\nAlong with writing and consulting, Villalobos now teaches as an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California. She also serves on numerous Outreach committees for the WGA (Writers Guild of America), where FVS Advisor Dennis Conway contacted her for this engagement. For more information about Film and Video Society events, contact Jonathan Bice at jrbice@valdosta.edu. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pictured: FVS Guest Speaker Ligiah Villalobos From: Dennis Conway Date: Oct. 22, 2017 How does it feel to start your career as a dancer, then become a television executive, a producer, a comedy show writer, a children\u2019s show head writer, a screenwriter, a consultant, and an educator? Hollywood veteran Ligiah Villalobos explained her multifaceted life…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":342,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-officeofthedean"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/342"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":982,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions\/982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.valdosta.edu\/coa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}