WGA - Animation Writers Caucus

11/26/2024

Don't know who's still reading this but...

Has anyone written a feature-length script (theatrical or TV or direct-to-video) for a Japanese studio/producer? One intended for use in Japan? I have a couple questions.

Thanks,
Craig Miller

Send a message to learn more

10/24/2024

As I've mentioned before, when I was 13 years old, Ray Bradbury told me about a science fiction club he thought I should join. He'd been a member since he was a teenager. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. It's been meeting weekly since 1934. Every Thursday night.

I joined a few months after getting Ray's recommendation. And I've been a member ever since. (One of the club's mottos is "Death Will Not Release You". Once you join, you're always considered a member. But I actually attend regularly, though not every week.)

TONIGHT, Thursday the 24th, the meeting will start at 8:00 pm and I'll be the program following the main meeting.

I'll be reading selections from my new book, "More Movie Memories". (They've had me do readings from "Star Wars Memories" a few times over the past couple of years.) Depending on time, this will include a selection or two from each of the sections of the book: Star Wars stories, Marketing Genre Films of the '80s, and Writing for Television.

These days the LASFS meets every week over Zoom (with one hybrid meeting a month in person at a restaurant).

Tonight is one of the all-Zoom meetings.

The link for the Zoom is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82574832548

PLEASE NOTE: It is password protected and they don't want the password posted publicly. To get the password, go to the club's page https://www.facebook.com/LosAngelesScienceFantasySociety and send a message requesting the password. Or you can text me and I'll give it to you privately.

I apologize that this is so complicated. As the LASFS says on its page, "This has become necessary due to trolls. We love new visitors, but not people who are here to disrupt meetings and make the monkies dance."

Hope to see you there tonight.

09/28/2024

Coming up next weekend at the L.A. Convention Center is L.A. Comic Con. (This convention has gone through a few names over the years, including Comikaze Expo and Stan Lee's L.A. Comic Con.)

I'll be doing two program items, both on Saturday. One of them is my talk based on my book "Star Wars Memories". The other is a panel about writing animation.

While they provided me with a table last year, this year I don't have one. I know real estate is tight but if anyone has a table there and wouldn't mind letting me have a small piece of it Saturday afternoon to sign my books after my program items, I'd really appreciate.

Saturday, 12:00-1:00
Star Wars Memories
Craig Miller, Lucasfilm's original Director of Fan Relations, gives a slide show on the early days of Lucasfilm and marketing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back to fandom and the rest of the world. Including stories about 20th Century Fox's market research on making Star Wars, George Lucas's original explanation for the Millennium Falcon's 12 parsec Kesel Run, picking Leigh Brackett to write The Empire Strikes Back, the wrap party Carrie Fisher threw, Underwear That’s Fun To Wear, taking Droids to Sesame Street, and more.
Room 304AB

Saturday, 1:30-2:30
Writing for TV Animation: Myths and Realities
Can you really write ANYTHING! because you don't have to worry about budget? How is writing for animation the same and different from writing live-action? What works in one that doesn't work in the other? Are there differences between writing for 2D versus 3D animation? Experienced animation writers answer your questions. Craig Miller, Kirk Kushin, Bob Skir, Charlotte Fullerton, Len Uhley
Room 404AB

Join us October 4th, 5th, and 6th for Los Angeles' ultimate destination for comics, gaming, cosplay, anime, and pop culture!

07/12/2024

San Diego Comic-Con has now posted its program schedule for Thursday and Friday. They post it, day by day, starting two weeks in advance of the convention. (Gasp! It's now less than two weeks until Comic-Con.) And since my program items are on Thursday and Friday, I can now publicly post what I'll be doing at the convention.

With "More Movie Memories" now out, I'll have a table at Comic-Con in the Small Press area of the exhibit hall. K-13 is the designated location. If the room's layout is the same as last year, it's on the outer row of Small Press.

I'll be selling and signing copies of both "More Movie Memories" and "Star Wars Memories". SWM is still $25 (for now) and MMM is $30, due to increased production costs. But I'll be selling it to anyone who buys both (or has already bought "Star Wars Memories") for $25.

"More Movie Memories" is one-third more tales from my time with Lucasfilm (including how and why I had a character’s name changed, the line of dialogue I came up with that’s in the film, and who was Star Wars’ Secret Weapon), another third about the films I worked on after leaving Lucasfilm (like Superman II, Altered States, The Thing, The Dark Crystal, The Last Starfighter, Return to Oz, Krull, The Muppets Take Manhattan, Splash, and more), and the final third on my “second career” as a television writer (on animated shows like The Real Ghostbusters, The Smurfs, Curious George, G.I. Joe, Transformers: Beast Wars, as well as shows for China, France, Italy, and Dubai and live-action series like Murder, She Wrote and Showtime’s The Hunger).

I'll also have a bunch of miscellaneous Star Wars collectibles for sale. Items I've had for 40+ years that turned up as I cleared out my storage areas during the pandemic. One of the photos here is a poster I'll have at the table, showing some of the items I'll have available.

And I'll be doing two talks, on on each of my books.

Thursday, 25 July, 11:30-12:30
Marketing Movies & Writing Cartoons
Craig Miller, whose Hollywood career dates back to working on the original Star Wars, tells tales of marketing genre films of the 1980s like Superman II, The Thing, Krull, The Dark Crystal, The Last Starfighter, The Black Cauldron, and more, as well as writing animation ranging from Curious George and The Smurfs to The Real Ghostbusters to G.I. Joe and Beast Wars.
Room 29CD

Friday, 26 July, 12:00-1:00
Star Wars Memories
Craig Miller, Lucasfilm's original Director of Fan Relations, gives a slide show on the early days of Lucasfilm and marketing Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back to fandom and the rest of the world. Including stories about 20th Century Fox's market research on making Star Wars, George Lucas's original explanation for the Millennium Falcon's 12 parsec Kesel Run, picking Leigh Brackett to write The Empire Strikes Back, the wrap party Carrie Fisher threw, Underwear That’s Fun To Wear, taking Droids to Sesame Street, and more.
Room 7AB

Hope to see you at the convention.

07/10/2024

WooHoo!!

Copies of "More Movie Memories" have arrived!

04/18/2024

Mirabile dictu! I've finished writing "More Movie Memories", the follow-up to my other book, "Star Wars Memories".

When I was first planning this book, it was going to be about the movies I worked on after I left Lucasfilm. Movies like "Superman II", "Altered States", "The Thing", "The Dark Crystal", "The Last Starfighter", "The Muppets Take Manhattan", and more. But what with pandemic de-cluttering of my office and storage areas, a lot of things turned up I didn't know I still had.

So now the book is in three sections. About one-third is more Star Wars anecdotes, the second third is about the post-Lucasfilm movies I worked on, and the final third is about the last 30+ years I've been writing animation and live-action.

I'm starting to send out a few copies to people I hope will provide me with quotes for the book's publicity. And, with luck, the book will be out just in time for San Diego Comic-Con this summer.

07/07/2023

San Diego Comic-Con is coming up in less than two weeks. How did it get to be July already? Scary.

Officially it's name is Comic-Con International: San Diego these days but it's had a few different names. It actually started in 1970 as a one-day event, Golden State Comic Book Convention, and has since grown and changed to become a major touchstone for both the comic book industry and genre entertainment in general. So much so that, for at least a couple years, Entertainment Weekly magazine was doing special Comic-Con issues. (I was interviewed for one of them about how we were the first movie company to promote a film at Comic-Con with Star Wars.)

Yeah, yeah, I know. You think there's nothing about comics at Comic-Con anymore, grumble, grumble. You're completely wrong. There's likely a lot more than there used to be. Certainly the program is filled with comics topics. Looking at just Friday at noon, when one of my program items is taking place, there are 17 program items starting then. Ten of them are comics panels. Another couple are about Fandom topics, so they're at least peripherally about comics. There are still quite a few comics dealers in the exhibit hall. Comics publishers big and small have booths (which they didn't in the early years). And Artists' Alley is certainly comics related, just as much as it was in the earliest days of Comic-Con. It's just that now there are *also* a lot of exhibitors who aren't back-issue comic dealers. Toy companies. Game companies. Movie & TV companies. (And tell the truth, how much business would you be giving those comic dealers?)

Comics hasn't gone away; there's just a lot of other stuff as well.

As I'll be reminding you in the coming days, I'll be there throughout the convention. With a table for the first time since I started attending in 1974. (I was supposed to have a table last year but, just a few days before the con started, I came down with covid and had to cancel.)

Table K-13 in Small Press, where I'll be selling and signing copies of "Star Wars Memories" and a number of small collectibles come back from 30+ years in my storage areas. Original 1976 May The Force Be With You Buttons (in English and in Spanish), embroidered patches given to crew members, stickers like the famous "triangle" sticker we used on Star Wars and the Vader in Flames sticker from The Empire Strikes Back, set passports, etc.

Details on my program items coming up.

01/19/2022

Every year, the WGA and the AWC gives out the Animation Writing Award. It's essentially a life-career award.

For 2021, the award is going to the writing team of Mark McCorkle & Bob Schooley "for their distinguished careers in the field of Animation".

McCorkle & Schooley are best known for creating, writing and executive producing Disney Channel's Emmy Award-winning global hit series Kim Possible. They also executive produced both television movies based on the series: Kim Possible: A Sitch in Time and Kim Possible Movie: So the Drama.

Both McCorkle and Schooley have made successful careers out of adapting relatable movie characters and stories into hit series, including the multiple Emmy, Bafta and Annie Award-winning Penguins of Madagascar, Monsters vs. Aliens, Disney’s Hercules, and Disney’s Aladdin: The Series. They have also taken their talents to the big screen, earning screenwriter credits for Hotel for Dogs and Sky High. Additional writing credits include Disney's Aladdin and the King of Thieves, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, and Tinker Bell and the Legend of the NeverBeast.

The Award Ceremony is normally held in November and, alas, for the last couple years it's been a virtual gathering. For scheduling reasons, this year's ceremony was postponed until... tonight.

WGA and Animation Writers Caucus members should have received email a couple weeks ago with details. If you didn't receive it and want to "attend", please email for the Zoom information.

11/16/2020

Each year, the WGA Board of Directors and the Animation Writers Caucus present the Animation Writing Award, "given to that member of the Animation Writers Caucus and/or the Guild who, in the opinion of the Board of Directors, has advanced the literature of animation in film and/or television through the years and who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of the animation writer".

Normally, this award is presented as part of the AWC's Annual Meeting held at the WGA building. Such a gathering is impossible in this time of covid but the meeting and award presentation will take place virtually. (Sorry, no hors d'oeuvres or bar provided.)

The event will take place on Tuesday, November 24th at 7:00 pm. Marv Wolfman will be presenting the award. If you're interested in "attending", please RSVP to [email protected] for the link.

You can find the details at this link. https://www.wga.org/messagewebview?tempName=AWC%20Award%20Invite%202020

03/13/2020

The WGA has cancelled/postponed all non-essential meetings and gatherings. In keeping with that policy, the Animation Writers Caucus will temporarily cease holding our Schmooze Dinners. There won't be one in March. We'll assess on a month-by-month basis going forward and will announce when the dinners resume.

We're sorry to do this but, of course, everyone's health and safety comes first.

02/20/2020

Ash Wednesday falls on the 26th this month and those of you who fast can break it with us at the Corner Bakery (La Cienega between 3rd and Beverly in the Beverly Connection) for this month's installment of the WGA Animation Writers Caucus Schmooze Dinner.

Our Guest Speaker this month is Robert N. (Bob) Skir.

Writer, Story Editor, Series Creator, and sole survivor of a now-dead planet, ROBERT N. SKIR has written tons of TV animation on a wide variety of shows featuring mutants, gargoyles, mutant gargoyles, a mischievous Ghost-With-The-Most, and in one case, Muppets. He also served as a story editor on a Godzilla animated series, a CGI Transformer series that earned him a coveted Fatwah Award*, and a show based on the single most successful toy line on the planet that you've never heard of.

And that was just the first ten years.

Since 2002, Bob has been teaching at UCLA's School Of Theater, Film, Television, & Digital Arts. He has enjoyed nurturing young talent, and giving them a full appreciation of traditional 3-act structure.

Exploring new worlds, or at least streaming services, Bob has written on the Netflix series, The Adventures Of Tarzan And Jane, featuring the first-ever team up between Tarzan and King Kong! He also wrote on all three seasons of Netflix's hugely successful original series Super Monsters.

Exploring new countries, Bob has recently written an animated feature film currently in production in China.

Bob's current project, GoGoBus & Team Steam combines STEM-based curriculum with action, adventure, and lots of humor (including the occasional Benny Hill gag.)

Writing animation, and teaching the next generation of animation professionals, has been a really, really good time.

Now about that Fatwah...

* not actually an award, it turns out.

The "Schmooze" is open to anyone interested in animation writing. But because space is limited, you MUST RSVP by noon on the day of the event by email to [email protected].

Parking is available in the Beverly Connection parking structure for $1/hour. The Corner Bakery does not validate.

01/26/2020

It's a new year and the AWC Schmooze Dinners are back.

We're returning to Coral Cafe on Burbank Bl (just east of Hollywood Way) on Wednesday the 29th. 7:00 pm gathering with our guest speaker starting at 8:00.

This month's guest is Asalle Tanha.

Asalle is the Director of Development for Cartoon Network’s Original Series department, working to find and develop new original shows.

At Cartoon Network, she has developed such series as Victor and Valentino, Craig of the Creek, Apple & Onion, and the newly announced Tig n’ Seek and The Fungies.

Asalle began her career in Pixar’s Story department. She holds a BA in Classical Civilizations from UC Berkeley and an MSc from the London School of Economics in Media and Communications. Outside of work, Asalle loves to ride horses.

Space is limited. You *must* RSVP to [email protected] by noon on the day of the event.