The Mercury has announced the creation of a writers’ room, made possible with a generous donation from screenwriter and showrunner Shane Brennan.
Shane Brennan is an Australian television writer and producer best known as the Executive Producer of the worldwide hit police drama NCIS, as well as the creator of the NCIS spin-off NCIS: Los Angeles
The Mercury’s relaunch as a screen community hub includes the offer of a monthly subscription for budding filmmakers, offering year-round access to screenings, workshops and upgraded filmmaker facilities, including a production office, edit suite, colour grade room, sound editing and mixing suite and now a purpose-built writers’ room.
“The Mercury will be in a position to take emerging filmmakers from script to screen, giving valuable time to the development of screenwriting, and paying professional screenwriters as mentors to give stories the attention they merit, in line with industry standards,” said interim general manager Lisa Bishop.
Donor Shane Brennan said, “The plans for The Mercury sound promising and I was impressed with the idea of facilitating Australian Writers’ Guild members to work with emerging screenwriters. Having a supportive filmmaking environment like The Mercury gives stories the best chance of getting to the screen, particularly as writing for screen is never an end in itself.”
Mr Brennan also serves as President of the Australian Writers’ Guild, the professional and industrial association for Australian performance writers, whose vision it is to improve rights and opportunities so that screen and stage writers may thrive as a dynamic and integral part of Australian storytelling.
The Mercury will run weekly writing consultations for filmmakers who have draft scripts and story ideas. Coupled with this will be a monthly Script Club, along the lines of book club concept.
For more information about becoming a Mercury subscriber and accessing the new facilities and workshops, visit the Mercury website.
For more news about opportunities for local screenmakers delivered direct to your inbox, subscribe to the C44 newsletter!
Cover image by Adrian Hernandez on Unsplash
