Tulane Ed. Conf. 2004: Producing a Weekly TV Series

From the 51st Annual Tulane Educational Conference - January 31, 2004

"Producing a Weekly TV Series" - Get the inside track on behind-the-scenes production of four-plus decades of TV!

Panel moderated by Lea Ellison (Newcomb '69), a producer and president of Strong Hearts Entertainment, Inc., with 28 years experience in television, theatre, arts festival production, management and marketing. For twelve years, Ms. Ellison worked as art director or assistant art director in network series television. Her credits include ABC-TV's "Soap," "Benson," "It's a Living," "Oh, Madeline!," "I'm a Big Girl Now," "Charlie & Company," and "Off the Rack;" NBC-TV's "Night Court," and "Amen;" and Louisiana Public Television's Justin Wilson's Louisiana Kitchen." Ellison was an assistant art director on "Soap" in 1978 when it won the prime time Emmy Award for Best Art Direction in a Comedy Series.

Panel participants include: Michael Price (Graduate School '86), writer and co-executive producer of "The Simpsons." Other recent credits include co-executive producer of "What About Joan," an ABC sitcom starring Joan Cusack, and Disney's "Teacher's Pet," an ABC and Disney Channel animated show, and supervising producer of "The PJs," a Fox animated comedy starring Eddie Murphy.

Todd A. Erlandson, AIA (Architecture '87) architectural consultant on the Discovery Channel's reality series "Monster House," helps conceptualize each scenario, appearing on camera for each "design shoot" with host Steve Watson, the production designer and an illustrator putting the plans for the week's house on the design boards. The first season houses were themed as a tropical hideaway, a '70s disco, the Old West, an English castle, a Zen retreat, a car racetrack and Hollywood entertainment. Erlandson, is a partner at (M)Arch. strategic architectures, a collaboration of architects and marketing professionals in Santa Monica, CA. He is a guest critic and lecturer, has taught at SCI_ARC, Otis College of Art and Design, Woodbury University and Vico Morcote, Switzerland, and worked for Richard Meier and Associates on the Getty Center and the Wolfgang Puck Food Company developing concept restaurants.

Harold Sylvester (A&S'72), a familiar face on television, including appearances as Griff in the series "Married... With Children."

Ed Nelson (A&S'53, UC 2000), received his sidewalk 'star' downtown at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside, for his "Peyton Place" role as Dr. Michael Rossi.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Tulane
• NewOrleans
• Entertainment
• TV
• Series
• television
• education
• engineering
• visual
• arts

[corten588a]

Ed Nelson is a great talent. There are none like him today. He's a great family man and one of those faces we always remember from the golden age of television.