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TyLie Shider
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tylie produces hot new web series

6/17/2016

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After consuming an unhealthy amount of 
web series, I was inspired to write The Miseducation of a First Generation College Student. This story navigates the world of the title character, Lavor, as he struggles but finds unconventional ways to pay rent off campus. 

                                                   
​What's a Web Series?
Now many of you are "living under a rock", or at worst in front of a television. So, how do we define web series? A web series is expedited storytelling for the new mind. And whereas many creators are looking to catch the eyes of TV execs with their tightly written addictive stories, they are really creating an innovative way to consume serials that might take-over. 

Will television become extinct? I don't think so. It'll stick around with libraries! Nonetheless everyone's got their main source of entertainment in-hand. 

Watch All You Want
Yes networks are keeping up with our web-driven world by offering online viewing; but it isn't only the platform creators use that makes web series so popular, it's their length. And producers know just how to hook their audience by sometimes uploading three or more episodes at once to encourage binge watching. 

My Vision
If you are familiar with my work, you know I write about the dark stuff. At twenty-seven, I've spent a great deal of my artistic life exploring the emotions we often mask. I wanted the web series to be different. I wanted it to be fun for everyone involved. 

So you can expect to laugh at this dramedy. We are currently shooting at Studio 15 Productions. This loosely autobiographical series is scheduled to premiere this fall on a device you're probably holding.

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the responsible writer

6/17/2016

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It has become apparent to me the influence creative writers have on shaping human perspective, documenting history, and shedding light on world issues. From the documentary-style plays of Anna Deavere Smith (Fires in the Mirror) to the fictional retellings of Lynn Nottage (Ruined) creative writers have proven to be just as serious as their journalistic counterparts. Yes, with a dramatic edge that "21st century" theater patrons could stand for up to two hours, playwrights might be making up for the deficit of empathetic journalism in today's celebrity-centered media in an evening of theater. This subject raises the question: what are we writing for? Do current events like, sex trafficking, war, and civil rights blind our imagination and hinder our ability to create new world views? Since we have influence, should we show people a better way to live instead of a reflection? Or do we continue to raise awareness through our works? What is the writer's responsibility?

August Wilson wrote to document the African diaspora in his famous Pittsburgh Cycle. However, this is not specific to any culture or group of people as there is something happening in every part of the world and to everyone, rich, brown, or poor. Each writer documents the world as he views it; and will successfully tackle sensitive topics that move him. It took me awhile to get this. It took me awhile to become a controlled creative writer. Initially, I was off on a tangent writing from the surface of things. This was before I came to understand my responsibility as a writer.

The first responsibility of a creative writer is to WRITE. Many of us are smothered by the monotony of daily life, but we must find our center and write something down every day. We are really robbing the world if we don't! And with the wildly popular success of the web we have a platform for our work. The second responsibility is to read. We have to know what's going on. No, we aren't going to use headlines as impetus for everything we create, but the more we know, the more relevant and unselfish our work becomes. Thirdly, we should have a writer's mission statement. What are we writing for? This might change seasonally, but it will give us a goal. Even before we start writing the "outline" we should know why we are sitting down to write in the first place. Too often creative writers, renowned, or NOT, allow themselves to fade into oblivion when they convince themselves it's just a hobby and maybe there's something more important to do. There isn't! So come forward, get your mission statement together, and write for a cause. You might be a voice for the unspoken.

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purpose beyond the war

6/15/2016

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​It is Monday, June 13th when I am receiving a text from my ‘fav’ student asking if I’d be in class today. I had been missing-and-actively pursuing career goals outside of the classroom. My plight as an art-educator is struggling to break into the industry amid creating opportunities for student-artists to exercise their gifts. Both callings are equally important to the success of my community and require an enormous amount of energy from my creative soul. At TWENTY8 I am still learning how to balance creative and professional energies so to become a master of my gift and not a slave. However, I’ve had very few perfectly balanced creative or professional experiences. Everything and every work seems to be ever in development; and when something succeeds something almost always fails. It was the beginning of a Monday but the end of a chapter; and I had been working to accept the failure of my career in secondary education.
 
I’m sitting at my desk grafting a blueprint of a new work I’m writing exploring the massacre in Orlando when seven students are bursting through my door! When I immediately order them to behave they are defiant and adamant about surrounding my desk. Then proudly one student hands me a card and another slams cupcake on my desk. Thoroughly moved by their effort to congratulate me on my acceptance to the MFA Dramatic Writing program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, I am thanking them and reading the handwritten notes on the card aloud. Amid three years of what I perceived to be inadequate service my effort to educate was not in vain; And of the hundreds of students I struggled to teach while juggling my artistic pursuits seven returned to wish me good luck and say thank you! Blessed.
 
There has been something oddly spiritual about my experience teaching at my alma mater in inner-city New Jersey. I walk the halls each day shedding the weight of my adolescence here. Here… in this very high-school… I was an overweight introverted poet without a voice or an opportunity to explore my gift of writing. As an educator I am seeing and hearing the gift of my students and wondering why no one saw the talent budding inside of me. The things we (the people) ignore grow. The things we (the people) ignore remember. In remembering, I am faced with the truth about the condition of the inner-city school district.
 
There is a war going on in the inner-city public schools. How big is the war? The war is enormous! It starts in the home… crippling the hopes of every mother… and crippling the dreams of every father. Then it creeps into our school districts… stifling the minds of our scholars. The war is poverty… and its rapid progression from one generation to the next is seeking to stagnate what it cannot corrupt. The war is propaganda in the media, music, and entertainment our scholars consume… and it is seeking to contaminate and define their identity. My students are in this war. I was in this war. The war against the inner-city suffocates purpose until one discovers information about himself. We have to get information and get it to our scholars. What is the information we need? This cupcake/card is telling me I got information to seven students who will continue to pursue their craft of acting. When there is purpose beyond the war we are victorious even when it looks like we’ve failed.
 
 


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When the past crashes into the present

6/14/2016

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Straight Outta Comptonhas received some negative criticism for its heroic depiction of the movie's ensemble cast. Amid naysayers, the movie has also hit box office records grossing over $100 million worldwide. 

This epic retelling of the rise and fall of hip hop's breakthrough rap group, NWA, has been finely trimmed to inform, entertain, and inspire the aging generation of the group's fans, and their children. Rising stars: Jason Mitchell (Eazy E), O'Shea Jackson Jr. (Ice Cube), and Corey Hawkins (Dr. Dre), all deliver gritty performances navigating the group member's lives on and off stage.

At the onset of the film, we meet our title characters in the underserved community of Compton, CA. Each member is traveling the same road differently. From then we are watching skillful screenwriters (Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman) weave the life of a hustler, DJ, and lyricist together in about one act. 

The group is formed and funded by what seems to be illegal money until the "white heroic" character, played empathetically by Paul Giamatti, offers them a life altering opportunity to sign with his apparently archaic record company. At first the deal seems sweet, but the demon in the music industry quickly rears its ugly head, and the group members separate to launch solo careers.

Before this movie, the history of NWA might have been restricted to their fans, and lovers of hip-hop. But in the hands of F. Gary Gray, film director who began his career making music videos, their history is now American history we can no longer ignore or erase. 

The story speaks of America's problems today. Leaping over cultural biases it explores the universal themes of friendship, ambition, and even discrimination. 

But why the film's depiction of police brutality is not just history opens the floor for an entirely different discussion. 

This is just a review. Go see Straight Outta Compton while you still have time.

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How to Tell You’re Watching a Great Film

6/14/2016

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It is the end of my work week and I am sitting at my computer when I remember filmmaker Tahir Jetter’s Instagram post reading: Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) will give an additional screening of his film How to Tell You’re a Douchebag, a romantic comedy and Sundance success. 

As a recently admitted NYU Tisch School of the Arts graduate student, I am ambitious to follow the work of alumni. And so after a very brief mental conversation about toll cost, I purchased two tickets to bring the one person in my life who would tell me if I was a douchebag. My wife!

We arrive at the theater early enough to meet Jetter who seems to be a down-to-earth guy with a keen sense of character. The screening is held in Cinema3, an archaic room with colorful seating. We scuffle to find center top row seats just as Jetter enters to snap a photo of the crowd on his smartphone. The film is introduced, Jetter mutters something comedic about ‘assholes’ when given the opportunity to describe his film, the audience laughs and the house lights fade.

The film opens to introduce Ray Livingston (Charles Brice), a writer who seems to be having bad luck with work and women. It continues to sketch the dysfunctional behavior of a broken-hearted dude in his twenties as he indulges in malt-liquor and one-sided relationships with apparently clueless females.

In my opinion, until we meet the very familiar independent black woman Rochelle, played convincingly by DeWanda Wise, this film could be offensive to women in the way the film adaptation of Terry McMillan’s novel Waiting to Exhale was to men in the 90’s. After a chance encounter Ray and Rochelle develop a messy relationship that quickly spirals into a brilliantly crafted authentic end.

Like many of the NYU ‘grads’ indie films I have seen, the story is set in Brooklyn. The city becomes an essential character over the course of the film as it is shot to provide a picturesque backdrop of its diversity and culture.

 From the onset the film is really an ode to social media and the detriments it has had on romantic relationships. Today we only need to hit ‘share’ to break a heart or damage a reputation.

With the power media and film has to exploit and shape public opinion, one can only applaud Jetter for creating affluent characters and expanding the narrative of black life in the21st century. Though I am not convinced Ray Livingston was a douchebag, BUT we do not always see our flaws in the mirror.

Check out the film’s website www.howtotellyoureadouchebag.com to catch a screening!

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Where’s the rest of it? Stories about black life in the inner-city.

6/14/2016

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“Where’s the rest of it?” is a line of dialogue from my web-series I thought would work as a title for this blog because I am asking Hollywood the same question about the stories it produces about inner-city black youth.

My web-series, the Miseducation of a First Generation College Student, is a dramedy that navigates the struggles of an inner-city first generation college student through the fictional character Lavor, but is a semi-autobiographical retelling of my experience(s) in undergrad. I attended the historically black college Delaware State University in Dover where I met a variety of interesting characters who I will try to recreate in the series. Although more importantly I believe being the first in my immediate family to attend college introduced some unique and oftentimes laughable learning curves suitable for dramatic storytelling.

Whereas Hollywood will produce inner-city stories about black males the narrative is limited. And this is why I want to tell my story. From John Singleton’s ‘Boyz n the Hood’ (1991) to Rick Famuyiwa’s ‘Dope’ (2015) a single parent struggling to raise an incredibly gifted athlete or genius who gets caught in a drug war is only part of the inner-city reality. As there are many two-parent homes struggling to raise children who never interact with drugs or gangs but must still overcome the challenges of their impoverished communities. There are different options in the ‘hood’. There are different people. There are different stories, problems, fates, and solutions. The drug dealer lives next door to someone who is devoutly religious and, though economically deprived, they are refusing to live morally corrupt; and next door to this staunchly religious neighbor there is someone different. And so if there is variety in the ghetto it should be reflected in the stories we tell. Otherwise we continue to glorify one part of the ghetto and what message does that send?
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Dope was an amazingly well-crafted film but there could have been another obstacle in the main character’s life besides a bag of drugs. He could have had a father in the house and still struggled to get out of his poverty stricken neighborhood. There are entire families in the ghetto. There are blended families in the ghetto. We have to look at this. We have to know why Hollywood continues to produce stories about our inner-city youth from broken homes that involve the selling of drugs. Film is a powerful medium that helps to shape the identity of today’s youth.
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It is difficult to defy the stereotypes mainstream media adamantly continues to produce. My web-series is one story about an inner-city black male who comes from a struggling two-parent home. He is not an athlete. He represents the ‘other’ part of the inner-city that successfully avoids selling narcotics. We love John Singleton. We love Dope; but we need to tell the rest of our story. The drug dealer is NOT the main character in every ghetto and some of us lived in two-parent homes. All of these images are important because we want to see the truth, but when part of the truth escapes us we remain ignorant about our diversity and potential.
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    Tylie Shider is an award winning Dramatist and Art Educator/Activist. 

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