writing – Page 42 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

27 The Exorcist from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (25 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

I presented this holiday lecture “When Women Write Horror” on Tuesday, October 29th, 2019. Researching the many, many women who have written horror stories – in novels, films and television – brought new names to my attention who I am excited to start reading. I hope you will be, too!

Transcript:

What’s interesting to me about The Exorcist — again, written by a guy, adapted by a guy — when we think Exorcist we think about Linda Blair and the girl who had the demon in her, but they didn’t sell the movie on that. They sold the movie on the man who saves her — the priest who comes to exorcise the demon. They sold it as a boy’s movie, but it’s a girl’s movie. Right? So I think that’s a problem.

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26 Jamie Lee Curtis from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (47 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Another famous female in horror films is Jamie Lee Curtis. She also happens to be another Hollywood childhood because her parents are both actors right, but she starts an interesting trend because as a young person doing the first Halloween, which was based on the idea of babysitters being terrorized by a bad evil guy. She is actually — I forgot — as a child actor she could have been Linda Blair in The Exorcist, yeah. She was up for that part and their parents said “No that’s too horrifying. You shouldn’t do that. We don’t want you to go through that experience.” So it happened to Linda Blair whose career was over at the end of that movie. Nobody ever took her seriously after the spinning head and the puking. It was like too much right, whereas Jamie Lee Curtis didn’t do that job, grew up a little more, did Halloween and then has had a 40-year career. So it’s an interesting thought.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: Creative decision making within the contemporary Hollywood studios by Alexander G Ross

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

Creative decision making within the contemporary Hollywood studios by Alexander G Ross

This article seeks to contribute to the current debate about the decision-making process within the Hollywood studios and the marketing-driven quest to micromanage the creative process in order to manufacture more consistently profitable films. The author outlines the process to which scripts are subjected in order to determine their suitability for production and how this impacts the quality of the scripts. There are compelling questions about whether the current business model hinders relevant, definitive cultural narratives and how this affects both the quality and profitability of contemporary films. In addition to considering the existing literature dealing with the topic, this article also draws on the author’s fifteen years’ experience in Hollywood as a screenwriter, agent and producer.

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

25 Sissy Spacek and Carrie Fisher from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

Sissy Spacek was quite wonderful. Do a little pop culture moment here. That’s Sissy Spacek and she’s with Carrie Fisher. Why would i put those two together in a picture? I’s because long ago and far away onthe day that they each auditioned for their separate movie, the two directors swapped the women. So Sissy Spacek could have been Princess Leia and Carrie Fisher could have been Carrie. Think about how different both of their careers would have gone had that happened and how much that each of them affect the further work they did. Carrie Fisher would always argue and I believe with her Princess Leia was powerful. She wasn’t as powerful as she could be but she was a character that took a weapon and helped with saving herself right? So each of them affected the work they did in the future.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: The plot point, the darkest moment, and the answered question: three ways of modelling the three-quarter-point by Patrick Keating

The plot point, the darkest moment, and the answered question: three ways of modelling the three-quarter-point by Patrick Keating

Many contemporary screenplay manuals, following Syd Field, encourage writers to place an act break approximately three-quarters of the way through the story. Although this would appear to be an area of widespread agreement, this essay argues that the manuals do not always define the 3/4-point in the same way. One common approach is to define the 3/4-point as a causally significant plot point; another approach is to regard it as an extreme point on an emotional curve, typically the darkest moment; and a third approach is to conceive of the 3/4-point as the answer to a previously introduced question. Taking a closer look at these three competing models of the 3/4-point can help us uncover the manuals’ competing assumptions about narrative structure, showing how they conceptualize causality, emotion and comprehension.

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 Carrie from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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Subscribe to Rosanne’s Channel and receive notice of each new video!

In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

So now I want to focus for a second here also now on what happens when women are in horror films and what kind of women kind of female role models are we seeing in that world right? So, in movies, we didn’t have for a long time women doing a lot of writing so the women were represented as the characters in this piece so right? Popular, most famous, of course, being Carrie so now we’re back to Stephen King who wrote that right? So not written by a girl and the movie was actually adapted by Lawrence Cohen, but Carrie’s an interesting study in a girl revenge movie right? This is a chance for “You misused me and I’m going to get you back,” and that wasn’t something frequently that girls had a chance to get. They just got bullied and hurt and then gee who saves the day? She’s going to save her own day when she rises from the dead.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage: screenwriting, national specificity and the English-Canadian feature film by Janice Kaye and Charles H Davis

If it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage: screenwriting, national specificity and the English-Canadian feature film by Janice Kaye and Charles H Davis

Like other film-producing nations, Canada’s movie landscape was long ago colonized by US interests. While other nations also welcome American movies, the Canadian case is extreme: Canada has the lowest market share in the world of its own movies on its own screens. Living next to the world’s most powerful country, Canada occupies geographically, economically, linguistically and culturally a position unique in the world. The historical and ongoing predicament of the lack of success of English-Canadian feature films has been variously attributed to similarities to the United States in language and culture, lower production budgets, and weaknesses in distribution, exhibition, marketing and quality. The role of screenwriting, however, is little understood and rarely broached. In this article, we argue the importance of screenwriting in understanding national cinemas; show that it has institutional, sociological and nation-specific dimensions; and present Canada as an ideal case to begin examining such factors. The first dimension the institutional is defined by auteurism as well as the collaborative nature of production. The second the sociological is greatly affected by exclusionary networks and various levels of discrimination based on such factors as gender, ethnicity/race, age, sexuality and economic class. The nation-specific area pertains to diverse historical, cultural and institutional practices particular or exclusive to the country or region. English-Canada, for instance, experiences a unique and complex cultural policy environment. Moreover, its fractured and regional history is one that has resulted in the production of obsessively performed narratives of national identity, particularly imbricated with Qubec, the United States, Britain and France. Our analysis draws together strands of intersecting disciplines, combining film theory and history with production studies, close textual analyses, political economy and nation theory, calling for a more complete picture of the role of screenwriting in national cinemas.

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!

23 Taking Horror Seriously from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (43 seconds)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

It’s one of those questions you find yourself — you know people think, “Oh you’re doing a class on horror. That can’t be anything you take seriously.” Well, we have to because it’s information people are taking in. What is it making you think right? If you’re with a dude who’s scary, do you think oh yeah it was good for her. It all worked out in the end for he.r Maybe not right? Let’s reconsider how we’re taking these fictional stories into our life. So I think that’s really interesting. Twilight of course was put together by Melissa Rosenberg who had come off the tv show, Dexter. So what an interesting background before you’re gonna write about Twilight and vampire romance, she’d written about a serial killer who you know kills once a week. I don’t know but uh she made a good ton of money off that and obviously was pretty successful.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V2 Issue 1: An evolving present within a past a history of screenwriting practices in popular Hindi cinema by Anubha Yadav

An evolving present within a past a history of screenwriting practices in popular Hindi cinema by Anubha Yadav

This article studies the mutual and exclusive relationship between the history of popular Hindi cinema and the writing of the screenplay by finding dominant points of reference in their individual and overlapping histories. It connects the unique storytelling tradition of Hindi cinema with the subsumed creative identity of a screenwriter. To do this the article focuses on significant historical markers in Hindi cinema: the Silent era, the Talkies, the Golden era of the 1950s, the New Wave of the 1960s, the SalimJaved era of the 1970s and the New New Wave of today. The New New Wave in Hindi popular cinema aims to recognize and legitimize the presence of the story and the screenwriter. The article studies the evolution of this recent phenomenon and examines the academic and industrial variants that have led to the coming of this change in Hindi cinema.

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!

22 Modern-Day Vampires from When Women Write Horror with Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute)

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In honor of Halloween – and in service to my teaching philosophy —

“Words Matter. Writers Matter. Women Writers Matter.”

Transcript:

We also then, of course, know about The Vampire Diaries. Julie Pleck put that out, but now she has Legacies which is a sequel to that and Origins which is another one. Interesting because here she’s also turning them more into the sexy dudes and we’re starting to talk about that concept. The problem behind it is at what point does the super-sexy guy really become a way to hide the toxic romance that’s going on when we think about vampires, because vampires are, in fact, capable of killing you. This is a boyfriend who can kill you and you are agreeing to be with him knowing how dangerous that is. That’s a definition of domestic violence in its own way and yet we’re turning it into pop culture hot oh boy which one do I pick? Which team are you on? Right? so is that, again, defanging them, or is that accidentally empowering those kinds of relationships?

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