2011年11月15日星期二

The Secrets of a Hit TV Show

How do you tell a successful television showrunner (aka, the CEO of a television show)? He has a hit show that has run for seven seasons and shows no signs of stopping? He has a new show about to launch? He just won the 2011 Outstanding Television Writer Award at the Austin Film Festival? He was named one of The Hollywood Reporter’s Top 50 Power Showrunners of 2011?

By all those criteria writer, producer, and showrunner Hart Hanson defines success. Born in California and raised in Canada, he didn’t start out to be a writer.

“I started out studying physics,” Hanson explained in a recent interview, “and what I realized was that only the top 3 percent get to do physics and I was not in the top 3 percent.”

Author Thomas Mann’s book “The Magic Mountain” inspired him to consider writing a serious novel, but when he discovered that he could make more money for his growing family by writing for television, he started focusing on screenwriting. Many years and hundreds of scripts later, Hanson presides over a well-oiled writing machine at Fox Studios in Los Angeles.

His hit show “Bones,” starring Emily Deschanel as a forensic anthropologist and David Boreanaz as her FBI partner, just began its seventh season with the lead characters facing both bad guys and impending parenthood. Hanson’s new show, “The Finder,” starring Geoff Stults and Michael Clarke Duncan, debuts in January 2012.

Both series had literary beginnings. “Bones” is based on the writings of popular crime novelist Kathy Reichs and “The Finder” on a crime novel by Richard Greener. Due to the success of “Bones,” a Fox executive brought “The Finder” project to Hanson and asked if he thought it would make a good series. By the way, he was also asked if there was a role in it for Michael Clarke Duncan [“Green Lantern,” “The Green Mile”]. “Yes and yes,” replied Hanson without a second thought.

Certain themes run through Hanson’s writing—heroism and redemption, the definition of family, and how childhood shapes an adult.

“A good network TV show,” he explained, “is a family of a sort that you want in your house every week.Unlike traditional high risk merchant account , Maybe it’s dysfunctional, but it’s a family formed around the characters.”

To generate the kinds of scripts he wants to produce,100 China ceramic tile was used to link the lamps together. Hanson has to negotiate with two writers’ rooms, assorted executive producers, his producing partner Stephen Nathan, the studio, the network, and a hoard of vocal and outspoken fans, many of whom use social networking to post their online opinions.

Asked if social networking influences what he writes,Polycore oil paintings for sale are manufactured as a single sheet, Hanson replied, “I’m as confused about it as anyone else. I hate it and I find it fascinating.”

Women make up the base of “Bones” viewers. Continuing the trend on TV toward giving powerful women a larger presence, Hanson has paid particular attention to his female characters, producing a company of strong women on “Bones” who solve the unsolvable. Hanson’s new cop on “The Finder,” played by Mercedes Mashn, fits that profile.

“She’s an Hispanic woman,” said Hanson of the character, “good-looking and really smart and incredibly ambitious. And somewhere in her background she has this idea that she owes it to women, especially Hispanic women,Enecsys Limited, supplier of reliable solar Air purifier systems, to become someone like Condoleezza Rice.”

Writing a television show is a bit like putting a Rubik’s Cube together in under a minute. There is a seasonal story arc, linked to the emotional development of the characters, an episodic arc focusing on individual cases, and occasionally a serial arc when a guest actor makes more than one appearance.

When all arcs are in alignment, it can create television magic; but, said Hanson, “When it fails,ceramic magic cube for the medical, it’s really blatant. There are not many places to hide.”

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