research – Page 8 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: ‘The Watergate Theory of Screenwriting’: A keynote presentation at SRN, Wisconsin, 2013 by Larry Gross

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 Watergate Theory of Screenwriting’: A keynote presentation at SRN, Wisconsin, 2013 by Larry Gross

One way to start to think about making information in a script interesting is to rephrase the question that was posed by the Watergate investigators about then President Richard Nixon’s knowledge of the criminal deeds of his subordinates. The question reiterated obsessively during the Senate Committee investigation, voiced initially by Tennessee Republican Senator Howard Baker, was … ‘What did the president know, and when did he know it?’. In order to get going, scriptwriters must ask: what do the characters know – about narrative context, about themselves, and about each other, and when do they know it? This essay will explore Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film, Ikiru (co-written with Shinobu Hashimoto and Hideo Oguni), and how the film is masterfully structured in relation to “who knows what and when.”

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 V5 Issue 2: ‘Screenwriting research: No longer a lost cause’: A keynote presentation at the SRN Conference 2013 by Jill Nelmes

‘Screenwriting research: No longer a lost cause’: A keynote presentation at the SRN Conference 2013 by Jill Nelmes

The article discusses the past, present and future of screenwriting research from a somewhat personal viewpoint, being US and UK in its focus, partly because of my own lack of knowledge of the researchers in other countries in the ‘dark’ years. Yet the pioneering writers and, more recently, the creation of the Screenwriting Research Network and the Journal of Screenwriting have all encouraged the exchanging of ideas and the realization that there are many of us interested in the same subject. More recently the area has proven to be exciting and dynamic with a diverse range of high quality research from many countries.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library and Archive by Miranda J. Banks

Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library and Archive by Miranda J. Banks

This article provides an overview of the resources available at the Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson Webb Library in Los Angeles, California. Included is a history of the library, an explanation of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Archive, and discussion of the library and archive’s extensive holdings. The author details resources available online. The article also offers information on how to prepare for a visit to the library and best practices when conducting research or using the Writers Guild Foundation Library and Archive for scholarly or creative work.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Start me up: Lean screenwriting for American entrepreneurial cinema by Andrew Kenneth Gay

Start me up: Lean screenwriting for American entrepreneurial cinema by Andrew Kenneth Gay

This article proposes a new approach to script development modelled after lean software development practices and entrepreneurial startup principles. First, it argues that the Hollywood mode of production and its methods of project development, when applied to microbudget film-making, are inherently wasteful and fail in the face of extreme uncertainty and unpredictability. Second, it argues that entrepreneurial screenwriters and writer/film-makers can adopt lean thinking in order to eliminate waste from their creative labour and enhance learning at every stage of development and production, adding value for their audience. Finally, it argues that inexperienced writer/film-makers are particularly susceptible to the false security of the ‘blueprint’ metaphor, often clinging to an original plan even as it fails them. The flexibility inherent to lean thinking, on the other hand, not only reduces waste but also enhances creativity and collaboration, increasing a project’s chances of success.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: The pragmatic modernist: William Faulkner’s craft and Hollywood’s networks of production by Ben Robbins

The pragmatic modernist: William Faulkner’s craft and Hollywood’s networks of production by Ben Robbins

This article analyzes the screenplays and treatments for two highly popular and critically acclaimed films, To Have and Have Not (1944) and Mildred Pierce(1945), on which Faulkner worked as a salaried screenwriter for Warner Brothers. Faulkner’s collaborative writing for To Have and Have Not demonstrates his ability to participate in and extend the construction of the cinematic archetype of the Hawksian woman on the level of action and language, a portrayal that both develops and transcends the portrayal of women within his own fiction. The article also illuminates the process through which Faulkner recycled content across the high–low cultural divide, borrowing from himself to include a hybrid scene from his modernist masterwork Absalom, Absalom! (1936) in Mildred Pierce, a noir melodrama starring Joan Crawford. The article further illustrates how Faulkner reconciled himself to the narrative mode of Hollywood through his use of ‘charged realism’. As such, Faulkner’s work for the screen would seem to confound a number of presumed modernist imperatives for artistic practice: autonomy, organic production, breaking with the past, formal innovation and disdain for objective realism. The article concludes by suggesting a way to reconcile the divergent skill bases of Faulkner’s screenwriting and modernist fiction by showing how he was able to imaginatively adapt his craft to inhabit and revisualize the structures of both genres.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: ‘A story is not a story but a conference’: Story conferences and the classical studio system by Claus Tieber

‘A story is not a story but a conference’: Story conferences and the classical studio system by Claus Tieber

In analyzing the script development of Grand Hotel (1932, Edmund Goulding), this article brings an insight into the workings of the classical studio system and the way screenwriting was organized and understood during this era. The protocols of story conferences that took place at MGM under the leadership of producer Irving Thalberg deliver an exhaustive picture of the whole process, from the first screen idea, to getting the rights for a novel, to the final discussions after the screening of a rough cut. The protocols deliver evidence of screenwriting as an ongoing work in progress that was done not by a single screenwriter, but by a group of film-makers, constantly discussing all elements of the production. The concerns of the participants of these conferences included more than just storytelling; they also focused on the emotional reactions of the audience and the presentation of stars. The criteria these decisions were based upon are not ‘rules’ of storytelling, but reasonable assumptions about the audience’s reactions. Screenwriting within the studio system was not an ongoing fight between screenwriters and producers, but an ongoing discussion about every detail of a film, constituting a rather modern and democratic system of film development.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Normatizing the silent drama: Photoplay manuals of the 1910s and early 1920s by Terry Bailey

Normatizing the silent drama: Photoplay manuals of the 1910s and early 1920s by Terry Bailey

The first instructional manuals to cover the writing of photoplays for silent drama emerged in 1911. In the wake of ‘Scenario Fever’, their style was often hyperbolic, and they claimed a great need in the film industry for new dramatic scenarists. In truth, few readers of manuals, or clients of the ‘schools’ that often distributed them, attained professional status. This article uses primary and secondary sources to examine the origins and content of the silent screenwriting manuals, and determines that, despite their poor record in fulfilling their ostensible purpose, they served valuable social functions. By overlooking screen drama’s debt to Victorian theatre and vaudeville, they served to normatize screenwriting practice in its own right, and thus helped to legitimize film’s sense of itself as a new medium. The uniform nature of their content, shaped by manual writers who were often working scenarists, suggests their reliability in clarifying aspects of screenwriting practice that lay behind the creation of silent films, and justifies their use as resources in film studies.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Written to be read: A personal reflection on screenwriting research, then and now by Claudia Sternberg

Written to be read: A personal reflection on screenwriting research, then and now by Claudia Sternberg

Having been identified as an early contributor to the intensifying academic study of the (American) screenplay and screenwriting, the author presents a personal account of the circumstances which led to her own research in the 1990s and the publication of Written for the Screen: The American Motion-Picture Screenplay as Text in 1997. Additionally, she offers some reflections on the consolidation and institutionalization of screenwriting research and sketches a number of possibilities for future work in the field.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 2: Filling up the glass: A look at the historiography of screenwriting by Tom Stempel

Filling up the glass: A look at the historiography of screenwriting by Tom Stempel

This article covers the historiography of screenwriting over the past 60 years, discussing whether there has developed a critical mass of scholars, writers, and publishers in the area. It begins with writings in the fifties, sixties and seventies by such writers as Pauline Kael and Richard Corliss, then spends time with the author’s experiences in writing about the history of screenwriting, and the problems he faced dealing with publishers. From there, the article moves on to the development of books about the history of screenwriting and screenwriters. There is a brief history of the rise, death and revival of Creative Screenwriting, which started as an academic journal and evolved into a magazine. The article notes that non-American academics got into the field earlier and in more depth than the Americans. The reasons American academia avoided the study of screenwriting are discussed, as is the recent growing involvement of American academics in the field.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983): A character without a goal? by Marja-Riitta Koivumäki

Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983): A character without a goal? by Marja-Riitta Koivumäki

This article centres on the use of a character goal and a character arc as elements to express the theme and the meaning in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Nostalgia (1983). In classical dramaturgy, the goal of the character – what does the character want and what actions may he or she take in order to achieve this goal – is considered to be of the utmost importance. In Tarkovsky’s film, however, the character is passive and there does not seem to be any obvious goal to achieve. Through dramaturgical analysis my aim is to reveal the dramaturgical function of both the character goal and the character arc in Nostalgia. My contention is that a passive character forms part of an extensive dramaturgical system and that it carries more meaning than is apparent on the surface. Usually it is the character goal, what the character desires, that carries the spine of the narration and it is usually the starting point of the story design. I argue that the character arc (inner goal) can also assume this function and, accordingly, we can start the development of the screenplay from the perspective of considering how the character changes or why he/she might change. I also suggest that there is a need to reconsider the centrality of character goal, since the screenwriting theories of the twentieth century emphasize the importance of the character goal at the expense of the character arc. This article forms part of a larger study that aims to define certain characteristics of so-called poetic dramaturgy. As I’m interested in whether or not it is possible to define the features of poetic dramaturgy in a similar way as in classical dramaturgy so that they too can be incorporated into the writer’s craft, I also challenge the conventions of classical dramaturgy.

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