#this obviously also applies to movies too; plays; and generally to multi-creator stories or art

[antigonewinchester]

this is very much my theater background speaking but what’s both very cool and very complicated about TV is all the influences that go into it. there’s the head writer/showrunner, who leads the rest of the writer based on their vision, but individual writers will also have their favorite themes, motifs, or images to work with; there are the directors and how they film the scripts, and that 2 directors can give a different tones/feeling, or add more or less depth, to a scene just by how its filmed even if the wording never changes; and then the actors and how they play the characters, which can sometimes loop back to then influence the directors & writers, esp for long-term serial media.

as I understand showrunning/being the head writer, they’ll often have an overall ‘vision’ they want to bring to the show that will get passed down to everyone (writers, directors, actors, set/costume/lighting designers, etc.), which creates coherency through all the parts, but also depends very heavily on the showrunner, their vision, and how intense they are about it. do they have a very specific idea they want to communicate, or is their vision murky? how much do their impress their vision on the rest of the staff? are they willing to change where the show is going or will it always stay the course? and so on.