academic – Page 27 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 35: The Collected Lorna Moon

Months of research went into the creation of the essays in “When Women Wrote Hollywood.” Here are some of the resources used to enlighten today’s film lovers to the female pioneers who helped create it.

For the first time, The Collected Lorna Moon brings together her much acclaimed novel Dark Star, collected short stories Doorways in Drumorty, and a selection of her previously unpublished letters and poetry to offer a fresh perspective on this unusual woman: a woman who travelled a long distance from Scotland and yet, imaginatively, took Scotland with her and re-fashioned the experiences of her early years. The life story of Lorna Moon from her escape from Scotland, a series of romantic adventures, to a career as a script writer in the early days of Hollywood, presents the wildest challenge to our expectations for a woman in rural Scotland in the early twentieth century. Her writing, in equally dramatic fashion, takes the conventional subject of Scottish small-town life, and reshapes it through a combination of satirical analysis and melodramatic romance that no other writer from the north-east has achieved. The Collected Lorna Moon is an enchanting collection, edited and introduced by Glenda Norquay, scholar of Scottish fiction and featuring a foreword by Richard de Mille, the illegitimate son of Lorna Moon and Hollywood director Cecil B. de Mille’s son William, in order to provide insight into the life of an extraordinary woman. — Amazon

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: Competitive writing: BBC Public Service television light entertainment and comedy in the 1970s and 1980s by Heather Sutherland

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

Competitive writing: BBC Public Service television light entertainment and comedy in the 1970s and 1980s by Heather Sutherland

Comedy has always been the least plausibly public service genre. It is entertaining and consequently seen as trivial, closest to commercial and often close to vulgar. Yet comedy remains the key to attracting audiences and is the aspect of programming most greedily eyed by the BBC’s competitors. This article examines how, facing severe competition during the 1970s and 1980s, in the shape of ITV and the arrival of Channel 4 in 1982, the BBC responded to the challenges of this competitive landscape, highlighting the Corporation’s approach to comedy writers and writing as a key competitive tactic. Whilst ITV and Channel 4 had their successes, the BBC, through its emphasis on organic as opposed to formula comedy forms, was able to articulate clearly the differences between its light entertainment and comedy scripts and those of the competitors. For instance, the absence of a commercial break allowed the development of more intricate plots and sub-plots, alongside in-depth characters; the structure of joke-telling adopted a more dramatic form, bringing to light wider themes, and resulting in comedic work that could inform, educate and entertain all at once. Furthermore, the nurturing approach experienced by writers working for the Corporation allowed the encouragement of new writers (to address new niche audiences) and the taking of risks in writing (particularly those under the heading alternative comedy), ultimately enabling writers to produce scripts that allowed the BBC to not only match its competitors, but to exceed them, principally with regard to the idea of what is termed here popular quality programming. As such, the history of the BBC’s approach to comedy writers and the styles and forms of BBC comedy writing can be a means of access to the core debates about what the BBC should do and produce as a public service; here is one strategy that was key to the Corporation’s defence of its public broadcaster status and its funding by licence fee. Its comedy department, scriptwriters and scripts act as an illustration of the shifts and tensions being experienced behind the scenes in the Corporation overall at this particular point in time.

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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20 Ruth Gordon & Garson Kanin from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video ] (53 seconds)

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Transcript:

So the problem here is we’re missing the writers. This movie, also famous in the United States is called George Cukor’s movie because George Cukor directed it. However, it was written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, another married couple who wrote films together. Ruth Gordon is more famous as an actress. She was in Rosemary’s Baby. She got an Oscar for that. She did several films in her early career. She did Harold and Maude which is also a cult classic. They wrote this film specifically and they cast it as we had a casting director speak this morning. They purposely said we’re only going to sell you the movie if you put Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in it. So they’re doing the work of the director but it’s George Cukor’s film. Makes them crazy. They also wrote several films together and as I said Ruth won an oscar for being in Rosemary’s Baby. That’s her very young. She was a Broadway actress and then, of course, she worked all the way until her death.

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 “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 34: Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood by Karen Ward Mahar

Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood explores when, how, and why women were accepted as filmmakers in the 1910s and why, by the 1920s, those opportunities had disappeared. In looking at the early film industry as an industry―a place of work―Mahar not only unravels the mystery of the disappearing female filmmaker but untangles the complicated relationship among gender, work culture, and business within modern industrial organizations.

In the early 1910s, the film industry followed a theatrical model, fostering an egalitarian work culture in which everyone―male and female―helped behind the scenes in a variety of jobs. In this culture women thrived in powerful, creative roles, especially as writers, directors, and producers. By the end of that decade, however, mushrooming star salaries and skyrocketing movie budgets prompted the creation of the studio system. As the movie industry remade itself in the image of a modern American business, the masculinization of filmmaking took root.

Mahar’s study integrates feminist methodologies of examining the gendering of work with thorough historical scholarship of American industry and business culture. Tracing the transformation of the film industry into a legitimate “big business” of the 1920s, and explaining the fate of the female filmmaker during the silent era, Mahar demonstrates how industrial growth and change can unexpectedly open―and close―opportunities for women. — Amazon

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: Who Writes British Films: A Summary on the UKFC Report and a Call for Further Research by Susan Rogers

Who Writes British Films: A Summary on the UKFC Report and a Call for Further Research by Susan Rogers

In 2007 I was commissioned by the UK Film Council to investigate the background and employment experience of screenwriters credited on a random selection of recent UK films. The resulting report, Writing British Films Who Writes British Films and How They are Recruited, confirmed some widely-held views and uncovered much new information. The UK Film Council’s first studies had revealed that many of the beliefs about screenwriting, expressed in interviews within the British film industry, to be anecdotal or based on unsubstantiated fact and to an extent, myth, confirming the scarcity of research in this field. The following is a summary and a reflection on the findings revealed in the report.

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19 Nunnally Johnson and John Ford from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (51 seconds)

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Transcript:

And journalists, who are writers, have made this mistake. They had dismissed writers in talking about Hollywood. I find it terrible. One time, John Ford pointed out that a particular shot that he was going to use in a script was written into the script. The screenwriter envisioned how the camera should move and John Ford said to Nunnally Johnson “I don’t know if the critics will recognize you or me for doing this work.” and Nunnally Johnson responded, “I don’t who’s going to get the credit, but Iknow I did it” and even John Ford said, ‘I know. I recognize it”, but that doesn’t mean that when John Ford was interviewed later in life he remembered to mention Nunnally Johnson. No, no, no. It was John Ford, right?

A Note About This Presentation

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: From three acts to three screens: the significance of the role of writing in a new media film project by Jeremy Bubb

From three acts to three screens: the significance of the role of writing in a new media film project by Jeremy Bubb

This article will discuss the writing and editing of a short film called Writ in Water, a project specifically designed for three-screen projection. I will explore the influences of the process of writing for multi-image drama by considering Lev Manovich’s notion of narrative as database, Gene Youngblood’s view of syncretism and synaesthetics and Robert McKee’s approach to three-act structure in relation to story, inciting incident, character development and narrative timeline. I will also outline the influence of Aristotle on this new media drama triptych and, finally, discuss scriptwriting as a changing component in relation to digital technology. The continuing significance of the script as blueprint will be explored and how classic story structure and use of new technology work together to inform the final work. This article aims to reflect on the acts and the actions of narrative creation using the classic tropes of screenwriting and its influences, and also recognize the importance of process in contributing to new knowledge in the area of multi-image screen narrative. A full appreciation of an artwork includes an understanding of the extent to which it is a product and reflection of the technologies used in its making (Shaw and Weibel 2003: 198).

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18 Nunnally Johnson and The Grapes Of Wrath from Why Researching Screenwriters (has Always) Mattered [Video] (1 minute 11 seconds)

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In this case — this gentleman Nunnally Johnson –I think got it even worse. He adapted this famous United States book, The Grapes of Wrath, into a film. You notice on the bottom it was directed by John Ford. We don’t see where — Nunnally Johnson’s name is right above it. Can you see the itty-bitty teeny-tiny print? John Steinbeck, the author of the book, actually said he thought the script was better than his book. He thought that the writing of the script improved this novel that is quite famous and taught in many American classrooms. When the woman who starred in the film — who married Nunnally Johnson — died just a few years ago, the obituary — her very own obituary — read that she was famous for John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath and she left acting when she married the film’s screenwriter. It’s his wife’s obituary and it doesn’t list his name because he’s just a screenwriter. He can’t possibly count as much as John Ford does. She wasn’t married to John Ford.

A Note About This Presentation

Many thanks to Glaucia Davino for the invitation.

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From The “When Women Wrote Hollywood Archives 33: Blood and Sand. Wr: June Mathis, Dir: Fred Fred Niblo, Paramount Pictures, 1922, USA 80 mins.

Juan Gallardo (Valentino), a village boy born into poverty, grows up to become one of the greatest matadors in Spain. He marries a friend from his childhood, the beautiful and virtuous Carmen (Lee), but after he achieves fame and fortune he finds himself drawn to Doña Sol (Naldi), a wealthy, seductive widow.

They embark on a torrid affair with sadomasochistic overtones, but Juan, feeling guilty over his betrayal of Carmen, tries to free himself of Doña Sol. Furious at being rejected, she exposes their affair to Carmen and Juan’s mother, seemingly destroying his marriage. Growing more and more miserable and dissipated, Juan becomes reckless in the arena. He is eventually killed in a bullfight but does manage to reconcile with Carmen moments before he dies.

There is also a subplot involving a local outlaw whose career is paralleled to Juan’s throughout the film by the village philosopher: Juan’s fatal injury in the bullring comes moments after the outlaw is shot by the police. — Wikipedia

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 2: Zen and the art of film narrative: towards a transcendental realism in film by Erik Knudsen

Zen and the art of film narrative: towards a transcendental realism in film by Erik Knudsen

Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings. (Okri 1995: 21) What defines the classic narrative is also at the root of its limitations; an epistemology that ties it to a material and psychological paradigm governed by largely explicable laws of cause and effect. Such notions as character motivation, narrative aims, obstacles, climax and so on have evolved to become as overwhelmingly dominant in cinema as the dogma of reason which subsequently the industrial age solidified. It is from this that the moving-image medium emerged: empirical evidence of motivations, mechanistic notions of causes and effects and scientifically based including the pseudosciences of psychology and sociology that provide justifications for events and actions all serve to reinforce the dominance of the classic narrative’s role in the storytelling of the developed world.In this article, I shall call for a different perspective on cinematic narrative form; not with a view to discussing what film generally is, but to make some general suggestions of what it could be, particularly from the perspective of a film-maker trying to transcend the limitations of the classic narrative. The motive is to try and understand how, in practice, one may evolve narrative forms in such a way as to deal with experiences not sufficiently touched by the classic form, as it is currently generally practised in cinema. I shall, in particular, look at the relationship between emotions and feelings and their relationship to narrative structure and bring into this examination some notions and ideas from Zen Buddhism to re-evaluate that relationship. The issues I hope to raise are about paradigms and I shall therefore deliberately base my discussion on general assertions and eclectic contextualization.

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