academic – Page 20 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

44 Samantha! from Brazil from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute)

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Transcript:

In watching Brazilian television I found Samanta! which I thought is adorable. I’m amazed we haven’t copied that in the United States yet because this experience of being a child star is something that is, sadly, universal and I think that it’s important to realize that a program can travel to many cultures because themes are universal and that’s why when we start writing from a theme we know that it’s something that going to work. We talked about Harry Potter this morning. It amazes me that we’re talking about a billion-dollar piece of merchandise that is entirely built around the theme, you have to have friends. You have to have friends you can trust. That’s all. That’s the theme of every single book and every single movie and look how powerful that has been. We need that message. We go to movies and television shows, we go to stories, to learn those messages.

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A Note About This Presentation

A clip from my keynote speech at the 10th Screenwriters´(hi)Stories Seminar for the interdisciplinary Graduation Program in “Education, Art, and History of Culture”, in Mackenzie Presbyterian University, at São Paulo, SP, Brazil, focused on the topic “Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered.” I was especially pleased with the passion these young scholars have toward screenwriting and it’s importance in transmitting culture across the man-made borders of our world.

To understand the world we have to understand its stories and to understand the world’s stories we must understand the world’s storytellers. A century ago and longer those people would have been the novelists of any particular country but since the invention of film, the storytellers who reach the most people with their ideas and their lessons have been the screenwriters. My teaching philosophy is that: Words matter, Writers matter, and Women writers matte, r so women writers are my focus because they have been the far less researched and yet they are over half the population. We cannot tell the stories of the people until we know what stories the mothers have passed down to their children. Those are the stories that last. Now is the time to research screenwriters of all cultures and the stories they tell because people are finally recognizing the work of writers and appreciating how their favorite stories took shape on the page long before they were cast, or filmed, or edited. But also because streaming services make the stories of many cultures now available to a much wider world than ever before.

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

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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.

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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43 Murdoch Mysteries from Canada from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute)

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This is a police program it’s from the police — it’s a period drama. So it’s the police in 1902 in Toronto, Canada and so they don’t have guns and for an American to watch a policeman who can arrest people without putting a gun in their face is an amazing experience because we’re far too used to shoot-’em-ups right? So i am pleased with the idea that a younger generation of children are watching people do this job without violence and he’s the most famous detective. It’s the number one show in Canada. So i love the idea that you know you would think that we know a lot about Canada. The other funny thing is because it’s a period drama, they introduce us to famous Canadians in history — people who grow up to be Prime Ministers or one was the first woman lawyer in Canada and we never study Canadian history in the United States, so we’ll watch the program and that’s how I’ve learned more Canadian history in my life.

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Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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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

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.

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42 Sharing Culture Internationally from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (50 seconds)

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When I was in Italy last visiting my cousin he has a little daughter named Carlotta which is Charlotte in English and he had never heard of Charlotte’s Web as neither the book nor the movie. So we bought a copy to show his daughter when she gets a little older and it was so beautiful to see the title of this book that I had always known in another language and then to know that they would share that story together with her and now we have this connection across the ocean that her — their child and my son knew the same story right? So it’s the culture. It’s the stories that teach our culture. This is a program from Canada that airs in the United States because of Netflix and I always have to say, people think Canada and the United States are the same place but we’re not. The Canadians have an entirely different culture which is often so much nicer than ours. So much more peaceful.

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A Note About This Presentation

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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

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.

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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

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

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41 UK TV In The US from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (39 seconds)

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Just in the United States, this show finished a six-season run. It’s from England and we’d always had programming from England because we had that in our national channel always brought in stuff from England because in the United States we think the English folks are smarter and more intellectual than we are right? We think that they’re just better because they have Shakespeare and we don’t. So we like English programming but what I liked was it taught me about a book series I had never heard of right? So I was exposed to some literature from another country that way. likewise, this is from years ago but this book series was a tv show in England that aired in the United States which I liked a lot.

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Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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

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.

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40 The Almighty Johnsons from New Zealand from Why Researching Screenwriters Has Always Mattered [Video] (1 minute 12 seconds)

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This is actually a program from New Zealand. Who knew New Zealand made television, but I have my students write spec scripts — speculative scripts — which are their own versions of a show that already exists to teach the art of copying, because if you’re going to write television you have to copy what exists and then you make your own story, but you have to know how the characters sound. So, I have them pitch ideas from programs they are watching, but they have to write a United States show because that’s what the people are going to read in the United States. This young man pitched an episode of this show because he saw it on Netflix and he didn’t even realize it wasn’t from the United States. he didn’t even notice that they were using city names from New — he didn’t know what New Zealand was really, but the TV showed him and I stay that we learn the mythology of other cultures. This is a show about Norse mythology. the young boys on the program discover that they are the re-born versions of Norse gods and their goal is to get together with the other Norse gods and eventually go back to heaven together and rule the world. It’s adorable and I wouldn’t have heard about it except for Netflix.

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A Note About This Presentation

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

* 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!
† Available from the LA Public Library

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