By Carmen Lehtimaki, contributor
On the third day of aTVfest 2016, SCAD students were treated to a screening of the third season finale of A&E’s “Bates Motel.” Following the screening, executive producers Carlton Cuse and Kerry Ehrin, star and writer Freddie Highmore, and six writers — Philip Buiser, Alyson Evans, Steve Kornacki, Scott Kosar, Erica Lipez and Torrey Speer — took the stage. They spoke about the show’s forthcoming fourth season, which premieres March 7 on A&E at 9 p.m.
“Bates Motel” is a prequel series based on the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film “Psycho,” which was based on Robert Bloch’s suspense novel of the same name. The writers and producers of “Bates Motel” did make a few notable differences in the show so that it could stand on its own. For example, in the Hitchcock version, the story was situated in the fictional town of Fairvale, Calif. In the show, the setting for the story is White Pine Bay, Ore.
Highmore, who plays a young Norman Bates, spoke about the show’s success and originality, saying, “People now appreciate ‘Bates Motel’ as its own. People now come up to me and say, ‘I’ve now seen ‘Psycho’ because of ‘Bates Motel,’ and I jokingly tell them that it will ruin the ending of the show because it doesn’t end well for Norman and his mom.”
Buiser enlightened the audience on his experience as a writer of color. “I did the CBS Writing Program and got the job before being accepted into the writing program. It’s been fun sitting in the room throwing out characters that maybe wouldn’t have been there if it weren’t for me, because I’m not a middle-aged white man.” Buiser, who is Filipino, then elaborated by explaining that this show’s characters are so in-depth that it takes a diverse group of people to come up with all of their complexities.
The discussion ended with students asking a few questions about what it was like in the “Bates Motel” writers’ room and how they all got to where they are today. The general consensus was that there is no one way to get into the writers’ room of such a successful show — some of the writers started off as production assistants and others began as playwrights. All in all, the event was a fascinating chance to learn from the makers of “Bates Motel.”