writing – Page 47 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

From The Journal Of Screenwriting V1 Issue 1: After the typewriter: the screenplay in a digital era by Kathryn Millard

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

After the typewriter: the screenplay in a digital era by Kathryn Millard

This article aims to contribute to contemporary debates about screenwriting as a process of developing the screen idea; about the ways in which formatting conventions from an earlier era of cinema may restrict innovation in screenwriting; and about shifting practices of screenwriting in a digital era in which images and sound play a potentially more significant role. Additionally, it questions the use of terms such as blueprint to describe the relationship between the screenplay and the proposed film that it represents. The article draws on the author’s body of practice-led research as a writer and director of feature films and documentaries, as well as histories of screenwriting, film production, comics and the graphic arts.

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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40 Conclusion from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (1 minute 42 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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This one allowed me to riff on some of my favorite female science fiction writers across time, whether they be novelists or television writers. It also opened up a good conversation on what art we support and include in our lives – and what that art says to us and about us. — Rosanne

Transcript:

We’ve moved to the world thankfully where now we’re gonna have female superheroes even and that’s the big deal. Likewise I love this meme. It’s been going around on Facebook but you probably saw it — makes a difference that little girls are now seeing women in charge and all these kinds of films makes a big difference. I like this one too. I’ve live long enough to see my child princesses become generals right? That’s Princess Buttercup — kicking some butt and what — exactly — in Wonder Woman. As you wish exactly. As I wish that someone take care. That’s pretty cool. and we’ve come to a place where there’s a new movie opening this weekend or next weekend that’s about an African-American girl who has superhero powers and so does her mother and her grandmother. It all comes through three generations of women who have to use those powers well and they have to deal with them and not cause violence and issues like that. So the fact that we’ve moved all the way here from Frankenstein is pretty amazing I think and I think we always have to go back to what Octavia Butler said, we have to think what we don’t see we assume we can’t be. So whatever that is, we need to see those depictions of all of our different selves because diversity isn’t about getting more money at the box office. Those make much richer, better stories because we are a hugely diverse world and it’s not just actually here in America. It’s all over the world. There’s all kinds of different people everywhere. We really need to think about all of them living on into the future. That makes the best science fiction, in my opinion. So there we have it. Thank you all for coming.

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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 by Jill Murphy

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

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

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK

* 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!

27 Fandom and The Monkees from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (1 minute 14 seconds)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

Wherever you go, you find Monkees fans and the Denver Popular Culture Con was no different. Amid rooms full of caped crusaders and cosplay creations, I was initially not sure how many folks would attend a talk on a TV show from the 1960s – but happily I was met by a nice, engaged audience for my talk on Why the Monkees Matter – and afterward they bought books! What more could an author ask for?

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Transcript

Fandom matters on The Monkees. Zilch is a podcast where every couple of weeks they put out a podcast. Lots of information about the show. Interviews with the guys. Updates on what’s happening with them. I do a thing called Monkees 101 with another woman who’s a Ph.D. — we’re both PhDs and we take one episode at a time and sort of pick it apart. Find all the stuff that’s in it. Talk about what was happening in history at that moment and in the music world at that moment and it’s really kind of fun. They do a lot of really cool stuff. 7000 or 8000 people follow that one podcast. Just because of this fandom and it’s international. As I said, they’re in New Zealand right now. They were going to Australia. They’ve in Japan. They’re everywhere. I’ve met them. Because fandom even means like people with Ph.Ds want to pay attention to them. This was on their last tour that Davy — uh, no, Peter — and Micky did together. And that’s how fast I talk. That’s how much I have to say. I have a lot more to say, but that’s the prepared stuff. I thought if people wanted to chat or perhaps had questions about stuff I would be glad to answer them. What interests people about why The Monkees are still famous?

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

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Bookshop.org

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy.

Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.

This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.

Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

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39 Buffy The Vampire Slayer from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (48 seconds)

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The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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Transcript:

Moves us into the world of Buffy which is part horror/part sci-fi I would say blending and I think really finally a powerful woman though yes she does use weapons but it’s also about her inner strength and her buddy Willow who doesn’t have to be sexy she’s just a cool really smart girl. So we’re trying to get some more normal representations of women. However when they sell the box set, uhhh, that’s a pretty like it yeah, an overtly sexual pose that doesn’t really thrill me, but the series is pretty brilliant and she’s pretty powerful in it and there’s an ending to it — not gonna spoil it — but there’s a choice made in the last episode in terms of how men would take having to deal with their power issues and how a woman decides to save the day. — what she does and it’s a big interesting thing.

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From The Journal Of Screenwriting V10 Issue 3: From dialogue writer to screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini at work for Federico Fellini by Claudia Romanelli

From dialogue writer to screenwriter: Pier Paolo Pasolini at work for Federico Fellini by Claudia Romanelli

Pier Paolo Pasolini was a poet, novelist, essayist and filmmaker who also worked as a screenwriter for some of the most important Italian directors including Mario Soldati, Mauro Bolognini and Bernardo Bertolucci, to name a few. While Pasolini’s poems, novels and films are widely studied, his work as a screenwriter has not attracted much critical attention. This is partly because Pasolini tended to collaborate with directors whose artistic tastes were very different from his own, making it difficult to understand what he could possibly bring to the films on which he worked. The fact that he took his first steps in the screenwriting teams for which Italian cinema was famous has also contributed to downplay his screenwriting activity. One such example is his contribution to Federico Fellini’s screenplays. Fellini first approached Pasolini because he wished to revise the dialogue in Le notti di Cabiria, which he thought lacked the authentic feel of the language spoken in the Roman slums where the film took place. Although critics have always assumed that Fellini discarded Pasolini’s revisions to his scripts, archival sources tell a different story, revealing Pasolini’s key contribution to Fellini’s work and his eagerness to leave a lasting impression on it.

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

Join me at the Screenwriting Research Network’s Annual Conference in Oxford, UK

* 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!

New Book Arrives April 2020 – The Civil War on Film by Dr. Rosanne Welch and Dr. Peg Lamphier (ABC-CLIO) – Pre-Order Now

The Civil War on Film will inform high school and college readers interested in Civil War film history on is-sues that arise when film viewers confuse entertainment with historical accuracy.

The nation’s years of civil war were painful, destructive, and unpleasant. Yet war films tend to embrace mythologies that erase that historical reality, romanticizing the Civil War. The editors of this volume have little patience for any argument that implies race-based slavery isn’t an entirely repugnant economic, political, and cultural institution and that the people who fought to preserve slavery were fighting for a glorious and admirable cause.

To that end, The Civil War on Film will open with a timeline and introduction and then explore ten films across decades of cinema history in ten chapters, from Birth of a Nation, which debuted in 1915, to The Free State of Jones, which debuted one hundred and one years later. It will also analyze and critique the myriad of mythologies and ideologies which appear in American Civil War films, including Lost Cause ideation, Black Confederate fictions, Northern Aggression mythologies, and White Savior tropes. It will also suggest the way particular films mirror the time in which they were written and filmed. Further resources will close the volume.

Makes clear that depictions of the Civil War on film are often mythologized
Analyzes films in a manner that shows students the historical context in which the films were made and viewed
Goes beyond just synopses and historical facts, helping students to develop critical thinking skills
Stimulates debate over the various ways the war was interpreted and experienced

26 A New Album 50 Years Later from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (1 minute)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

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

Transcript

…and of course, the music still matters because two years ago they put on an album on their 50th anniversary that made the top 50 in the Billboard charts. Fifty years after their last top-ten album. No other artists can say that. No other living artists right. If you put up dead people’s stuff then it’ll sell yeah but no other living artists and the people that wrote for them on this album again very major modern songwriters. So I think that’s really really cool Rivers Cuomo, Andy Partridge, Ben Gibbard wrote a beautiful song called Me and Magdalena which is just a very gorgeous song — a Nesmith thing. These are all amazing people today. What they did, the folks at Rhino records went out and asked people from hit rock bands today, if you could write for The Monkees would you and a bunch of them said yes and then they said okay write me a song that sounds like a Monkees song and that was a great challenge for them. They really, really enjoyed it. Ben Gibbard sings the Me and Magdalena when he’s on tour.

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.

Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.

This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.

Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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38 Russell T Davies and Doctor Who from The Sisterhood of Science Fiction – Dr. Rosanne Welch [Video] (57 seconds)

Watch this entire presentation

The Sisterhood of Science Fiction: A Walk Through Some Writers and Characters You (Should) Know And Love

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Transcript:

I’m going to go back to my Russell Davies guy because he said something that is really interesting in one of his interviews about what’s wrong with television. He happens to be a gay man — an out, gay man — in England. So he made sure that most of his pieces involved gay men in partnerships because he wanted to see, again, as a child — he wanted to see that that was normal and acceptable, but he also recognized how badly women are represented on television and he wanted to something about that. So, in Doctor Who, when he took it over, he invented a lot of very interesting female companions who had all their different levels of strength. I could do a whole talk on that. I already have, but of course, the great thing about Doctor Who, post the Russell Davies period we’ve now come up with regenerating — so we’re going back to Virginia Woolfe and Orlando — we’re making the male character — who for 50 years has been represented by a male actor — he regenerated into a female character and so we’re moving forward in the Doctor Who universe as well as a female character.

* 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!

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25 Songwriters and The Monkees from “Why The Monkees Matter: Even 50 Years Later [Video] (53 seconds)

Enjoy This Clip? Watch this entire presentation and Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

From Denver Pop Culture Con 2019.

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

Transcript

Obviously, as I said, the TV Writers, the music writers mattered. I mean, Carole King — how many Grammy’s in her day — and she wrote Some Time In The Morning, which I think is one of the most beautiful love songs ever. Boyce and Hart, as I mentioned were the major songwriters for them in the first couple of years and then it expanded. Neil Sedaka wrote for them. Neil Diamond — how about that young picture of Neil Diamond. Paul Williams, who also — somehow the Muppets and The Monkees — I need a book that connects them because there is a lot that connects them. David Gates from Bread wrote a couple of songs and actually, Micky has an album of — he does a new album called Remember and in that he records Diary which is a famous David Gates song which David wrote and tried to sell to him in the late ’70s and he said no, I don’t think I’m a singer anymore. So he did that later in his career. But that’s how important — and Carole Bayer Sager of course. So they knew that writers were an important thing.

Buy Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Pop Culture

A hit television show about a fictitious rock band, The Monkees (1966-1968) earned two Emmys–Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Directorial Acheivement in Comedy.

Capitalizing on the show’s success, the actual band formed by the actors, at their peak, sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined, and set the stage for other musical TV characters from The Partridge Family to Hannah Montana. In the late 1980s, the Monkees began a series of reunion tours that continued into their 50th anniversary.

This book tells the story of The Monkees and how the show changed television, introducing a new generation to the fourth-wall-breaking slapstick created by Laurel and Hardy and the Marx Brothers.

Its creators contributed to the innovative film and television of 1970s with projects like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laugh-In and Welcome Back, Kotter. Immense profits from the show, its music and its merchandising funded the producers’ move into films such as Head, Easy Riderand Five Easy Pieces.

McFarland (Direct from Publisher) | Amazon | Kindle Edition | Nook Edition

Want to use “Why The Monkees Matter” in your classroom?

Order Examination Copies, Library and Campus Bookstore orders directly from McFarland

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS