screenwriting research network – Page 12 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

13 Something’s missing in writer’s rooms from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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When the folks hosting the conference announced their theme as “Screen Narratives: Chaos and Order” the word ‘chaos’ immediately brought to mind writers rooms. I offered a quick history of writers rooms (the presentations are only 20 minutes long) and then quoted several current showrunners on how they compose their rooms and how they run them.

Transcript

Something’s missing in these early writer’s rooms. What’s — who’s not in that picture? Audience: Women. Uh-hum. it’s kind of obvious, you know, so we had these shows that we admire greatly but they didn’t have a female perspective. Hello? They were missing and their opinion is missing and I think that’s a problem. But then along came Buffy and Buffy had a staff that included many female writers — some of whom are now credited with giving it the feminist bent that it had. Joss Whedon may have started the show but now we also know that — like Woody Allen — there are things we don’t like about him. So it seems it was the women on the staff who maintained that feminist idea right up to the point where they credited the first lesbian couple on television, Tara and Willow — and that was a big step in American television. So, Buffy’s a big step. Now, here we have a room for Orange is the New Black, which has many females, but it’s missing something different. Audience: People of color. A person of color, exactly, and yet the show itself was filled with women of color as characters. So, again, we have to address that issue. We’re not getting all the perspectives we can.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: Where are you from? Place as a form of scripting in independent cinema 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

Where are you from? Place as a form of scripting in independent cinema by J. J. Murphy

Large-budget Hollywood studio productions generally prefer a high level of fabrication in creating a film’s setting, either through the building of sets or through special effects, because it gives the production team greater control. Yet that’s often been less true of indie films historically. For a variety of reasons, the setting or location of independent films often becomes a central part of the scripting of a film. It is obviously cheaper to use what already exists in reality rather than to attempt to create a location through set design or art direction. Beyond issues of budget, however, my interest here is in exploring how ‘place’ can actually function as a key element in the scripting process, especially one that is rooted in visual storytelling, by taking into account the myriad ways that a film’s setting can contribute to and enhance the narrative beyond the use of generic, decorative or touristic locations. Using examples drawn from independent cinema, the article argues that place can have an intrinsic, integrative, stylistic, structural, conceptual and thematic function.

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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The Civil War On Film – 32 in a series – “…because it was insufficiently sympathetic to the Confederate point of view.”

Predictably, some Civil War movie fans didn’t like Andersonville because it was insufficiently sympathetic to the Confederate point of view. Neo-Confederate viewers, who surely expected a different film from Georgian Ted Turner, pointed out Confederate soldiers in Union prison camps suffered as greatly as Union soldiers in Andersonville. On the whole though, Andersonville fairs well with Civil War movie fans who enjoy (or at least tolerate) a Northern point of view.

Movies profiled in this book:

12 Kenny Johnson from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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Transcript

Kenny Johnson brought science fiction more seriousness, right? So he started The Bionic Woman. He moved on to The Incredible Hulk, then V, and then Alien Nation. A beautiful show about an alien nation and assimilation into new cultures all done through science fiction. So he brought social justice to science fiction and that was a very distinct way that his voice worked. I got to be his assistant for a while.

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The Civil War On Film – 31 in a series – …the heroism slathered on the men who survived Gettysburg…”

Much of the heroism slathered on the men who survived Gettysburg on both sides, but mostly regarding the Confederates, came from the literary work of their wives and widows published for years after the war. For example, in 1913 La Salle Corbell Pickett published The Heart of a Soldier As revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett C.S.A. Due to his wife’s efforts, his reckless and ill-conceived charge became synonymous with heroism – and with her husband and her husband alone – despite the fact that two Confederate divisions charged up Cemetery Ridge that day.

Movies profiled in this book:

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 1: Where do cinematic ideas come from? by Adrian Martin

Where do cinematic ideas come from? by Adrian Martin

This essay explores the concept of a cinematic idea. How does it originate, and how can it shape, on every level, the construction of a film? Making special reference to filmmakers’ documents (as an instance of genetic criticism), the essay offers a case study of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors.

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11 Donald Bellisario from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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Transcript

Don Belisario gave us the military on television and that is a very distinct voice in America. It speaks to a part of the population that doesn’t feel they’re serviced by television right which they think is all run by liberal elites. So to glorify our military is the thing that is very popular in some parts of the country and that’s because Don Belisario was from the military. So he wanted to express that part of his life in writing.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 3: The pleasure of immersion: Some thoughts on how The Singing Detective sustains narrative by Anne Karpf

The pleasure of immersion: Some thoughts on how The Singing Detective sustains narrative by Anne Karpf

This article argues that while Dennis Potter’s television drama series The Singing Detective is commonly celebrated for its multi-layered narrative and the post-modern way that it played with genre, another of its critical features has remained relatively neglected: the sustained narrative pleasure that it afforded. It suggests that Potter allowed viewers the deep immersive experience of realist TV drama and storytelling, even while he was experimenting with narrative, so providing a bridge between modernist and traditional forms, and rewarding viewers (who had to try and integrate the series’ different fragments and layers into some sort of quasi-cohesive narrative) with abundant dramatic gratification. Narrative, it claims, is not effaced, only displaced, partly onto the central character of Marlow, whose subjectivity unifies the fragmented narrative. Potter broke radically with the conventions of TV medical drama, and the painful experience of Marlow-as-patient acts as another binding agent.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V4 Issue 3: Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman by Leah Panos

Chaos, culture and fantasy: The television plays of Howard Schuman by Leah Panos

The single plays of American ex-pat playwright Howard Schuman produced for British television between 1973 and 1983 have received little critical attention. Written in a distinctly un-British madcap, non-naturalistic and often pulpy ‘B movie’ style, they centre around caricatured, hysterical and/or camp characters and make frequent references to popular culture. This article provides a general survey of Schuman’s plays and analyses his sensibility as a screenwriter, drawing extensively on material from interviews with the writer. The article’s particular focus is how and why different cultural forms including music, film and theatre are used and referred to in Schuman’s plays, and how this conditions the plays’ narrative content and visual and aural form. It also considers the reception of Schuman’s plays and their status as non-naturalistic dramas that engage heavily with American pop culture, within the context of British drama. Finally, it explores the writer’s relationship to style and aesthetics, and considers how his written works have been enhanced through creative design decisions, comparing his directions (in one of his scripts) with the realized play to reflect on the use of key devices.

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10 Steven Bochco from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

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Transcript

Then, of course , we have Steven Bochco, who gave us — he, as was said in the keynote, the multi-level story, many characters with different goals. He brought that to television in a way that hadn’t existed before. Adam-12 is a very basic, two guys do cop things all day. This was now groups of people. Here we had the policemen with their own personal lives at home. Later will have LA Law. The lawyers with their own personal lives and NYPD Lue. So that was what Bochco brought to television.

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