From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: Reel by reel: Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics in the context of transition to feature-length format in Czech silent cinema by Martin Kos

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


Reel by reel: Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics in the context of transition to feature-length format in Czech silent cinema by Martin Kos

This article examines the screenwriting practice in Czech silent cinema in the late 1910s and 1920s. It focuses on Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics as a case study of specific storytelling choices within the transitional era from one- or two-reelers to the feature-length format in the context of local technological restrictions in exhibition – inevitable breaks of changing film reels in single-projector cinemas. Poetological analysis of Kolár’s Řina (1926) with his other surviving scenarios and pictures shows that meant not only the necessity of adapting to these limitations, but also became a productive way of achieving particular effects on the audience. Semi-independent narrative acts, thrilling moments occurring at the end of the reel, or significant shifts in space and time between two reels were integral parts of his own original stories as well as adaptations of various novels. Nevertheless, the article outlines more general perspective in relation to film reels as structural narrative units and screenwriting practice among Czech filmmakers as well.


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 V10 Issue 3: Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay by Alexandra Ksenofontova

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


Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay by Alexandra Ksenofontova

This article poses a question previously overlooked in the tremendous body of research on Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari: why does the cabinet take such a prominent place in the title alongside the protagonist? The question is approached through a reading of the Caligari screenplay, which reveals that its narrative can be fruitfully conceived as a struggle of ‘evil spaces’. Pursuing the origins of this original spatial structure, the article uncovers a close connection between the script and the popular fantasy novels of the early twentieth century, in particular the only novel by the Austrian graphic artist Alfred Kubin. It is finally argued that acknowledging this connection to fantasy novels as well as the importance of the spatial structure in the Caligari script allows us to reconsider the crude opposition between the script’s narrative and the film’s set design that is prevalent in the existing research on the film.


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 V10 Issue 3: Die Filmprimadonna (The Film Primadonna, 1913): A case study of the fiction of a screenplay and the process of filmmaking in German early cinema by Jan Henschen

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


Die Filmprimadonna (The Film Primadonna, 1913): A case study of the fiction of a screenplay and the process of filmmaking in German early cinema by Jan Henschen

A case study on Urban Gad’s German shooting script for Die Filmprimadonna (The Film Primadonna, 1913) reviews the screenplay in the production process shortly after the emergence of multiple-reel feature films. In the dramatic story of the rise and fall of a film prima donna, a fictitious screenplay plays an idiosyncratic function in filmmaking that sketches, for the cinematic audience of that time, a specific idea of how and why an appropriate script has to be made. The article offers an analysis of Gad’s preserved script and demonstrates that this screen-idea contrasts with the value and agency of screenplays in the historic mode of production in 1913. Inasmuch as the plot of the movie simply highlights the function of acting, Die Filmprimadonna as a script itself functions as a complex and highly composed agent in the process of filmmaking – as both a narrative and, equally, a production schedule for the film.


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 V10 Issue 1: More therapy with Dr Melfi (the character who guides viewer engagement with Tony Soprano): Relationship arcs in serial antihero narratives by Fernando Canet

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


More therapy with Dr Melfi (the character who guides viewer engagement with Tony Soprano): Relationship arcs in serial antihero narratives by Fernando Canet

Antihero narratives constitute a common thread in the current boom of TV fiction. The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) could be considered an early example of this tendency. The antihero is a complex character who demands equally complex responses from viewers. The title of this article is an allusion to Rob White’s article, ‘No more therapy’, in which White explores Dr Jennifer Melfi’s role as a narrative mechanism used to undermine viewer sympathy for Tony Soprano at the end of the series. Here I seek to explore this role further since Dr Melfi’s responses to Tony’s actions serve as a narrative strategy used by The Sopranos writers to guide viewer responses in their relationship with Tony Soprano, a pioneer example of the antihero figure. In doing so, it is my purpose to demonstrate the relevance in antihero TV series of the evolution not only of the antihero themselves but also of their relationship with other major characters over the course of the series. I call this evolution, through which the creators develop the transformational arcs of the two characters concerned: the ‘relationship arc’.


From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Creative resistance tactics in the work of English Canadian screenwriters by Kerry McArthur

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

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Journal of Screenwriting 10.3 is now available (Historiographic Research in Screenwriting Special Issue)

Journal of Screenwriting 10.3 is now available (Historiographic Research in Screenwriting Special Issue)

I’m always happy to announce the latest issues of the Journal of Screenwriting and 10.3 — a Special Issue discussing ‘Historiographic Research in Screenwriting’ — is now available! 

 

For me, as Book Reviews editor it’s especially nice to note that 2 alums of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting program, one current student and Friend of the Program Anna Weinstein are among the reviewers of books this month, with current MFA candidate CJ Ehrlich having reviewed a text used in our History of Screenwriting courses – Tom Stempel’s Framework.

 

Does your college library have a subscription? Order one today to read all these reviews PLUS the articles noted below:

 

Crash! Boom! Bang! How to Write Action Movies, Michael Lucker (2017) 

JENNIFER ANNE MARTIN

 

Words in Action: Forms and Techniques of Film Dialogue, Paolo Braga (2015) 

JACKIE PEREZ

 

Off the Page: Screenwriting in the Era of Media Convergence, Daniel Bernardi and Julian Hoxter (2017)

ANNA WEINSTEIN

 

FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, 3rd ed., Tom Stempel (2000)

 

C. J. EHRLICH

 

For more information about the special issue and journal, click here >> https://www.intellectbooks.com/journal-of-screenwriting

 

Issue 10.3 Included:

 

Editorial

STEVEN PRICE AND CLAUS TIEBER 

 

Articles

 

Die Filmprimadonna (The Film Primadonna, 1913): A case study of the fiction of a screenplay and the process of filmmaking in German early cinema 

JAN HENSCHEN

 

Once again into the cabinets of Dr. Caligari: Evil spaces and hidden sources of the Caligari screenplay

ALEXANDRA KSENOFONTOVA

 

Reel by reel: Jan Stanislav Kolár’s narrative poetics in the context of transition to feature-length format in Czech silent cinema 

MARTIN KOS

 

Walter Reisch: The musical writer

CLAUS TIEBER

 

Network television writers and the ‘race problems’ of 1968 

CARYN MURPHY

 

From dialogue writer to screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini at work for Federico Fellini

CLAUDIA ROMANELLI 


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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Colonizing, decolonizing: Bad-faith liberalism and African space colonialism in Doris Lessing’s screenplay The White Princess By James Arnett

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


Colonizing, decolonizing: Bad-faith liberalism and African space colonialism in Doris Lessing’s screenplay The White Princess
By James Arnett

Although Doris Lessing frequently wrote about Africa over the course of her career, and her relationship to colonialism is undeniably critical, changing theoretical paradigms have complicated readings of her anticolonial critique. From a treasure trove of unpublished African material contained in her papers at the Harry Ransom Center Archives at the University of Texas, this article looks at one of her unpublished screenplays, The White Princess, as a complex and fraught attempt to generate an ethos of decolonization well in advance of its contemporary, post-postcolonial preeminence in twenty-first-century theoretical discourse. Lessing’s positing of a speculative future African recolonization of Britain would have emerged into a smattering of British speculative fictions of the late 1960s and 1970s that likewise imagined African colonialism, but did so, this article argues, hampered by a bad-faith liberalism. Despite the subversive potential of exploring inverted colonial dynamics, this article argues that Lessing ultimately cannot break free of generic conventions, political and theoretical limitations, or colonial discursive structures to achieve real decolonization work in The White Princess – although she may succeed elsewhere in her oeuvre.


From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Creative resistance tactics in the work of English Canadian screenwriters by Kerry McArthur

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Creative resistance tactics in the work of English Canadian screenwriters by Kerry McArthur

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


Creative resistance tactics in the work of English Canadian screenwriters by Kerry McArthur

This article analyses how eight successful English Canadian screenwriters negotiate various norms of screenwriting practice, in particular the criteria for three-act structure, character development and closure as advocated by Hollywood. The writers discuss their interpretations of what they consider essential narrative elements in screenplay projects, while dismissing other edicts of the screenwriting industry. Analysis of interview transcripts reveals that most of these writers take their inspiration from their own experience of screenwriting and their interpretations of other screenplays and historic texts on narrative rather than from contemporary screenwriting textbooks. The focus for almost all of these screenwriters is on writing screen stories in original ways, rather than adopting standardized narrative directives, even when elements of these directives have their uses.


From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: Creative resistance tactics in the work of English Canadian screenwriters by Kerry McArthur

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 1: An insider perspective on the script in practice by Vincenzo Giarrusso

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


An insider perspective on the script in practice by Vincenzo Giarrusso

The machinations of industry, the exigencies of film funding and the producer’s prominent role in setting fiscal and marketing objectives for film production seem incongruous with scriptwriting as a generative creative practice in the filmmaking process. This article presents a case study that investigates the agency of creative practice from the insider perspective of a scriptwriter. In mobilizing the concept of the boundary object, the case links the problematic and transitional status of the script – as it passes out of the hands of the writer – to other roles under the control of filmmaking practitioners. In combining a practice-based reflexive narrative with theoretical observations, the article explores the processes and imperatives that mediate the script and scriptwriting as an embodied experience for the scriptwriter.

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!


Screenwriting Research Network Conference 2020

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

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

Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* A portion of each sale from Amazon.com directly supports our blogs
** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!