From The Journal Of Screenwriting V6 Issue 1: From ‘What Can be Seen and Heard’ to ‘What Can be Sensed and Thought’: Almodovar’s moving textuality in the screenplay of Todo sobre mi madre/All about my Mother (1999) by Christian Abes

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


From ‘What Can be Seen and Heard’ to ‘What Can be Sensed and Thought’: Almodovar’s moving textuality in the screenplay of Todo sobre mi madre/All about my Mother (1999) by Christian Abes

A screenplay is a text in transit and in constant tension between the written and the audio-visual dimensions, resulting in a process of a great potentiality. Such a phenomenon can be perceived in Pedro Almodóvar’s screenwriting, in which a distinct idea of style and creative process emerges. The screenwriting of objectivity and exteriority gives way to a generous, dynamic and expressive text. This study highlights how the screenplay can be shaped within a peculiar and poetic textuality, mixing technical references with insight and more abstract comments, i.e. presenting itself simultaneously as a perceptual and as a conceptual text. What if the effects resulting from the audio-visual metaphors of Almodóvar’s screenplay for Todo sobre mi madre/All about my Mother (1999) were ‘present’ only in the screenplay? What if such deviation from classical rules engenders an experimental space within screenwriting that eventually expands the very idea of ‘screenplay’ itself?

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V6 Issue 1: From ‘What Can be Seen and Heard’ to ‘What Can be Sensed and Thought’: Almodovar’s moving textuality in the screenplay of Todo sobre mi madre/All about my Mother (1999) by Christian Abes


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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 3: ‘Want to Cook?’: Static and fluid layering in The Sopranos and Breaking Bad by Jeff Rush

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


‘Want to Cook?’: Static and fluid layering in The Sopranos and Breaking Bad by Jeff Rush

Neo-Baroque scholars argue that, because television serials build their story arc on episodic rather than linear structure, they feature the paradigmatic over the syntagmatic axis of story development. This article will extend that argument, claiming that, unlike three-act structure, serial story structure layers character against generic tropes and, as a result, limits character development. It will propose two such strategies for this layering: the static, where the trope remains the same, and the fluid, where the character moves from one trope to the other in the course of the story. In The Sopranos, the example of static layering, even though Tony Soprano pulls against the trope of the gangster don, he always returns to it. By contrast, in Breaking Bad, the example of fluid layering, Walter White is allowed to move through a series of tropes, evolving as a character as he does. However, the evolution is limited by the theme-and-variations style, which ultimately requires that subsequent variations play off of, and recapitulate, the initial theme.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: ‘Want to Cook?’: Static and fluid layering in The Sopranos and Breaking Bad by Jeff Rush


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: The continuing story: Experiments with serial narrative in 1960s prime-time television by Caryn 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


The continuing story: Experiments with serial narrative in 1960s prime-time television by Caryn Murphy
 
This article examines innovations in prime-time narratives in US prime-time television in the 1960s, using archival evidence to trace the goals, concerns and conflicts of screenwriters and producers on series including The Defenders (CBS, 1961-65), The Fugitive (ABC, 1963-67), Peyton Place (ABC, 1964-69), and Dr. Kildare (NBC, 1961-66). During this decade, television writers and producers innovated in response to outside concerns regarding the content of popular episodic programmes, and as a method of encouraging audience engagement and habit viewership. Historical evidence demonstrates that prime-time writers specifically sought to make a distinction between prime-time continuing narratives and those that aired during the daytime hours, in order to elevate what they considered to be a new form of television storytelling.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: The continuing story: Experiments with serial narrative in 1960s prime-time television by Caryn Murphy


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: Unspoken Desires: Lore as case study on shadow narrative by Margot Nash

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


Unspoken Desires: Lore as case study on shadow narrative by Margot Nash

This article explores the concept of a shadow narrative lying under the surface of the main film narrative through a case study of the 2012 film Lore. The film is based on the second story in Rachel Seiffert’s book The Dark Room. It was adapted for the screen by British screenwriter Robin Mukherjee and Australian director and screenwriter Cate Shortland. I will search for the structure of this narrative through an analysis of key emotional scenes, moments or spectral traces when the unspoken desires of the protagonist, Lore, surface and take form, when subtext becomes text and nothing is ever the same again. Using film analyst Paul Gulino’s argument that most narrative films consist of eight major sequences, each between eight and fifteen minutes, I will break the film into eight sequences and then identify one key emotional scene in each sequence. I will then analyse the eight key scenes and discuss the development of Lore’s shadow or unspoken narrative of desire. Some of these key scenes re-imagine or extend narrative moments from the book, but most are new, created by the screenwriters in order to make visible the invisible transformation of character and to heighten themes introduced in the first story in the book and brought to a resolution in the third.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: Unspoken Desires: Lore as case study on shadow narrative by Margot Nash


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: That was then this is now …  The Canyons – with Paul, Bret, James and Lindsay by Alex Munt

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


That was then this is now …  The Canyons – with Paul, Bret, James and Lindsay by Alex Munt
 
New Hollywood, from the late 1960s to early 1980s, was marked by an innovation in film business (production, marketing, audience) together with an opening up of film form. Today, some 50 years later, film culture is again in flux with new models of funding, production and distribution for the digital age. The impact of these developments on screenwriting is (necessarily) speculative at this stage. The focus of this article is on screenwriter/director Paul Schrader, a jump-cut from Taxi Driver (1976) to The Canyons (2013) – his experiment in ‘post-theatrical cinema’ with novelist/screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis. The film was written for microbudget and crowdfunded on the Kickstarter platform. It assembles the notorious cast of porn star James Deen and celebrity maelstrom Lindsay Lohan. The Canyons rolled out with an aggressive online marketing strategy and innovative ‘day and date’ distribution model with an eye to video on demand. Larry Gross has described the film as belonging to ‘this cultural moment’. In this analysis of The Canyons I ask: What does it mean to conceive, and write, a screenplay for the present, for ‘now’? How does screenplay development and creative collaboration differ in a crowdfunded/microbudget environment? How does the film interact with new forms, and aesthetics, appropriate to this ‘cultural moment’? In the final part of the article I attempt to situate the film within a wider narrative framework via Schrader’s diagnosis of ‘narrative exhaustion’, Douglas Rushkoff’s theory of ‘present shock’ and Ellis’ rumination on the American ‘post-empire’ condition.

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V5 Issue 3: That was then this is now …  The Canyons – with Paul, Bret, James and Lindsay by Alex Munt


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



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** Many of these books may be available from your local library. Check it out!

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


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

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

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


‘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.

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


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

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

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


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.

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


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

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

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


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.

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

 


Journal of Screenwriting Cover

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. 

Get your copy and subscription to the Journal of Screenwriting Today!



* 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!

24 Conclusion from How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television [Video]

With the full recording of “How The Chaos Of Collaboration in the Writers Room Created Golden Age Television”

24 Conclusion 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:

…and then there were many many stories in this one particularly, very quickly, there were people in the room who wanted to shoot down your ideas. Again reading the room and I had an idea about dealing with teenage young men who were fathers and lived in gangs and they had to make a commitment to their real family not their gang family. I knew that someone else in the room would not want me to have the extra script that year because that’s a nice chunk of money he would rather have. So my joke is I followed my executive producer into the bathroom because she was a woman and so was I and then I pitched her while we were washing our hands. So that when we walked back in the room, she already liked the idea and for someone else to shoot it down would be to say she had a bad idea and therefore I got whatever. So reading the room has always been a very important lesson. As well as remembering the doctors have power. Whenever you think about side characters, think about making them ethnic because that’s really important and then these are just the things that I learned from the room. You have to do research. You have to think about your nightmares. You have to speak up. I teach my female students this all the time. Please speak up. Don’t wait for the boys to give you a moment because they won’t and then I learned a lot and then I will briefly just say teachers make great writers because they do and collaboration doesn’t just happen in tv right because these guys collaborated on those films we have to recognize that so collaboration and chaos makes good quality presentations. Thank you.

 

For more information on the Screenwriting Research Network, visit

Screenwriting Research Network Conference, Porto, Portugal, All Sessions


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