Diverse Storytelling in digit­al short form series, by spring 2024 in its second edi­tion, aimed at a empower­ing emer­ging writers from under­rep­res­en­ted groups to cre­ate impact­ful digit­al short-form con­tent. From April to May 2024, under the lead­er­ship of Corinne Le Hong, the par­ti­cipants received tar­geted train­ing in Writers’ Room col­lab­or­a­tion, seri­al storytelling, and short-form stream­ing series devel­op­ment, learn­ing from estab­lished pro­fes­sion­als across the European and inter­na­tion­al tele­vi­sion industry. Exper­i­enced dram­at­urges and writers like Kat­rin Merkel (Seri­al Eyes Head of Stud­ies), Stefanie Ren (A THIN LINE), Vic So Hee Alz (DRUCK, PARA), and oth­ers offered dram­at­ur­gic­al insights on par­ti­cipants’ pilot epis­odes. The online writers’ room ses­sions allowed the six inter­na­tion­al screen­writers an intens­ive peri­od of hands-on exper­i­ence. They developed a web series of 6x6 epis­odes in Eng­lish which they pitched togeth­er as a group in June 2024.

The work­shop was espe­cially tar­geted at par­ti­cipants com­ing from BiPOC and LGB­TIAQ* communities:

• Dav­id Ben­tigui (Austria/​Ivory Coast)
• Theo Boguslaw (Sweden/​Poland)
• Letí­cia Fudis­saku (Brazil)
• Roshane McField (Cay­man Islands/​Jamaica)
• Zero Pil­nik (Brazil/​Germany)
• Maj Weid­lich (Ger­many)

The cur­riculum was put togeth­er under the lead­er­ship of the writer-dir­ect­or Corinne Le Hong, who mon­itored the ses­sions closely and dir­ec­ted the online writer­’s rooms ses­sions. Diverse Mas­ter classes and case stud­ies by seasoned dram­at­urgs and screen­writers roun­ded off the curriculum:

• Corinne Le Hong, Head of the Pro­gram & Lead­er­ship of the vir­tu­al Writers Room
• Vic So Hee Alz, Break­ing down Gender Ste­reo­types in Film and Series & Rep­res­ent­a­tion vs. Repro­duc­tion of Viol­ence in Film and Series
• Yashar Alishen­as, HAP­PI­NESS – a Case Study of the first French-Ira­ni­an Webseries
• Joel Bas­saget, Best Prac­tices in Dis­tri­bu­tion, Fest­ivals and Com­munit­ies of Digit­al Short Form Series
• Nora Bendzko & Judith Vogt, Writ­ing from the Margins
• Han­no Hack­fort & Bob Kon­rad, How to Work as a West­ern Kartoffel
• Kat­rin Merkel, Intro­duc­tion to Seri­al Storytelling & Intro­duc­tion to the US Writers’ Room System
• Stefanie Ren, How to become a Head­writer of a Stream­er Show
• Freya Stew­art, Ana­lyze This! A Deep­er Look at Per­spect­ive in Storytelling
• Toni Weiss, Pitchtrain­ing Storyselling