nickelodeon fellowship

Call for Entries: The Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship

Nickelodeon is offering writing fellowships in live action and animated television to culturally and ethnically diverse, new writers. Participants will have hands-on experience writing spec scripts and pitching story ideas.

The program, developed to broaden Nickelodeon's outreach efforts, provides a salaried position for up to one year. The '07 - '08 cycle is tentatively scheduled to begin in October 2007.

The Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship Program is designed to broaden its outreach efforts in order to attract, develop and staff – new, experienced, culturally and ethnically diverse writing talent on Nickelodeon Network productions.

The Fellowship provides a salaried position for up to one year and offers hands-on experience writing spec scripts, pitching story ideas, attending storyboard pitches and table reads, in both live action and animation television.

The Fellowship operates in a three-phase structure over a one year period. The audition phase (phase one) last six weeks and allows each of the chosen fellows to write one spec script. The fellow’s writing talent and progress is evaluated to determine if they are qualified to remain in the program.

The development phase (phase two) lasts ten weeks and again each fellow writes one spec script. In addition, they are integrated into the activities of the production/development department. Each fellow is assigned to a team that consists of two executives (one from live action and one from animation), a manager or coordinator and an assistant. The manager or coordinator functions as the point person on the team, and the assistants maintain the schedules. This approach allows the fellows an opportunity to attend storyboard pitches, notes meetings, records, table reads, show pitches and show tapings, all while being exposed to top creators and key production crews.

During the placement phase (phase three), the fellow will spend the remainder of their time in the program – thirty four weeks. They will write another spec script and pitch one original idea.
This three-phase structure allows the fellow an opportunity to come in contact with creators, network executives, line producers, head writers, showrunners, story editors, etc.

As part of their script writing, each fellow will be assigned to an on-air show and have an opportunity to write a spec script for that show all while working with the Executive in Charge of Production.

The next submission period runs from January 2 - February 28, 2007. Applications and submission guidelines are available at http://www.nickwriting.com/.