Personal Managers Association
Dear Agents
Ollie Kent from the BBC contacted me yesterday as a member of the PMA Long Running Series Committee. He wanted to outline the current situation at Eastenders and the fact that they may not be able to adhere strictly to one of our new best practise guidelines which covers script alterations. This is due to what sounds like a difficult transition period now that the exec Sean O’Connor has left. He told me that this would be a temporary situation.
He said that that because of the extraordinary pressures on production at the moment, it’s likely that many 3rd draft scripts will have and any necessary tweaks and amendments, written in-house, to enable those scripts to be ready for production. They are proposing that it would be core writers, in-consultation with the in-house editorial staff, who will make those changes and that the scripts will be sent back to the original writers for their approval and consultation. He assured me that it’s not about script editors pulling scripts away from writers and re-writing. He says that the story-lining process is very squeezed at the moment and therefore they have less time available for each script to reach a production draft. Therefore the final production polish has to be done at an unusually accelerated speed. He said that the writers will be treated humanely and kindly during this process and it is just a measure that they have to exercise temporarily to get them out of a hole. He says that nobody should feel threatened by this process and that it is not a reflection on the writers. He also made assurances that no writers, especially new writers, would be judged on their abilities during this time and that writers must feel free to talk to production at any time about this.
He said that when the story-lining process is back on track, then the process will go back to normal. Ollie hopes that will be in 3 months time. He says that he wanted agents to know what was happening and why they are doing this. He also made it clear that people are free to call him and talk to him about it if they want more clarity.
It’s not an ideal situation, but Ollie wanted to make sure that agents were informed about these changes in advance. If you have any questions or comments you’re welcome to get in touch with me and I can pass them on, or if you’d rather, Ollie is happy for agents to contact him directly.
All Best
Julie Press
Kitson Press Associates