From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 1: The strange case of Ronald Tavel: Andy Warhol’s only screenwriter by J. J. Murphy

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


The strange case of Ronald Tavel: Andy Warhol’s only screenwriter by J. J. Murphy

During the period 1963–1968, the Pop artist Andy Warhol turned his attention from painting and sculpture to film-making. Warhol gained attention for a series of notorious silent films – Sleep (1963), Empire, Blow Job and Eat (all 1964) – which early critics connected to minimalism and viewed as precursors to structural film. Warhol, however, confounded early admirers by collaborating with the writer Ronald Tavel on a number of sync-sound, more narrative films, beginning with Harlot (1964). The collaboration proved unlike any other between a director and screenwriter with Warhol incorporating the frustrations and tensions that often exist between screenwriters and directors as an essential part of the work.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 1: The strange case of Ronald Tavel: Andy Warhol’s only screenwriter by J. J. Murphy


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. 

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 1: ‘To make you see’: Screenwriting, description and the ‘lens-based’tradition by Adam Ganz

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


‘To make you see’: Screenwriting, description and the ‘lens-based’tradition by Adam Ganz
  
In this article I look at the descriptive writing in the screenplay, and link this to a tradition of ‘lens-based writing’, the precise visual description of phenomena observed through a lens for an audience unable to see what was described, which can be traced from the writing of Galileo and van Leeuwenhoek, through scientific and travel writing, to early fiction (with particular emphasis on Robinson Crusoe). I identify the most significant features of lens-based writing – the use of simple language and the separation of observation and deduction to communicate what has been seen through a simultaneous act of looking and framing, and show the similarities between this and screenwriting practice. I also make some observations about what this model can offer screenwriting research.

In this article I look at the descriptive writing in the screenplay, and link this to a tradition of ‘lens-based writing’, the precise visual description of phenomena observed through a lens for an audience unable to see what was described, which can be traced from the writing of Galileo and van Leeuwenhoek, through scientific and travel writing, to early fiction (with particular emphasis on Robinson Crusoe). I identify the most significant features of lens-based writing – the use of simple language and the separation of observation and deduction to communicate what has been seen through a simultaneous act of looking and framing, and show the similarities between this and screenwriting practice. I also make some observations about what this model can offer screenwriting research.


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. 

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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Development of a fundamental ’19-Sequence Model’ of screenplay and narrative film structure by Melvyn P. Heyes

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


Development of a fundamental ’19-Sequence Model’ of screenplay and narrative film structure by Melvyn P. Heyes

To understand the utility and value of sequences in the construction of screenplay narratives and the emotional experiences of audiences, I developed and utilized composite definitions of ‘sequence’ and ‘scene’ to quantify the sequence content of 133 feature-length Hollywood-style and independent films made between 1941 and 2010 that were produced in the United States, Great Britain, Russia, Germany and Japan. The 3-Act Model was used as familiar reference points. I also contrasted the results to Frank Daniels’ 8-Sequence Model as described by Gulino. I argue the results directly support a fundamental 19-Sequence Model of screenplay and film narrative structure. I propose that sequences expand vicarious and empathic emotional experiences of audiences into ‘contextual emotional meaning’, where significant autonomous emotions are generated that create the enjoyable and satisfying experience of what the story means to both the characters and viewer.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Development of a fundamental '19-Sequence Model' of screenplay and narrative film structure by Melvyn P. Heyes


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!



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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Storytelling in Bhutanese cinema: Research context and case study of a film in development by Shohini Chaudhuri, Sue Clayton

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


 

Storytelling in Bhutanese cinema: Research context and case study of a film in development by Shohini Chaudhuri, Sue Clayton

Screenwriter and director Sue Clayton and academic Shohini Chaudhuri consider storytelling structures in Bhutan, a country that has, until recently, been relatively culturally isolated but is now moving towards entering the global stage. As in the rest of South Asia, the dominant cinematic model in Bhutan is that of Bollywood, yet Buddhism, the oral tradition and supernatural beliefs form a rich repertoire of stories that screenwriters of the emerging film industry are increasingly attempting to mine. In this article, we show how cinematic storytelling in Bhutan functions as a kind of ‘secondary orality’ through our analyses of an earlier international co-production Travellers and Magicians (2003), two local DV films, and the film project that Clayton is developing in dialogue with Bhutanese writers, Jumolhari. We argue that Bhutan’s Buddhist, animist and oral traditions challenge and transform classically established cinema conventions of story structure, decentring individual human subjectivity as the controlling force and producing an altogether different kind of hero’s journey.

 


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!



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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Female fantasy and postfeminist politics in Nora Ephron’s screenplays by Roberta Garrett

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


Female fantasy and postfeminist politics in Nora Ephron’s screenplays by Roberta Garrett

The article examines and re-evaluates Nora Ephron’s screenplays; it argues that Ephron’s popularity with female viewers, and her association with the derided category of ‘chick-flicks’, has caused critics to overlook her important contribution to female screenwriting in the last twenty years. Since the late 1980s, Ephron has created a number of highly successful mainstream, popular screenplays that skilfully articulate and express the conflicting pressures experienced by young women, while still offering a positive view of ‘feminine’ culture. Through an analysis of key features of Ephron’s romantic comedies – such as the characteristics of the Ephron heroine, the use of parallel narrative and the symbolic significance of mother/daughter relationships, the article argues that Ephron’s narratives offset specific negative cultural stereotypes of single and professional women from the 1990s and noughties through a sympathetic, feminist-influenced approach to contemporary gender roles, expectations and courtship rituals. Ephron’s screenplays offer an uplifting vision of feminine culture and attributes in which patriarchal attitudes are countered and defeated by the optimism, resourcefulness and integrity of the female heroine.


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!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Giving credit where credit is due: Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett and The Thin Man by Dr. Rosanne Welch

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


Giving credit where credit is due: Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett and The Thin Man by Dr. Rosanne Welch

This article addresses the long-lived literary and popular culture assumption that the beloved characters of Nick and Nora Charles in the MGM film The Thin Man (1934) were representations of the relationship between novelist Dashiell Hammett and his lover, playwright Lillian Hellman. However, in a comparison of the screenplay to the novel, the screenplay’s specific dialogue and plot changes incorporated by married screenwriters Frances Goodrich Hackett and Albert Hackett can lead to a different conclusion. I will explore the Nick and Nora marriage that has served for so many years as a benchmark in romantic comedy relationships and propose that, in fact, this relationship was based largely on the marriage shared by the Hackett’s. The results of my exploration suggests credit to the screenwriting couple and serves as evidence that some screenplay adaptations often prove more enduring than their original source material.


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!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 2: Frances Marion: Censorship and the Screenwriter in Hollywood, 1929-1931 by Leslie Kreiner Wilson

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


Frances Marion: Censorship and the Screenwriter in Hollywood, 1929-1931 by Leslie Kreiner Wilson

The careful study of the screenplay – including archival study – can clarify our view of film history. While some film historians argue studios and studio bosses disregarded censors in the early 1930s before the Production Code Administration (PCA) was formed, archival research reveals screenwriter Frances Marion faced escalating censorship pressure at MGM in 1929 and 1930 as she moved through several drafts for Anna Christie (1930), The Big House (1930) and The Secret Six (1931). This research provides insight into the nature of the problems Marion faced and exposes the day-to-day frustrations and complications in the life of one screenwriter struggling to create art within a convoluted matrix of censorship negotiations as the Production Code was being drafted and ratified.


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!

Announcing the Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue: Women in Screenwriting with Editors, Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Rose Ferrell

I’m happy to announce the publication of a special issue of the Journal of Screenwriting focused on “Women in Screenwriting” that I co-edited with my SRN colleague Rose Ferrell, lecturer at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, at Edith Cowan University. 

While focusing on females was our first mandate, our second mandate was to be as international as possible.  This issue, then, includes articles about women in screenwriting covering five continents including countries such as Japan, China, Syria, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Zimbabwe and Canada. — Rosanne

Announcing the Journal of Screenwriting Special Issue: Women in Screenwriting with Editors, Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr.  Rose Ferrell

 

Contents
Volume (11): Issue (3)
Cover date: 2020

  • Editorial introduction by Rose Ferrell, Rosanne Welch
  • Tang Cheng: The first female animation screenwriter and director in the People’s Republic of China by Shaopeng Chen
  • Scouting for scripts: Mizuki Yōko and social issue film in post-war Japan by Lauri Kitsnik
  • Who is the author of Neria (1992) – and is it a Zimbabwean masterpiece or a neo-colonial enterprise? by Agnieszka Piotrowska
  • The Hakawati’s Daughter: How the Syrian revolution inspired a rewrite by Rana Kazkaz
  • The silent women: The representation of Israeli female soldiers in Israeli women’s films by Mira Moshe, Matan Aharoni
  • How the scripts of Latin American screenwriters Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Anna Muylaert (Brazil) and Claudia Llosa (Peru) have made a mark on the world stage by Margaret McVeigh, Clarissa Mazon Miranda
  • ‘Polite, no chill’ for the win: How Emily Andras engaged fans and overcame problematic tropes in Wynonna Earp by Tanya N. Cook
  • Battle of the sketches: Short form and feminism in the comedy mode by Stayci Taylor
  • Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction, Cari Beauchamp and Mary Anita Loos (eds) (2003) by Cierra Winkler
  • Modern Film Dramaturgy: An Introduction, Kristen Stutterheim (2019) by Andrew Wickwire
  • Nobody’s Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood, J. E. Smyth (2018) by Toni Anita Hull
  • How to Write for Moving Pictures: A Manual of Instruction and Information, Marguerite Bertsch (1917) by Diane Barley

Read article abstracts


Journal of screenwriting 94737 800x600

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!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: Imitation and adaptation: A screenwriting pedagogy by Debbie Danielpour

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


Imitation and adaptation: A screenwriting pedagogy by Debbie Danielpour

Because originality is highly valued in all the arts, it initially appears counterproductive to teach screenwriting students the craft by encouraging them to imitate established genres or to adapt literature. This pedagogical method, however, teaches students genre-specific narrative structure and conventions, avoids the paralysis that sometimes comes with ‘complete’ artistic freedom and ultimately allows students to discern the qualities of their unique ‘voice’. Countless contemporary American films are adaptations, sequels, parodies or mashups, yet many fear that learning via imitation will cause students to write derivative or cliché scripts. By exploring the history of emulation in art and the fact that the value placed on originality is relatively new, the pedagogic push for originality starts to appear short-sighted. Further analysis reveals how reaching for ‘highly original’ may produce innovation but few screenplays of critical value. Identifying an example of ‘original’ within the genre boundaries of the horror screenplay demonstrates how a screenwriter can break new ground while still writing within the conventions of the genre. Fiction to Film Adaptations also prove to be highly innovative and original works, ultimately refining the definition of creativity, innovation and originality in screenplay writing.


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!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: Storyworld: the Bigger Picture, investigating the world of multi-platform/transmedia production…by Anna Zaluczkowska

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


Storyworld: the Bigger Picture, investigating the world of multi-platform/transmedia production and its affect on storytelling processes by Anna Zaluczkowska

My investigations into transmedia and multi-platform production practices reveal that writers for film and TV could soon need to become content creators (directors or producers or craftspeople in addition to being writers), blurring the distinctions between concept, creation, production and post-production. This article explores this phenomenon of multi-platform/transmedia production, mostly in the United Kingdom, and in particular its storytelling processes through a study of a small but successful company, Bellyfeel, based in Manchester, United Kingdom. Bellyfeel have given me complete access to their work and established an online environment where I can study their practice/writing. I will contextualize the creative practice of the company with the work of Henry Jenkins, and suggest that, in the contemporary marketplace, it may be necessary for the writer to be focused on the production process and the technological aspects of this process in order to understand how product is created and functions in this new environment.


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!