Screenwriting Research Network – Page 21 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Screenwriting for new film mediums: Conceptualizing visual models for interactive storytelling

Highlighting the articles in the past editions of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Screenwriting for new film mediums: Conceptualizing visual models for interactive storytelling
Gwendolyn Ogle

Journal of Screenwriting, Volume 10, Issue 1

This article considers challenges specific to screenwriting for interactive storytelling in new film mediums, and proposes fifteen visual, conceptual models for interactive storytelling. The models are placed on a continuum with increasing degrees of interactivity. Three arguments are posed for the necessity of visual, conceptual models and a review of literature is presented that lends credence to these arguments. Though technology’s ability to provide interaction is an important factor, technology is not the focus of this article. Instead, the focus is on the need for authors to have a voice and a process in this new, interdisciplinary domain of interactive storytelling in new film mediums. The models proposed in this article help establish a common vernacular from which authors, programmers and others can communicate and direct interactive storytelling efforts towards the design of interactive storytelling systems.

The Journal of Screenwriting is an international double-blind peer-reviewed journal that is published three times a year. The journal highlights current academic and professional thinking about the screenplay and intends to promote, stimulate and bring together current research and contemporary debates around the screenplay whilst encouraging groundbreaking research in an international arena. The journal is discursive, critical, rigorous and engages with issues in a dynamic and developing field, linking academic theory to screenwriting practice.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 7: Book Reviews

Highlighting the articles in the latest edition of the Journal of Screenwriting, of which I am the Book Reviews Editor. Hopefully these abstracts will entice you to did a little deeper into the history and future of screenwriting. — Rosanne

Reviews

Authors: Levi Dean, Mikayla Daniels, Yasser O. Shahin, Ilona Rossman Ho

Television Antiheroines: Women Behaving Badly in Crime and Prison Drama, Milly Buonanno (2017) Bristol: Intellect, 285 pp., ISBN-13 978-1-78320-760-2, p/bk, $45k

The Girl Who Knew Too Much: Shadow of a Doubt (1943), Elaine Lennon (2016) Seattle: Amazon Digital Services LLC, 132 pp., ASIN: B01KTWF08U, e-Book, $3.99

Writing for the Screen, Anna Weinstein (ed.) (2017) New York: Routledge, 254 pp., ISBN 978-1-13894-511-1, p/bk, $32.95; ISBN 978-1-31567-157-4, e-Book, $31.30

The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest For Wholeness, Maureen Murdock (1990) Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications, 232 pp., ISBN 978-0-87773-485-7, p/bk, $18.95; ISBN 978-0-81356-342-8, e-Book, $10.98

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 6: Kurosawa to Kasdan: Storytelling influences

Kurosawa to Kasdan: Storytelling influences
Brett Davies

Lawrence Kasdan is one of the most commercially successful screenwriters of the past forty years. In addition to writing Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and four episodes of the Star Wars saga, Kasdan has gained critical acclaim as the writer-director of seminal 1980s ‘baby-boomer’ films, such as The Big Chill (1983) and The Accidental Tourist (1988). Known for ‘genre-hopping’, it is perhaps Kasdan’s very versatility that has led to a marked lack of academic discourse on his work, as his eclectic canon – including westerns, neo-noir, sci-fi horror, comedy and romantic thriller – makes it problematic for scholars to establish prevalent patterns in his output. This article argues that one influence has remained constant throughout Kasdan’s career: the work of Akira Kurosawa. Examining three screenwriting elements – dialogue, protagonists, themes – the article will demonstrate how Kurosawa’s storytelling style has repeatedly informed Kasdan’s work, from his earliest screenplays (Kasdan said that ‘there’s a lot of Kurosawa in Raiders’) to his most recent, as The Force Awakens (2015) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) showed stylistic connections with Kurosawa’s films, beyond those already established by George Lucas’s original Star Wars (1977).

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 5 : Crafting an ‘authentic’ monster: Dialogue, genre and ethical questions in Mindhunter (2017)

Crafting an ‘authentic’ monster: Dialogue, genre and ethical questions in Mindhunter (2017)
Erica Moulton

Extended scenes of idiosyncratic dialogue between a serial killer and profiler are emblematic of the first season of Joe Penhall and David Fincher’s Netflix series Mindhunter. In examining this aspect of the series, my article engages with several burgeoning areas of study in screenwriting and adaptation, notably the intersection of ethics, genre and dialogue. Mindhunter falls squarely into the serial killer subset of the crime procedural genre, following two FBI agents as they interview incarcerated killers under the purview of the newly formed Behavioral Science Unit. In exploring the origin and deployment of highly psychologized speech, I argue that conventions within the serial killer subgenre and the invocation of non-fictional source material led the show’s writers to rely on codes of ‘authenticity’ in crafting the dialogue. Building on studies of screenwriting and genre by Jule Selbo, I also argue that the interview scenes depicted on Mindhunter between the FBI agents and the serial killers can be broken down into various dialogue typologies. The dialogue in these scenes presents the killer as a fount of wisdom, the investigator as an eager receptacle and the psychological boundaries between the two characters as disturbingly permeable. I conclude by probing the ethical underpinnings of this typology considering how screenwriters navigate the tensions between on-screen representation and the framing of ‘authentic’ content.

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First Screenwriting Research Network Executive Council Meeting

I’m so honored to be a part of this international group of screenwriting academics – who plan by far the best conference I’ve ever attended each year. — Rosanne

First meeting of new Executive Council yesterday – spanning 18 time zones!!! Got the ball rolling for the new academic year and picked up suggestions from last month’s AGM. Minutes to follow soon on the SRN website.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 4 : Influences on story development in transnational pan-Arab dramas: A case study of the series 04

Influences on story development in transnational pan-Arab dramas: A case study of the series 04
Fadi G. Haddad

Despite the growing research interest in the transnational nature of the Arab World’s television industry, screenwriting in the Arab World has received little academic attention. Moreover, while the media plays a major role in shaping the ‘narratives of identity’, the reality of television drama production is as much about cultural, economic and political influences as it is about aesthetics. Set within a unique interpretation of the theoretical context of the ‘Hierarchy of Influences Model’, this article aims to explore to what extent the routine practices in screenwriting govern the artistic decisions taken at the level of the screenplay development of transnational pan-Arab dramas (Arabic: al-drāma al ‘arabiya al-mushtaraka). Taking ‘04’ (Zero Four) as a case study, a pan-Arab drama produced by the Saudi-owned UAE-based MBC television that tells the story of four young expatriates from four different Arab nationalities living in modern-day Dubai, and through in-depth interviews with the show creators, the article attempts to present an example of novel screenwriting practices in the Arab World between single authors and writers’ room.

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How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television, Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (22 Minutes)

A full recording of my presentation at this year’s Screenwriting Research Network conference (at the lovely Universidade Católica Portuguesa) in Porto, Portugal.

“How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

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Video Montage, Screenwriting Research Network Conference, Porto, Portugal, September 2019

This video montage gives you a quick impression of what it is like to attend one of the Screenwriting Research Network‘s annual conferences.

The 2020 conference will be Oxford, UK. 2021 will be in Vienna, Austria and 2022 will be my event, held at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 3 : Re-writing theatrical documentaries: The broadcast version

Re-writing theatrical documentaries: The broadcast version
Phoebe Hart

In the funding matrix for major theatrical documentaries, television networks are often sought out as commissioners, particularly in territories such as Australia, where a plan in the form of distribution agreement and/or broadcaster pre-sale is required to access screen agency funds. As part of the deals with the broadcaster, there are mandated deliverables in the form of a ‘broadcast version’ of the documentary film, typically one hour in length or as a series. For producers, this arrangement raises much-needed production finance and capitalizes on the property’s reach and earning potential by exploiting the various distribution windows available. However, these deals lead to vexatious practical concerns in re-versioning for broadcast as documentary screenwriters are challenged to make changes while attempting to maintain the tone of their work. This research delves into the creative and cognitive processes as experienced by screenwriters who must ‘cut down’ a theatrical version of a documentary for broadcast. The research presents three case studies drawn from in-depth interviews, which are examined via a thematic analysis methodology to understand the processes of re-writing, including changes to narration, tone, style, character and narrative arcs, and thematic treatment. The research examines what is sacrificed due to time restrictions and viewer sensibilities, and whether or not the key intentions of documentary screenwriters can be preserved.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting 2 : The screenplay as boundary object by Rosamund Davies

The screenplay as boundary object
Rosamund Davies

Described by Pasolini as a ‘structure that wants to be another structure’, the question of what kind of thing-in-itself the screenplay might be has produced a range of answers. Screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière has used the metaphor of the chrysalis – of vital importance in the process of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly – but useless and empty once the butterfly, or film, has emerged. Film scholar Claudia Sternberg has considered the screenplay’s status as a ‘second rank’ text, in relation to the ‘first rank’ film performance. The idea of the screenplay as blueprint is common. Meanwhile, scholars (e.g. Maras, Millard, Price) have raised issues with such definitions, pointing out their limitations. In this article, I propose the notion of the ‘boundary object’ as a useful way of thinking about the role and nature of the screenplay within the development and production of a screen narrative. My starting point is sociologist Susan Leigh Star’s concept of the boundary object, defined as an object that allows different individuals or groups with heterogeneous skills, knowledge and interests to cooperate towards a common goal by creating a ‘shared space’, situated at the boundaries between their habitual spheres of practice. I propose that, avoiding the problems inherent in an analogy such as the blueprint, the concept of the boundary object offers a useful starting point for understanding and analysing the role of the screenplay in audio-visual production.

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