srn – Page 13 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: Television and film screenwriters: How to reach a global audience by Philippe Perebinossoff

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

Television and film screenwriters: How to reach a global audience by Philippe Perebinossoff

The focus of this article will be on an examination of American television and film projects and their inceptions and/or receptions in various marketplaces. In addition, the article will explore some of the specific cultural differences around the world that may be of importance to screenwriters.

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 V3 Issue 1: Irish cinema 1994–2009: The trajectory of script development policy at the Irish Film Board by Díóg O’Connell

Irish cinema 1994–2009: The trajectory of script development policy at the Irish Film Board by Díóg O’Connell

This article explores the changing nature of public policy in Ireland, 1994–2009, as it relates to film and scriptwriting practice. The dominant discourse in Irish cinema studies has centred around ideas of identity, national identity in particular with more recent studies branching off in the direction of genre studies, political economy and narrative studies. This article is framed, broadly speaking, within a political economy discourse, by way of exploring how Irish Film Board policy changed over a specific period as a result of internal and external factors, shaping a structure that would determine how Irish scriptwriters related to the wider field of film production. Through a survey of Irish Film Board policies, newspaper articles and annual reports, this article presents a general historical overview of an evolving film policy as it related directly to scriptwriting and script development. Against this backdrop, other questions surface about Irish cinema and scriptwriting practice, particularly questions centred on local/global issues.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: The constructive use of film genre for the screenwriter: The relevant knowledge component of the mental space of film genre by Jule Selbo

The constructive use of film genre for the screenwriter: The relevant knowledge component of the mental space of film genre by Jule Selbo

This exploration is a continuation of my work on the ‘mental space of film genre’, a term I have coined to introduce a terminology to investigate the use of film genre for the screenwriter as he or she constructs a screenplay. Understanding this use of film genre may add to the screenwriter’s other technical skills such as knowledge of story structure and character construction. I have previously delineated the first two elements of the mental space of film genre in the second issue of the Journal of Screenwriting – schematic knowledge (the use of film genre as a framing device) and specific knowledge (the understanding of film genre the audience brings to the viewing of filmic narratives). This work will then focus on what I believe to be the important third element of the mental space of film genre – relevant knowledge.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962): Conflict and contrast, two types of narrative principles by M.-R. Koivumäki

Poetic dramaturgy in Andrey Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962): Conflict and contrast, two types of narrative principles by M.-R. Koivumäki

This article aims to define certain characteristics of so-called poetic dramaturgy by analysing sequences from Andrey Tarkovsky’s first feature film Ivan’s Childhood (1962). The essential elements of classical dramaturgy as proposed by Aristotle are problem (conflict), cause and effect, turning points and a closed ending, and writerscontinue to use such elements in their writing. I am interested in whether or not it is possible to define the features of poetic dramaturgy in a similar way so that they too are incorporated into the writer’s craft. In this article, I will focus on one frequently occurring expressive cinematic element in Ivan’s Childhood – upward–downward movement. Through dramaturgical analysis, my aim is to reveal the dramaturgical system associated with this movement. The deviations from classical dramaturgy are of interest to me, and I will consider them as evidence of poetic dramaturgy. My contention is that there is an immanent system in Tarkovsky’s film that clearly differs from classical dramaturgy and which we can define as poetic. In addition, this article aims to analyse the nexus between word and image in the screenplay and film, with the intention of understanding whether the poetic dramaturgy has been defined in (written into) this particular screenplay or whether it is something that the director has introduced into the film.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V3 Issue 1: ‘To see a script’: Jean-Luc Godard’s re-envisioning of screenwriting in Passion (1982) and Scénario du film Passion (1982) by Jill Murphy

‘To see a script’: Jean-Luc Godard’s re-envisioning of screenwriting in Passion (1982) and Scénario du film Passion (1982) by Jill Murphy

In the film Passion (1982) and its video scenario, Scénario du film Passion (1982), Jean-Luc Godard attempts to re-envision the conventional script by placing an emphasis on visual rather than verbal forms. In this article, I examine Godard’s development of narrative through image in Passion and his description of this process in Scénario du film Passion. In addition, I consider the concurrent emphasis he places on the visualization of narrative in the diegetic film around which the storyline of Passion is based. To contextualize the process of narrative construction that Godard applies in the films considered in the article, I present some earlier examples of his screenwriting practice that illustrate how Godard’s screenwriting evolved towards an image-based approach.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Some attitudes and trajectories in screenwriting research by Steven Maras

Some attitudes and trajectories in screenwriting research by Steven Maras

An edited extract from a keynote address at the third Screenwriting Research Network conference, ‘Screenwriting Research: History, Theory and Practice’, at the University of Copenhagen in 2010,1 this piece focuses on what I have termed the ‘object problem’ in screenwriting research. I pay specific attention to how we might address the object problem by thinking about different attitudes and trajectories in screenwriting research.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Re-writing Paul Laverty’s screenplay – The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) by Jill Nelmes

Re-writing Paul Laverty’s screenplay – The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006) by Jill Nelmes

This article analyses two drafts of Paul Laverty’s screenplay The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2004b, 2005), pointing out that the changes from the first draft to the second draft focus on a single protagonist and emphasize the narrative drive, prioritizing these over informational detail and scenes which do not have a clear narrative function. In this study, I argue, re-writing acts as a refining and filtering process, in which only the essential parts of the story are retained while the model of ‘cause’ then ‘effect’ is applied to ensure the linearity of the action.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Britain’s First Suicide Bombers – The script and the screenwriter in dramatized documentary for television by Garry Lyons

Britain’s First Suicide Bombers – The script and the screenwriter in dramatized documentary for television by Garry Lyons

This article centres on a drama-documentary developed by the author, an experienced screenwriter, producer and academic. The project in question was a major featurelength film for the BBC about the first suicide attack carried out by UK citizens. Aside from the significant difficulties posed by the subject matter, the mixed-genre nature of the film made its development problematic, falling between two distinct and contrasting traditions of programme-making. This case study locates the project in the context of a rising fashion for dramadoc within the BBC post 2000, identifies unforeseen difficulties with screenwriting that arose with the use of the form, and illustrates how those difficulties became amplified in this particular production. The analysis deals with the status of the screenwriter in a process where the script is no longer sovereign, raising questions of authorship, division of labour and collaborative exchange. It contributes to the ongoing debate between documentary values of sobriety and objectivity as opposed to dramatic ones of inner truth and emotional understanding, and makes the case for an ‘accumulation of voices’ as a justifiable representation of reality in contrast to a linear expository narrative. Finally, it commends further study of mixed genre drama/ documentary as a way of reappraising orthodox screenwriting theory, offering as it does production methodologies that frequently dispense with the formal screenplay.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Greenaway’s books: Peter Greenaway’s published screenplays by Miguel Mota

Greenaway’s books: Peter Greenaway’s published screenplays by Miguel Mota

Greenaway’s published screenplays – screenplays produced and consumed as discrete material objects – function both as fluid, hybrid texts and as material books that stand ambivalently and therefore suggestively and productively poised between print and film technologies. Ranging from the early scripts published by Faber and Faber in the mid-to-late 1980s to the later and still-ongoing series of scripts produced by the French publisher Dis Voir, Greenaway’s published screenplays are fascinating examples of print film texts that produce and demand unique ways of reading and looking. By addressing these books as visual and material objects, distinct from the films, we might evince and extract from the pages of these published screenplays entirely new texts with a plurality of narrative possibilities, in which juxtapositions and relationships amongst different cultural discourses can give rise to innovative visual and verbal structures. Such an approach to Greenaway’s published film scripts as material events might contribute a curious but compelling chapter to the history of the ontology of the screenplay, affording the published script a visibility it often otherwise lacks.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 2: Escape from the stage? From play to screenplay in British cinema’s early sound period by Victoria Lowe

Escape from the stage? From play to screenplay in British cinema’s early sound period by Victoria Lowe

In this article I discuss the evolution of the screenplay from play to film of Escape (1930) through a detailed examination of the archive correspondence between its producer Basil Dean and the original writer of the play, John Galsworthy. My aim is to provide a more nuanced account of the relationship between stage and screen practices at this time, one that goes beyond histories that have understood the adaptation of stage material to have been a burden from which British cinema had to escape, in order to create its own distinctive identity. I argue that the relationship between the two practices was affected by the coming of sound, and the cultural anxiety and debates around the film industry and national identity formations that it engendered. I then examine Basil Dean’s thoughts about the adapted screenplay, in particular his ideas around the retention of the original author’s dialogue, and his practical response to the issues in terms of his collaboration with Galsworthy in the writing of the screenplay of Escape, one of the first talkies made in the United Kingdom.

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