Screen writing, music biz connections

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This article was published 12/06/2020 (1940 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Learning about the many ways to make a living as a writer, and how to make connections in the music industry were two of the lessons learned by high school students in a youth mentorship program hosted by Creative Manitoba.

“Adults tend to promote writing as a tool, but never as a career,” Vanessa Matsubara said of the experience. “In the course of the class, we met so many people who are doing this, from a playwright to a poet, a graphic novelist and a book publisher.”

Matsubara is a Grade 12 student at Vincent Massey Collegiate who intends to pursue a career in screen writing. She transferred from Kelvin High this year, attracted by Massey’s video production classes. She’s written scripts for a couple of short films, and has been taking classes in film making, including the film making class last year with Creative Manitoba’s youth mentorship program. She is enrolled in the media studies program at the University of British Columbia this fall.

“Our teacher, Carolyn Gray, brought in amazing mentors who are from Manitoba. We heard how they get their works published or put on stage,” Matsubara said.

Gray said she found this year’s group of a dozen students to be excellent writers. The students set themselves the task of collaborating on a book with a world disaster theme, that they expect to publish at McNally Robinson once the self-publishing function opens again, she said.

“We did a number of writing exercises, and quite a few would have extra stories they wanted critiques on. They’re very keen to learn,” Gray said. “I taught theatre for many years, including as an instructor at MTYP, and am used to getting large groups to collaborate on projects. Seeing the students create a world with good and evil and ghosts and such for their writing project, and then work together was amazing. Their books will be called Collisions.”

Claire Boning co-mentored the class on the music business with Ashley Au. Boning has been part of the Manitoba Music team since 2017 and also plays drums in touring bands. Au plays upright bass, and is a composer, sound artist, arranger, and queer creative.

“We managed to have three in-class lessons at Manitoba Music before the pandemic,” Boning said. “Then we moved online. Sadly, we dropped from nine students down to four to six who had time in their busy schedules. While we were supposed to stop at the end of May, we’re still going for the next couple of weeks.”

Boning and Au have been bringing in guest speakers to talk about aspects of the music business in Winnipeg, including jobs in marketing, publicity, home studio recording, production, stage management, and artist management.

“For example, Grace Hrabi talked about booking shows and festivals. Alexa Dirks (Begonia) and Andrina Turenne talked about songwriting. Roman Clarke talked about home recording and Paul Yee took them on a virtual tour of the Stereobus studio,” Boning said. “By connecting the youth to these people, we’re hoping to help them set up internships or get a job in the music industry.”

Ethan Lyric is a Grade 11 student at Glenlawn Collegiate who is interested in what small artists can do for themselves. He’s been playing music for years, writing folk songs, including three songs he has streaming on Spotify.

“The class was supposed to end in a showcase of musical talent and show production,” Lyric said. “But instead, our mentors brought in people who talked about their experiences. It was interesting to hear from a movie music supervisor who works in Los Angeles, about picking the songs that go into films. It seems that’s part of their job, and the rest is negotiating rights and other legal stuff.”

Lyric learned how to promote himself and how to get his music onto blogs written by people who track who is who in the music industry.

For more on the youth mentorship programs with Creative Manitoba, see creativemanitoba.ca