Seminar
Legally Speaking – The Law and the Writer
Presented by Ivan Hoffman

Saturday, August 19, 2006

If you are an author, writer or publisher of any sort, whether of books, via the Internet, games, or any other kind of publisher, intellectual property laws affect you very directly.

Indeed, you are in the intellectual property rights business even though your product or service may be a book or other format.

Knowing your rights and obligations when it comes to the complexity of intellectual property law is thus essential. Instructor Ivan Hoffman is a lawyer and copyright expert who teaches in plain English and from an entrepreneurial point of view.

This seminar is designed to give an overview of the laws of copyright, trademark, contracts, and other issues related to publishing and writing. It includes information on how those laws and issues have been impacted and modified by the Internet, as well as the business and entrepreneurship issues related to writing and publishing.

Ivan Hoffman is a publishing, copyright, Internet, trademark, and music law attorney, practicing for over 31 years. He practices in the Los Angeles area. His website, IvanHoffman.com, has already won eight Prestigious Web Site Awards for the hundreds of articles posted on the site dealing with law.

Seminar
Rewriting Secrets For Screenwriters

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Get me rewrite! Screen scribe Tom Lazarus, author of Secrets of Film Writing and former IWOSC panelist, is back with a new book, Rewriting Secrets for Screenwriters: Seven Strategies to Improve and Sell Your Work.

One of the important, if not the most important, parts of screenwriting is rewriting. Rewriting Secrets offers a comprehensive strategy for rewriting, some examples of actual rewrites, some hair-raising stories about nightmare rewrites, and a lot more — including a forward by Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Scott Frank.

Every screenwriter needs to rewrite — more than once, probably many times — to make the story work and then to make a sale. And then again later on, to please producers, studios, or stars. Lazarus — author of Stigmata, among other scripts — is a working screenwriter and teaches the Advanced Screenwriting Workshop at UCLA Extension. In this book, he’s distilled his own experience and that of other screenwriters into a system, in a book that is laced with humor and attitude as well as practical information.

How to Tell a Poem and Other Solo Acts: A performance workshop
with Deborah Edler Brown

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Poets and writers take such care with words; you edit, massage and repeat them until a plain collection of letters and spaces embodies a place, a time, a person on the page. But all too often, when you read the piece aloud, something goes flat. The writer speaks the words but never draws the listener into the poem or story.

How to Tell a Poem will teach you how to release the piece from the page. This workshop is not about memorizing and microphones; it is about using your words, your voice and your imagination to enter the world of the work. It is about getting out of the way so that the poem or story can speak for itself.

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet and journalist, performer and storyteller, author and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in three anthologies, as well as in various journals such as Nimrod and Kalliope. She is a reporter for Time magazine and co-author of “Grandparents as Parents: A Survival Guide to Raising a Second Family” [Guilford Press, 1995.] As a performer, Deborah tells poems and stories in theaters, libraries, bookstores and bars across the country. She was the 1997 Head-to-Head Haiku Champion and a member of the 1998 Los Angeles National Poetry Slam Team. She holds a degree in Creative Writing from Brown University and is the 2005 recipient of the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize. Deborah also teaches private writing workshops in Los Angeles.

How to Tell a Poem and Other Solo Acts: A performance workshop
with Deborah Edler Brown

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Poets and writers take such care with words; you edit, massage and repeat them until a plain collection of letters and spaces embodies a place, a time, a person on the page. But all too often, when you read the piece aloud, something goes flat. The writer speaks the words but never draws the listener into the poem or story.

How to Tell a Poem will teach you how to release the piece from the page. This workshop is not about memorizing and microphones; it is about using your words, your voice and your imagination to enter the world of the work. It is about getting out of the way so that the poem or story can speak for itself.

Deborah Edler Brown is an award-winning poet and journalist, performer and storyteller, author and teacher. Her poetry has appeared in three anthologies, as well as in various journals such as Nimrod and Kalliope. She is a reporter for Time magazine and co-author of “Grandparents as Parents: A Survival Guide to Raising a Second Family” [Guilford Press, 1995.] As a performer, Deborah tells poems and stories in theaters, libraries, bookstores and bars across the country. She was the 1997 Head-to-Head Haiku Champion and a member of the 1998 Los Angeles National Poetry Slam Team. She holds a degree in Creative Writing from Brown University and is the 2005 recipient of the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Prize. Deborah also teaches private writing workshops in Los Angeles.

Success Secrets of the Super Successful

“What I’ve learned about success representing the biggest stars in the world” – a workshop with celebrated media expert Michael Levine

Saturday, May 19, 2006

Whether you’re opening a pizza parlor in Peoria or trying to forge a successful career penning powerful prose (or poetry), successful people have traits in common. Is there something in their DNA? Can it be learned? Or is it a combination of both —  the nature vs. nurture argument.

You will get information and inspiration here that you can’t get anyplace else. Plus, expect an extensive Q&A session.

Media expert and public relations agency founder Michael Levine is the author of 17 books, including “Guerilla PR,” said to be the best-selling and most widely used introduction to PR book of all time. He is an industry expert who is frequently called upon by national media to provide PR insight into topical news and events.

As the founder of LCO (Levine Communications Office, founded in 1983), Levine has managed or overseen PR campaigns for leading personalities and corporations, such as Barbra Streisand, Charlton Heston, Robert Evans, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Nike, Sharp, and Pizza Hut. LCO has secured national and international results in virtually all major media outlets, including CNN, The Today Show, MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight, BBC, The New York Times, The London Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, Rolling Stone, MTV, and Vanity Fair.

LCO publishes the online newsletter LBN News, with a daily circulation of 147,000 “influencers” throughout the U.S. and other countries. In addition, Levine writes a column, “My Town,” that appears weekly in the newspaper Entertainment Today. He has also written numerous articles and Op Ed pieces for newspapers and magazines.