Friday, December 21, 2001

A Longtime Television Writer Offers His Own Online Screenwriting Course By SCOTT CARLSON Bob Banner was a pioneering writer, producer, and director in television, having started with the medium way back in 1948. Now he's embarking on a production for the Internet Age: his very own online program in screenwriting. Mr. Banner, mostly retired from television these days, is an adjunct instructor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He has spent about $25,000 to acquire the technology and expertise to set up a system that will allow students from around the world to sign up for the Banner Method screenwriting courses. Sometime in January, students will be able to log on and get advice about building characters, writing dialogue, and setting scenes from a guy who was behind shows like Candid Camera, Solid Gold, and The Carol Burnett Show. What makes Mr. Banner's effort different from most distance-education courses is that it's pretty much a one-man show -- there's no college or company behind it. Through a digital camera set up in Mr. Banner's study, the screenwriter will deliver lectures on Tuesday evenings and Saturday mornings. Any questions that come in through a toll-free phone line will be broadcast through the Internet to the rest of the class. Provided that all the technology works as it's supposed to, the program's first installment -- "Essentials of Writing" -- will go up on January 22. In early January, students will be able to sign up for the course, which will last nine weeks and cost almost $700. A 16-week follow-up course is being planned for late spring or early summer. The courses are experiments and explorations into online education, Mr. Banner says. Although he expects to make a profit someday, he's not worried about getting his investment back within the first year. In fact, he's going to limit the enrollment so that if something does go wrong, it will be easier to fix. It was Mr. Banner's son, who works in the recording industry, who told Mr. Banner about distance education and urged him to start an online course. "He kept saying, You should teach a course online -- that is going to be more and more important," Mr. Banner says. "I started looking into distance learning and found it to be truly exciting." He ran the idea past the Southern Methodist University, where he teaches, but administrators there weren't willing to get an online program started yet. "They don't seem to be quite aware of the importance of it, and their schedule of when it's going to be practical differs from mine," he says. After all, Mr. Banner, who is 80, isn't getting any younger. "I thought it was important to start now." Mr. Banner sees online learning as a major growth industry, but other aspects attracted him as well: He will be able to make the class available to students who couldn't afford private-school tuition. And he can reach students outside of Dallas, which is not usually considered a hub for hopeful screenwriters. He's already heard from would-be screenwriters as far away as India. The idea of teaching in a global classroom is exciting to him, knowing that these days much of Hollywood's audience and revenue come from markets overseas. "In a class where people of different cultures are interacting with each other, you really are getting a world view of opinions about writing and the movies from people with varied backgrounds." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

Congress votes to raise spending on Defense Department research House passes bill requiring more screening and monitoring of foreign students Journal analyzes the phenomenon of the "academostar" and the questions it raises NEH selects Henry Louis Gates Jr. to deliver Jefferson Lecture Sen. Lieberman distances himself from report decrying campuses' "blame America first" attitude Bill to avert crisis in student-loan program suffers setback in House Trustees contribute $120-million to Bard College, doubling its endowment College in Missouri to cut 11% of employees Unesco plans transnational quality-assurance agency for academe Updates on billion-dollar campaigns at 13 universities  MLA to recognize 16 for outstanding scholarship in language and literature Publisher of free online science journals will charge authors a "processing fee" A longtime television writer offers his own online screenwriting course