Genre Theory and Writing the Pilot

This course will examine the concept and theory of genre as it applies to well-known television and film forms, with an emphasis placed on authoring creative works within and beyond the confines of specific genres.

In conjunction with this, the ongoing development of the students individual TV pilots, a component of the Capstone project, will be supervised and guided on a one-on-one basis.

Instructor: William Rabkin

Professor Rabkin has written and/or produced hundreds of hours of dramatic television, serving as showrunner on the CBS series Diagnosis Murder and Martial Law. His writing and producing credits include The Glades, Monk, Psych, Nero Wolfe, Missing, Spenser: For Hire, seaQuest 2032, Hunter and The Cosby Mysteries. He has also written a dozen network TV pilots and is currently writing feature films and TV series in China.

His work has been nominated twice for the Edgar Award for best television episode by the Mystery Writers of America. He has written two books on writing for television, Successful Television Writing (2003), with Lee Goldberg, and Writing The Pilot (2011) and has consulted on television writing and production in China, Singapore, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Brazil and the Netherlands.