Abstracts + Bios

Akam, Kingsley Oyong

Lancester Institute of the Contemporary arts

Script to Screen: Portraying Social Realism and the Metaphor of Rape in Emem Isong’s Code of Silence (2015)

Abstract:
Globally all forms of exploitations such as rape and other inhuman abuses have no boundaries regardless of race, gender and age. In order to get rid of these social vices especially rape there have been enlightenment campaigns across the world using various media including the film medium. It is against this background on global advocacy and enlightenment against the menace of rape and gender inequality that Hollywood, Health & Society, Nollywood Workshops, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation developed the idea of Code of Silence (2015), ‘‘a mainstream Nollywood film tackling issues of rape and gender equality’’ (Rosenthal, 2016, p.2). Bola Aduwo wrote Code of Silence and directed by Emem Isong a woman director working in Nollywood (Nigerian cinema). The aims of this paper centres on looking at the director’s malleable approach and reinterpretation of the script in the course of making the film and to examine elements of social realism in Nigeria regarding rape and how rape works as a metaphor of exploitation in Code of Silence. I will be taking a metaphoric approach besides social realism regarding ethical and unethical issues surrounding rape in Nigeria, I will be interpreting the character of Adamma (Makida Moka) the victim as mother earth representing the exploited and oppressed citizens by greedy individuals as portrayed in the characters of Chief Arthur Igwe (Kofi Adjorlolo) the assailant and his cohorts. I will situate this study on Transnational approach of cinema based on Naficy (1996) ideas linking with that of Higson (2000) and Ezra & Rowden (2006). I will do a textual analysis of the film as a finished product on screen from the script as a blueprint for the director in ensuring that the film Code of Silence serve as an instrument for social change and advocacy for the ‘‘fight’’ against rape.

Bio:
My research interests are not limited to nation-state/transnational cinema; health-filmology; sociology of film/drama; gender studies, postcolonial issues, social realism and Afrocentric colonialism. I have lectured in the Department of Theatre and Media Studies, University of Calabar, Nigeria from 2016-2021. I am a prolific and gifted stage/screen writer, actor, director, producer and cinematographer interested in using theatre and film for positive transformation of the society.
I have published scholarly articles and book chapters as well as attended conferences for intellectual discourses. I wrote, directed and produced The Crippled Giant (Play) (2019) which is now in print as The Honey Badgers. I am currently a postgraduate researcher pursing my PhD in Film Studies; working on ‘‘Female Nollywood Filmmakers and Values/Citizens Reorientation towards Good Governance’’ in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), Lancaster University, United Kingdom

Azatyan, Shmavon

Independent researcher/screenwriter

Cultural Transformations in the screenplay Pam and Dave

Abstract:
This paper concerns itself with the transformation of cultural elements in my process of writing a screenplay, Pam and Dave, in a collaboration with producer/director Raj Mehrotra. The project, which features a century-old story, originally written by an Indian fiction writer, is set in modern-day Canada. As the author of the screenplay, I discuss how ‘transnational’ collaboration impacts the original story in that it requires a certain transformation of cultural elements that become the axis, around which the development of the screenplay revolves. I argue that the transformations occur on two levels: first, they are locally required and preferred by author; second, they are expressed by implications arising from the cultural context the screenplay is set in.

The article uses D. Shaw’s categories of ‘transnational collaborative networks,’ ‘film and cultural exchange,’ and ‘transnational modes of narration,’ and R. Burgoyne’s and J. Middents’ theories to position Pam and Dave within the framework of ‘transnational’ cinema. Further, drawing on the views of S. Datta, the discussion traces the representation of gender dynamics in Indian Cinema and takes an insight into their transformations in Pam and Dave. The transformations are, firstly, required by the cultural context, and secondly, preferred by the producer and writer. I claim that certain cultural attributes are required in that they stem from limited choices; while others are preferences in that they are afforded by unlimited choices. Also, I argue that the ideological and cultural beliefs underlying the same ‘action’ by the same ‘character’ in Pam and Dave may be interpreted differently depending on the audiences’ cultural milieu. The ‘ideal love’ rampant in Indian Cinema is an ‘alien deposit’ in Pam and Dave; Dave’s struggle for Pam implies fight for ‘individual freedom’ in the Western context, while for Indian viewer it is a self-sacrificial struggle for true or perfect love.

Bio:
I received my PhD in Screenwriting from La Trobe University in 2019. Since then I have been tutoring Humanities subjects and conducting independent research. My research interests lie in filmic narrative, spatial narration, sex in film, reality and cinema, and Soviet and Scandinavian cinemas. My research articles and essays on film have been published in PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences (2017), Journal of Media, Communication and Film (2018), Film International (2019), Offscreen Journal of Film and Media (2019), Taylor & Francis (2020), and an article is due soon in Journal of Scandinavian Cinema. I have also participated in conferences, such as SRN 2017 in Dunedin, The European Conference on Media and Mass Communication in Brighton (2017), International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities in Lisbon (2017) and others. In addition, I write screenplays, and currently I am working on a few projects.

Bas, Anil

A Meeting: AI-Assisted Screenplay Generation

Bio:
Dr Anil Bas is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering, Faculty of Technology, Marmara University in Istanbul. He is the Senior Researcher on the AI as Author research project.

Batty, Craig

University of South Australia (UniSA)

The Dominance of the English Language in Screenwriting Research

Abstract:
For several years now, in many countries and sectors, we have been talking increasingly about social and cultural diversity and inclusion. Studies have been conducted, events organized, articles and books writen, and hegemonic structures challenged in order to better name and understand the systemic discrimination experienced by different social groups in different contexts – the ultimate goal being to collectively develop new mechanisms and models of integration, interaction and acceptance. In terms of research and artistic practices, diversity is generally approached in connection with issues related to accessibility and representation. Therefore, the legitimacy of (historically) marginalized voices is now progressively recognized. From many countries, the work of SRN members contributes in a significant way to this important momentum. However, the SRN does not escape an unintended discriminating phenomenon linked to the globalization of research – i.e. the domination of the English language within the academic world. Indeed, despite the linguistic diversity of the Network’s members, official and informal communications, conferences and publications are conducted mainly (if not exclusively) in English. While a significant proportion of SRN members speak English as their mother tongue, for many affiliated researchers, fluency in English is rather an imperative to their professional integration and to ensure adequate dissemination of their work. Although many researchers cope well with this, members who do not speak English as their first language are systematically disadvantaged. With this paper, we do not seek, under any circumstances, to “bring to trial” the SRN. Rather, we want to account for phenomena associated with the dominance of the English language within our Network – keeping in mind that those issues necessarily outflow just as much as they integrate the Network. In our paper, we will cite work on systemic discrimination and the linguistic dominance of English in research. Both sitting at different ends of the “Anglo-spectrum”, we also intend to use our personal experiences of the dominance of English in the academic world as exemples. Our goal is to highlight some problematic aspects of the current language status quo and, we hope, spark a collective reflection within our Network.

Bio:
Craig Batty Professor Craig Batty is Dean of Research (Creative) at the University of South Australia. He is the author, co-author and editor of 15 books, including Script Development: Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives (2020), The Doctoral Experience: Student Stories from the Creative Arts and Humanities (2019), Writing for the Screen: Creative and Critical Approaches (2nd ed.) (2019) and Screen Production Research: Creative Practice as a Mode of Enquiry (2018). He has published book chapters and journals articles on the topics of screenwriting practice, screenwriting theory, creative practice research and doctoral supervision. Craig is also a screenwriter and script consultant, with experiences in short film, feature film, television and online drama.

Benis, Rita

CEComp (Center for Comparative Studies, Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon)

How migrant filmmaking shaped Portuguese screenwriting models

Abstract:
The diversity of Portuguese screenwriting practices is somehow linked with its early day’s cinema history. Namely, to the foreign migrant who became active players in the Portuguese silent film period (until the first half of the 1920s). The so-called “Portuguese cinema made by foreigners” (Baptista 2008) period was largely directed by Italians and French technicians (hired by the first Portuguese film companies). Mimes and the art of pantomime, with its importance of the rhythm, shaped this cinema who evolved under a strong rhythmic, musical, ascendancy (rather than a narrative one). Roberto Nobre's book Horizonte de Cinema [Cinema Horizon] (1939) – the first Portuguese book to address screenwriting formats – was written already in the sound epoch. Significantly, it is divided in two chapters: the aesthetic function of rhythm (whether in images or fiction), and the performance of actors (emphasizing the importance of pantomime). Through this thematic division (rhythm and performance), we realize how the construction of a film at the time was not yet fully under the domain of narrative conventions. Today Hollywood storytelling models are increasingly present in Portuguese audiovisual culture. Still, we can witness the coexistence of different styles of screenwriting and a wide variety of formats – from the industrial models to the more alternative, non-standard, experimental screenplays, heirs of a more exploratory matrix, still linked to a freedom which reverberated in the silent film period. In this paper we will explore how the early wave of foreign filmmaking, combined with some modernist poets’s screenwriting experiences, left an indelible trace in Portuguese screenwriting culture. A subtle rhythmic influence that would later be reflected in the work of some writers-directors: from Manoel de Oliveira's first screenplay (1931), with its syncopated phrases in a dizzying pace, to Pedro Costa or Teresa Villaverde’s writings, where rhythm and tension are defining marks.

Bio:
Rita Benis is a researcher at Center for Comparative Studies (Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon). With a grant from FCT, she’s currently finishing her doctorate on Manoel de Oliveira’s screenwriting. Master in Comparative Literature, taught Screenwriting and History of Cinema. Member of the research project Cinema and the World, she co-edited the electronic magazine Falso Movimento – escrita e cinema [False Movement – on writing and cinema]. She has translated and published books and articles on the relationship between image and writing. Latest book: Benis, Rita and Elisabete Marques (org). 2020. Escrita e Imagem [Writing and Image], Lisbon: Documenta/Sistema Solar. Award-winning screenwriter, works in cinema since 2000: collaborated with Teresa Villaverde, Margarida Gil, Jorge Cramez, Inês Oliveira, António Cunha Telles, Vincent Gallo and Catherine Breillat, among others.

Bentham, Michael

University of South Australia (UniSA)

Screenwriting the Other: an evaluation of the objections to using empathy as method in the construction of biographical fictional representations

Abstract:
Continuing my series of papers examining the process of writing a biopic, this text explores the notion of empathy as a core method employed by screenwriters to bridge the gap between the self, living in the present, and the (emotional) interiority of a biographical referent, situated in the past. When discussing historical fidelity there is a well-documented expectation that (screen)writers of historical and biographical narrative fiction defend their process on the broadly empirical terms of the historian. As a result, as soon as the conversation turns to the use of imagination and empathy as methods of accessing the past, there are no shared reference points to frame the discussion. The conversation begins to break down. Significant objections to the use of empathy as method have also emerged from the broader interdisciplinary field of cultural studies. Here, the objection is situated within the framework of colonial and post-colonial power structures where, it is argued, attempts at empathic understanding can lead to cultural appropriation and acts of epistemic violence towards people from oppressed positions in society. In common with the historian's objection, the cultural studies position on empathy also references notions of fidelity. In this paper I will examine these objections, and argue that the writer of biographical fiction is pursuing a kind of knowledge that not only sits outside the academic field of the historian, but sits outside empirical research activities into our understanding of the emotional interiority of others per se. In other words, to gain meaningful insights into the intersection between the narrative fiction (screen)writer and the interiority of a biographical subject, the scope of the enquiry needs to move away from empirical frameworks, and centre around the locus of praxis in which writers of biographical and historical fiction operate.

Bio:
A graduate of the UK’s National Film and Television School, Michael’s work as a writer/director spans feature films, documentary and shorts. His recent feature drama, Disclosure (2020), was nominated for an AACTA (best indie film), ADG (best direction) and ATOM (best feature film) Award. Michael's research activities at the University of South Australia are currently exploring the articulation and application of moving image narratives as methodology.

Bouschinger Christensen, Katrine

University of Copenhagen

Writing entertaining family fiction with a natural science mission: The case of the Danish television Christmas calendar ‘Christmas of the Comets’

Abstract:
Based on findings from the research project ‘Reaching Young Audiences’ on film, serial fiction and storyworlds for children and young audiences (RYA 2021), this paper analyses the writing of the television Christmas calendar Christmas of the Comets which was shown as 24 episodes on the commercial public service broadcaster TV 2 in December 2021. The Christmas calendar genre is quite unique to Scandinavian television as a very popular form of fiction that gathers families for shared viewing during the month of December (Agger 2013). The TV 2 television Christmas calendar of 2021 was unique in the way that the idea for the series came from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen where astrophysicist Anja C. Andersen and television producer Marie Breyen developed a plan to create a greater interest in the natural sciences through the making of an inspiring fictional universe marked by fascinating natural science elements. TV 2 and the production company Nordisk Film were fond of the idea and hired showrunner Jenny Lund Madsen to head the writing of the series. Based on literature on writing for children and family audiences (Brown 2017; Hermansson and Zepernick 2018; Redvall and Christensen 2021) and qualitative interviews with Jenny Lund Madsen, Marie Breyen and Anja C. Andersen, document analysis (of e.g. the press material, reviews) and observation studies at industry events (such as THIS Series festival in 2021), the case study explores the process of creating a Christmas calendar with an arena and a storyline where natural science elements are naturally integrated in each episode. Building on theories of transmedia storytelling (Ryan 2015), the case study also explores the extensive transmedia universe ‘Universet udenom’ (the universe around) which was created around the series and the way in which this mirrored the action and conflicts of the fictional story.

References

Agger, Gunhild (2013) ‘Danish TV Christmas Calendars: Folklore, Myth and Cultural History.’ Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 3(3): 267-280.

Brown, Noel (2017) The Children’s Film: Genre, Nation, and Narrative. London and New York: Wallflower.

Hermansson, Casie and Janet Zepernick (eds.) (2019) The Palgrave Handbook of Children’s Film and Television. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Redvall, Eva N. and Katrine B. Christensen (2021) ‘Editorial: Screenwriting for children and young audiences.’ Journal of Screenwriting, 12(3): 259-268.

RYA. 2021. Project website for the Reaching Young Audiences research project. https://comm.ku.dk/research/film-science-and-creative-media-industries/reaching-young-audiences-serial-fiction-and-cross-media-storyworlds-for-children-and-young-audiences-rya/

Ryan, M,-L. 2015. ‘Transmedia Storytelling: Industry buzzword or new narrative experience?’ Storyworlds, 7(2): 1–19.

Bio:
Katrine Bouschinger Christensen completed an MA in Film and Media Studies at the University of Copenhagen in 2017. Since then she has been working as a social media project manager and team leader for digital content for the national broadcasters DR and TV 2 before becoming a PhD fellow in the collaborative research project ‘Reaching Young Audiences: Serial Fiction and Cross-Media Storyworlds for Children and Young Audiences’ at the University of Copenhagen. Her PhD project focuses on the current production strategies in film and television for children and young audiences. Katrine has published in Critical Studies in Television and co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Screenwriting on writing for children and young audiences.

Braga, Paolo

Department of Communication Sciences and Performing Arts
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan

Movie speeches – a classification proposal

Abstract:
The “inch by inch” speech delivered by Al Pacino’s character to his team in Any Given Sunday, the exhortation to the Scottish army by Mel Gibson/William Wallace in Braveheart, the virulent verbal attack by Jack Nicholson/Colonel Jessep in A Few Good Man… Monologues are often pieces of great screenwriting. They challenge actors to give prove of their talent. They not rarely are memorable scenes that leave a mark beyond the story they belong to, the excellence of which monologues usually are a sign of. The proposed paper addresses this topic, seldom taken into account in screenwriting studies.

I will first present the few contributions on how to write a movie speech offered by the main authors of screenwriting manuals (Robert McKee, John Truby, Michael Hauge).

I will then sketch a map of the fundamental kinds of movie speeches. Drawing on two basic oppositions (the speaker marking his being different from the audience VS. his belonging to their group; the speaker stressing the conflict with an antagonist VS. the strive for a goal) I will argue that the protagonist, when addressing his listeners, can play one of four major oratorical archetypical roles: the Fighter, the Inspirator, the Pioneer and the Fustigator.

I will analyze the structure of each kind of speech, showing that they represent different ways to motivate an audience, counting on four different “emotional transitions”: from mediocrity to excellence (the Pioneer), from depression to hope (the Inspirator), from fear to courage (the Fighter), from duplicity to truth (the Fustigator).
Finally, I will make the hypothesis of an emotional correspondence between the fundamental kinds of speeches and some basic narrative structural steps (the worst point, the choice to undertake the final action, the battle, the resolution).

Bio:
Paolo Braga, Ph.D., is lecturer at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he teaches Screenwriting. At Università Cattolica he also teaches at the Master in International Screenwriting and Production. He has published extensively on the topics of the construction of empathy with character and of US television series. The rhetorical and persuasive dimensions of storytelling are his general research area, which he has treated in several articles and essays. Among his most recent publications is Words in action. Forms and Techniques of Film Dialogue (Peter Lang, 2015).

Carey, Mark

University of South Australia / University of Plymouth, UK

Screenwriting as 'Strategy': towards a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking methodology

Abstract:
Screenwriting as 'Strategy': towards a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking methodology Abstract: Using the recent Australian-UK feature film Disclosure (2020) as a case study, writer/director Michael Bentham and cinematographer Mark Carey will analyse the script-to-screen process of a key third act scene to demonstrate the fluidity of the notion of scripting in the digital era. The merging and augmentation of the traditional (Hollywood) screenplay format with mood boards, sound design, and annotated photo storyboards illustrate what Kathryn Millard refers to as 'cinematic scripting'. Crucially, cinematic scripting is not simply a delineated written text for the finished movie, but part of a collaborative filmmaking process of fluidity and flux, "an open text that sketches out possibilities". In this paper Bentham and Carey draw on nonrepresentational theory to argue that cinematic scripting can be thought of as one of a series of creative strategies that filmmakers use in the creation of a 'filmic utterance'. The notion of screenplay as strategy builds on recent scholarly work that aims to articulate screenwriting (and screen production) as research. To this end the paper will offer a working definition of narrative fiction filmmaking as methodology, in which scripting and mise-en-scène operate as core strategies in generating new knowledge

Bio:
Mark is an award-winning cinematographer whose credits range from feature films to fine art installations and documentary, collaborating with leading directors including Martin Scorsese and Alex Gibney. His work with artist Jasmina Cibic has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and was the recipient of the Jarman Award, 2021. As Associate Professor in Filmmaking at the University of Plymouth, Mark is generating practice-led research around notions of the 'empathic' lens.

Castrillo, Pablo

Showrunners of Spain: Outlooks and Challenges in the Post-TV Writers’ Room

Abstract:
Over-the-top media services (OTT) such as Netflix, HBO Max, and Amazon Prime Video have disembarked in Spain in full force since 2015 (Sáez, 2019). Local media groups like Atresmedia and Movistar+ have also emerged with their own VOD services and content brands in an attempt to compete against these global multinational giants. Consequently, the demand for original scripted content has soared, involving ever larger numbers of individual creators and production companies. Traditionally, the relationships between writers-producers and networks have been hierarchical, ruled by a customer-supplier mentality. The new players, however, have seemingly introduced different approaches in the creative processes, yielding more autonomy to the writers’ rooms or, when applicable, to writers-producers or showrunners. In this paper we set out to illustrate the new practices, styles, and perhaps also difficulties faced by Spanish writers’ rooms in the still fresh environment brought about by the digital platforms. In order to do so, our methodology will combine a) a survey for Spanish screenwriters; and b) a series of in-depth interviews with writers-producers of hit TV shows created in Spain in recent years, such as Money Heist (Atresmedia; then Netflix), Cocaine Coast (Atresmedia), Cable Girls (Netflix) and Patria (HBO Max), among others. As screenwriters who have worked in the Spanish industry for over fifteen years, our questions for these industry practitioners will revolve around the changes they have experienced inside the writers’ rooms since the cord-cutting wave; the ways in which the relationships between creators and outlets have shifted; and most importantly, whether these alterations, presumably caused by their migration to new digital platforms, have had a meaningful impact in their writing process and in the narrative-poetic configuration of their stories

Bio:
Dr. Pablo Castrillo is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Film, TV & Digital Media of the University of Navarra, where he has also served as Vice Head of the Master’s Degree in Screenwriting (MGA). He obtained his M.F.A. in Screenwriting from Loyola Marymount University under a Fulbright Scholarship (2010-2013), and obtained his PhD in Communication/Film Studies at the University of Navarra (2013-2017).

Cavazza, Giulia

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milano)

Developing empathy: the adventures of Pinocchio between USA and Italy

Abstract:
Pinocchio is one of the Italian book most frequently adapted for the screen, both in USA and in Italy. There are many reasons that make this story especially appealing for an international audience, such as the universal themes and the flexible structure. But the original book presents also challenging obstacles to screen adaptation and screenwriters from different countries and cultural backgrounds chose different way to overcome them. This paper is focused on one of these problems: how to make the audience empathise quickly with a main character that is not immediately likeable. In fact, in the first part of Collodi’s book, Pinocchio is often selfish, arrogant and unfaithful, especially toward his benevolent father Geppetto. Moreover, screenwriters had to rely mainly on Pinocchio’s action, because cinematographic form does not allowed many insights into his mind to explain his behaviour. Every screen adaptation chose his particular way to deal with it. The Disney version (1940) changed deeply the character of Pinocchio, making him kinder and naive, with an external conscience (Jiminy Cricket) with which is possible to interact. This choice aimed to meet audience expectation but had a deep impact on the narrative structure and on the theme of the story. In Italy, during the years, many attempts were made to create a more “faithful” adaptation of the original book: from the animated version of 1971, Un burattino di nome Pinocchio, that was almost philological in his intention, to the most recent film directed by Matteo Garrone in 2019. This paper, focusing on some significative incipits, wants to compare the American and the Italian way to deal with the empathy problem, and the enduring influence of the Disney version even on screenwriters that chose different paths.

Bio:
Giulia Cavazza (1991), after a degree in Modern Philology, attended the Master program in International Screenwriting and Production at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milano). She worked for three years as story editor in Lux Vide, especially on the first season of Doc and Blanca, both successful tv series sold internationally. She is now a PhD student in Linguistic Sciences and Foreign Literatures, with a research project about the evolution of adaptation strategies in the history of Disney Animation Studios.

Černík, Jan

The Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Palacký University, Czech Republic

Frank Daniel: The beginnings of a famous screenwriting teacher

Abstract:
Frank Daniel is considered one of the great gurus of screenwriting. According to legend, he was a teacher of David Lynch, collaborator of Robert Redford and he worked at major institutions like American Film Institute, Columbia University and University of Southern California. Even a quarter of a century after his death, he is known as an influential teacher of screenwriting, and transcripts of his lectures circulate the internet. All of it is true, but a significant part of Daniel’s life story is omitted. Who was Daniel before emigration from Czechoslovakia? What were the foundations of his theory? How was his beginnings in the USA? I believe that forgotten events and information may show Daniel's teaching method in a new light.

In the first part of my paper I will briefly introduce Daniel’s life before emigration in 1969, and essential thoughts of Daniel’s pre-emigration understanding of screenwriting teaching will be retrieved from his Czech books. Daniel wasn’t just screenwriter, dramaturg, teacher of screenwriting and manager. Besides he was an author or co-author of five never-translated theoretical books about screenwriting, which I want to briefly introduce. In the second part I will discuss the circumstances of Daniel’s emigration and how his teaching method developed during the first decade in the USA, with special emphasis on his lesser-known workplace at Carleton College (MN).

My ambition is to show Daniel’s career as a search for a method of teaching screenwriting, and to introduce the basics of his screenwriting theories.

Bio:
In my research I combine an interest in the topics of Czech and Czechoslovak cinema, film industries, and screenwriting with a theoretical framework of analytic philosophy. I believe that in an exploration of audiovisual culture, we have to consider the applicability of our findings. I graduated in film studies and philosophy and received my Ph.D. degree in film history in 2018. Recently I edited a special issue on screenwriting in Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Besides research in screenwriting history I am interested in the stylometry of screenplays, and cognitivist theories.

Chakravarty, Indranil

Eurocentrism in Screenwriting Pedagogy

Abstract:
The presumed distinctiveness associated with the notion of national cinemas presupposes that different countries and cultures not only have unique stories to tell but also different narrative traditions. However, the universal guidelines and the dominance of Hollywood-centric screenwriting manuals is a refutation of that contention. If there are no books on screenwriting ‘Indian style’ despite being the largest film industry in the world, neither are there books on how to write film-scripts in the European style or the Latin American style. Does this mean that below the veneer of diverse filmmaking traditions, the principles of storytelling are the same? Does it imply that the Hollywood/Aristotelian way of telling stories is actually the only ‘right’ way of doing it? The contestation to Hollywood’s claim to universality has become increasingly feeble in a globalising world. As a teacher of screenwriting in India, one has to confront this uncomfortable question because there are no clear answers or alternative methods though India has an elaborate treatise on dramatic theory that pre-dates Aristotle’s Poetics. Despite an awareness of cultural difference, screenwriting pedagogy in India (and other similarly different cinematic cultures) has entailed a reinforcement of the Eurocentric model by taking the Hollywood manuals as normative and then, merely highlighting idiosyncratic departures. This paper relates the cultural predicament of unwillingly enforcing a Western dramaturgic model where the only way to reflect on one’s own cinematic Self is through a dialogue with the cinematic Other.

Bio:
Indranil Chakravarty currently heads the Screenwriting department of Prasad Studios in Chennai, India. He studied filmmaking at the Escuela Internacional de Cine y TV (Havana) and holds a PhD in Creative Practice (Screenwriting) from Victoria University of Wellington, NZ. He has been professor of Screenwriting at FTII (Pune), Whistling Woods Film Institute (Mumbai) and SRFTI (Calcutta). His publications include The New Latin American Cinema (1996), India’s Audiovisual Industry: An Analysis (2006), Redescubriendo a Tagore (2011) and articles in several peer-reviewed journals such as ‘Sightlines’. He works as a script mentor for web-series for Prime, SonyLiv, etc.

Chiarulli, Raffaele

Department of Communication and Performing Arts,

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

From Italian Concept to High Concept. Different ways to a global screenwriting

Abstract:
Looking for the origins of narrative ideas is a difficult yet stimulating challenge that has always put to the test the studies of cultural processes. Understanding how narrative concepts take root in an imagery concerns also Screenwriting Studies and different Histories of Film around the world. Parent-Altier (1997) described screenwriters as artists indifferent to the origin of their ideas and as authors of a “creative magma”, which only following analysts will be able to make out. In some Italian writers’ opinion, dramatic insight comes mysteriously to the artists, since it naturally and unconsciously emerges from the richness of their knowledge and the variety of their experiences. There are exceptions, though, and we can explore some screenwriters’ creative universe thanks to their memoirs (for the Italian context see Incrocci:1990; Pirro: 2011), useful in Screenwriting Studies thanks to the “discourse frame paradigm” (Maras: 2009).

The screenwriter’s inspiration sources can be verified because they are generally rooted in a series of universal parameters set at the heart of the human experience and placed in the cultural traditions. As well as the studies and sources able to testify to some resisting narrative trends inside the history of Italian cinema (Eugeni: 2008), the paper means to stimulate a reflection about the Italian cinema imagery, its ideas and its creative industries in connection with the possibility this imagery has to become global (Aresu: 2020; Peluffo: 2020).

It also means to answer some questions about Italian cinema as seen in the light of “high concept” (Thompson: 1999) and find traces of this notion within the screenwriting practice of Italian movies. So, it intends to highlight broader themes of reflection between film history and screenwriting studies and, above all between theory and practice.

Bio: Raffaele Chiarulli earned a PhD degree in Communication Studies at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart (Milan), where he teaches Audio Visual Languages and Contemporary Italian Cinema and collaborates with the MISP - Master's Course in International Screenwriting and Film Production. He wrote Di scena a Hollywood. L’adattamento dal teatro nel cinema americano classico (Staged in Hollywood. Adaptation from Stage to Film in Classical American Cinema; Milan 2013) and Social Movies. Dal cinema digitale al cinema del sociale (Social Movies. From Digital Cinema to Social Cinema; Milan 2015). He edited, with Armando Fumagalli, a commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics for screenwriters (Rome 2018). In 2021 he won the SRN Award for Best Journal Article.

Cotta Ramosino, Laura

Catholic University of Milan

A broader allegiance How an Israeli show about an ultraorthodox family became a global hit

Abstract:
Shtisel, a little tv show about the eponymous Haredi (ultra-orthodox Jewish group) family in Jerusalem, was first aired in Israel in 2013. By 2021, the series, now broadcasted globally by Netflix, has become a hit both in European and American market (with a potential remake in US territory).

The life of the members of Shtisel family are affected by a complex system of rules and restrictions, and their desires and aspirations must come to terms with a Weltanschauung that imposes a number of expectations on the individual. The religious element imbues every aspect of existence, from food to clothes, from professional to emotional life, in a measure unknown for today’s secular society.

It might seem a mystery that a show so strongly rooted in a very specific religious, social and political reality and shot in Hebrew and Yiddish may appeal to such a broader audience, but Shtisel managed to gain a faithful and affectionate following by opening the doors of a normally secretive world and trying to explore the lives of their members in a sympathetic and respectful manner.

The speech will address the narrative patterns of the series, a successful example of extreme glocalization, with a specific attention to the way it translates some universal themes as personal vocation, love, parenting, death and mourning in its specific context.

Bio:
Laura Cotta Ramosino was a story editor for the Italian Public Broadcaster RAI, taking part in the development of more than 80 tv projects. She is now a creative producer in Cattleya, one of the leading Italian tv production companies, for local and international projects. As a screenwriter she is the author (with Luisa Cotta Ramosino and Paolo Marchesini) of tv series Made in Italy, about the birth of the Italian Fashion System, that has been broadcasted on Amazon.

She has a PhD in Ancient History and is the author (with Luisa Cotta Ramosino and Cristiano Dognini) of a study about the evolving image of Roman history in cinema and television (Tutto quello che sappiamo su Roma l’abbiamo imparato a Hollywood). She has taught docudrama in Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Palermo and regularly collaborates with the Master in International Screenwriting and Production of the Catholic University of Milan.

Cotta Ramosino, Luisa

Catholic University of Milan

A broader allegiance How an Israeli show about an ultraorthodox family became a global hit

Bio:
Luisa Cotta Ramosino is Director for Italian Originals at Netflix Italia. Before that she has been for years a freelance screenwriter and a creative producer for leading Italian television companies. She has been involved in many international projects (among them Medici and Devils) and she has created and written (with Laura Cotta Ramosino and Paolo Marchesini) Made in Italy, a TV series about the birth of Italian Fashion system. Luisa has a PhD in Applied Linguistics at Catholic University in Milan and attended a Master in Media and Entertainment Management at the Institute for Media and Entertainment in New York. She collaborates with the Master in International Screenwriting and Production of Catholic University in Milan. She is author of a book about the image of Roman history in cinema and television (Tutto quello che sappiamo su Roma l’abbiamo imparato a Hollywood, 2004) and a number of essays on Italian Television productions.

Cummins, Michael

University of Huddersfield

Screenwriters in the Global Twittersphere

Abstract:
This research examines the relationship between the screenwriter and social technology. Globally, there are currently 6.4-billion smartphone users. Given that the title ‘screenwriter’ defines the actual job role, how have screenwriters adapted to these mobile screens and the new social media workspace created by these devices?

The study explores the Twitter usage of 49,000 self-identifying screenwriters over a six-month period (September 2019 - February 2020) spanning 15 nations. In analysing over 225,000 tweets, the research builds up a complex profile of the modern screenwriter, combining professional practise, home life, politics and more. In doing so, we question at what point aspiration and self-identification emerge into professionalism. We also consider how the use of Twitter moves the traditionally isolated task of screenwriting into the public arena as an act of performance. The research expands on this to consider to what degree live Twitter interaction with others during the creative process affects the texts being produced. Large scale Twitter analysis is supported by interviews with screenwriters from across career stages.

The focus of this research is to explore what writing for the screen means in the social technology era. In doing so, we discover a changing job role that sees a shift from viewing the screenwriter primarily as a dramatist, to that of a content creator across multiple platforms encompassing a range of skills and written texts. This includes a reassessment of what screenwriting is in the post-social age. The implication of a vast but fragmented social media audience suggests that screenwriters are no longer reliant on traditional, legacy outlets for their work.

Bio:
Mike Cummins is currently in the final year of his PhD at the University of Huddersfield (UK), researching the interaction between screenwriters and social technology. Previous to this he achieved an MA (Distinction) in Screenwriting from The University of Salford. His research is focused on the screenwriter as the creator of texts over the texts/screenplays produced. Mike has written and co-produced several budget shorts and features (see: www.mikecummins.net).

Mike has taught film and media production for 20-years. His aspiration is to use his current research to develop new approaches to teaching screenwriting practice, with equal focus on the wider skillsets required beyond the creative writing first approach found in many institutions and screenwriting courses.

Dabner, Matthew

University of Technology Sydney
University of South Australia

What ails the nation? Culture and theme in scripted SVOD dramas

Abstracts:
Expanding on Marieke Jenner’s (2018) concept of an emerging grammar of transnationalism in serialised scripted dramas on Netflix, this paper examines how screenwriters from outside the US and UK, developing projects for SVOD, can represent their culture to the world, by paying closer attention to theme. In her book Netflix and the re-invention of television, Jenner outlines the features of what she terms a ‘grammar of transnationalism’ in the dramas that are finding a truly global audience on the service. Connecting this concept to the long-standing debates in Film Studies about the way nations can assert themselves thematically in films (Hjort 2000) this paper looks at whether ‘themes of nation’ should therefore become an active consideration for the screenwriter who is developing a series for an SVOD with global reach. Taking several of Netflix’s recent top-rating international television shows as case studies – Squid Game (2021), Money Heist (2017-2021) and Lupin (2020-21) – this paper will argue that in addition to embodying the elements of Jenner’s grammar of transnationalism concept, these series have represented the concerns of their originating cultures in the ways that they have explored and presented their themes. Furthermore, might streaming services be the latest venue on which domestic audiences can see their own stories, whilst simultaneously showcasing themselves to the world? While presently only Netflix appears to be pursuing a content strategy that sets out to find, develop and export local dramas to all the corners of the globe, there are signs that other SVOD players such as Amazon Prime and Disney+ are readying themselves to follow suit. This paper intends, therefore, to contribute to the ongoing conversation about how local stories can be successful in finding global audiences, by centring the discussion on a screenwriter’s approach to theme.

Bio:
Matthew Dabner is a Lecturer in Media Arts & Production at the University of Technology Sydney and a PhD student at the University of South Australia. Active in the Australian screen industry for of over twenty years, Matthew has credits as a screenwriter (The Square), producer (Cedar Boys) script editor (Riot, The Family Law) and investment consultant (Screen Australia). Trained at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, Matthew’s career began with development roles at Mel Gibson’s Icon Productions and Alex Proyas’s Mystery Clock Cinema. Matthew’s experience in education includes teaching postgraduate screenwriting at the Australian Film and Television Radio School, before commencing his current position at UTS. Matthew’s creative practice PhD looks at the opportunities presented to the Australian scripted drama in the emerging age of internet-distributed television.

Davies, Rosamund

University of Greenwich

Authorship and Collaboration in Screenwriting aka How Many People Does it Take to Create an Author?

Abstract:
Recognition and understanding of authorship in screenwriting relates not only to the creative process, but also to the exigencies of industrial labour division and the establishment and enforcement of intellectual property rights. Any discussion of authorship in the context of screenwriting studies is also informed by recent debates in film and literary theory, which have attempted variously to both champion and challenge the notion of the author. Bringing together these different frames of reference, this chapter will investigate several creative and organizational contexts of idea development and writing for the screen, including transnational co-production, considering how they may facilitate different enactments and understandings of collaboration and authorship. It will examine the range of ways in which the development of a screenplay may be deemed a process of collective creation, considering aspects such as what might be the differences between co-operation and collaboration; different approaches to collaboration; the dynamics of power and status within the collaborative process, and the commercial and legal structures within which authorship may be defined.

Bio:
Rosamund Davies is a member of the International Screenwriting Research Network and a senior lecturer in screenwriting at the University of Greenwich.

Her research focuses on writing practices within the media and publishing industries and the production and business structures in which they take place.

Rosamund has contributed several articles to the Journal of Screenwriting, including ‘The Screenplay as Boundary Object’(2019) Journal of Screenwriting, 10 (2). pp. 149-164.

Other recent publications include:

‘Nordic noir with an Icelandic twist: Establishing a shared space for collaboration within European co-production’ (2020). In: Craig Batty, Stayci Taylor (eds.), Script Development: Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan

She is co-editor (with Paolo Russo and Claus Tieber) of the book The Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (forthcoming 2022). London: Palgrave Macmillan

Davies, Brett

Meiji University, Tokyo

First Empire: Re-examining Leigh Brackett’s authorial presence in The Empire Strikes Back

Abstract:
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) is widely considered the best instalment in the Star Wars saga (Ebert 1997, Bradshaw 2018). George Lucas provided the initial story, while Lawrence Kasdan wrote the final two drafts of the screenplay. However, the very first version of the script was by Leigh Brackett, the veteran screenwriter (The Big Sleep [1946], Rio Bravo [1959]) and science-fiction novelist, who completed her draft just before her death.

Since then, Brackett’s contribution has been downplayed, both by her co-writers and in scholarly discourse. Kasdan said that Brackett’s work was ‘in an entirely different mode’ (Rinzler 2010), while Lucas called the script ‘unworkable’ (Duncan 2020), assigning Brackett co-writing credit only because ‘she was sick at the time […] and she really tried her best’ (Bouzereau 1997). This version of events has remained mostly unchallenged by critics for 40 years, with Kasdan cited as the person responsible for ‘Empire’s stunning disengagement in style from the original film […] with an emphasis on character’ (Kaminski 2008).

The release of Brackett’s draft, though, allows us the opportunity to examine the relative contributions of the three writers. My qualitative textual analysis reveals that Brackett’s script contains many of the elements found in Kasdan’s final draft, including structure, key plot points, character/relationship development, and a move towards a more mystical understanding of the ‘Force’ that would resonate throughout the saga. Furthermore, unused aspects of Brackett’s screenplay would be resurrected in future episodes, contradicting the contention that her ideas were incongruous to Lucas’s vision of Star Wars.

While these findings have obvious implications regarding authorship of The Empire Strikes Back, they also raise wider concerns as to why the work of the only credited female writer in the 11-film Star Wars series has been minimized so drastically, both by her fellow filmmakers and the academy.

Bio:
Brett Davies is an associate professor in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University in Tokyo. He has published extensively both in linguistics and cinema studies, and his Master’s dissertation demonstrated how a corpus of film screenplays could be used to improve conversational language use among Japanese students of English. He is currently a PhD candidate in film studies at De Montfort University (UK), with his thesis analysing the career of writer-director Lawrence Kasdan. His research interests include the use of homage and pastiche in modern Hollywood cinema, and thematic relationships between Japanese and American films.

Davis, Northrop

University of South Carolina

Manga and Anime’s Global Adaptations - How to Make them Well

Abstract:
Manga and anime have swept the globe. Originally a visual storytelling form unique to Japan, manga followed its Japanese limited animation cousin (anime) out into the world over the subsequent decades. Now Hollywood and movie and television studios and international entities attempt to adapt anime and manga into live action movies and television shows, with mixed results. This paper addresses the problems and obstacles faced by adaptations of manga/anime into other cultures, languages and forms. And points the way forward to successful adaptations of these vibrant creative forms. It also focuses on my own manga project, which includes some of my graduated students as staff, which is university grant funded, and that I plan to adapt into a movie or television series having utilized the things I learned through my research.

Bio:
Northrop Davis is the author of the book "Manga and Anime Go to Hollywood"-- and a screenwriter-- and is now writer of his first three manga (Japanese style comics) volumes -- who teaches screenwriting, television writing and manga/anime studies. As writer, Davis has sold three Hollywood projects: his science fiction script to Warner Brothers and two pitches-- one to Columbia/Sony Studios and another to 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, both of which he subsequently wrote as screenplays. He has lectured at the Writers and the Directors Guilds of America, Duke University, Cal Arts, UCLA Professional Screenwriting Program, U.C. Irvine, and nine years at Anime Expo-- and was interviewed in 2020 by Lionsgate Entertainment for the 25th Anniversary of the legendary "Ghost in the Shell" anime Blu-ray/Steelbox 4k Home Video release featurette-- and by French television studio Canal + for a documentary about Hollywood anime adaptations and by BBC News. He has been invited four times to lecture internationally, including at the premiere manga program at Japan's Kyoto Seika University (2015). A member of the Writers Guild of America West, at the University of South Carolina, he received the Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award. In 2015 he was named a Breakthrough Star “awarded to faculty from a wide variety of disciplines, who show phenomenal commitment to their fields through research and scholarly activity.” His articles have appeared in leading publications in his field. Davis and his book-- which was published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Academic-- were quoted by France’s newspaper of record "Le Monde" (May and August 2017 and in 2021). The American Library Association’s "CHOICE" magazine recommends [PDF]] his book for all ages. The book is in over 900 libraries worldwide. Volume one of the manga he wrote and that his former student, Louise Wang, is a lead artist on, "The Hole," will be published in 2022, followed by "The Hole: Space Airport"(vol. 2, which is currently in production). For more information, including about his teaching/mentoring, students' current activities and career successes, please go to: https://web.archive.org/web/20210125173101/https:/www.wemakemanga.com/articles

Doherty, Amanda

Queen’s University Belfast

Dismantling the patriarchy through screenwriting: Biopics as a tool for readdressing the silencing of women’s history

Abstract:
George F. Custen illustrated through his work how Hollywood helps shape our understanding of history, however when framed through the lens of feminism, it is important to assess how it has helped reduce our understanding of women’s history specifically.

As highlighted by Natalie Wreyford, amongst others, women’s opportunities within screenwriting are frequently limited. The screenwriting industry remains today an overly homogenous, male dominated industry. Women are given less opportunities to pursue screenwriting, and to reach higher levels of screenwriting professionally.

One effect of this is that within biopics, it is often male figures who are preserved in cinematic history. However, even when women are historicised through screenwriting it is more often through the male gaze. When opportunities are repeatedly given to the same demographics, the same biases and viewpoints are repeated and become assumed fact.

Biopic screenplays allow men the opportunity to be held as the ‘great individual’ in contrast to women who are held as members of the collective. Is the narrative structure of the biopic inherently masculine or simply a reflection the freedoms of emotional labour which men enjoy in real life?

How can screenwriters work actively against this today? Can we better use the screenwriting practice in biopics as a tool of feminism?

This presentation includes analysis of 3 screenwriting texts: On the Basis of Sex, Jackie, and Bombshell- examined alongside the creative practice of the researcher, a feature length biopic of Kay Graham.

Bio:
Amanda Doherty is a PhD candidate at Queens University, Belfast, from where she also holds an MA in Film (Distinction). Her practice-based research is a case study of Kay Graham, the American publisher, which she uses to examine the representation of women’s history in biopics. In this way, screenwriting is a valuable tool for audiences to engage with, understand, and examine history.

She is also a professional actor and award-winning theatre maker whose work has toured across Europe and the USA. Classically trained at Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts, London, she works for film, tv, and stage. Credits include The Fall, Scúp, and Seanchaí for the BBC, and The Lyric Theatre, Belfast, amongst others

Freitas, Tom

The art of subverting: The post-horror narratives in Robert Eggers work

Abstract:
The horror genre has been constructing its own ways of storytelling through the history of the cinema. Naturally, each period has been equally contributing to this continuous construction of the horror storytelling. Nowadays we come across the term post-horror, which means a new wave of horror films that have not only its specific aesthetics but also its own subversions and innovations in the narrative structures. Assuming that posthorror is influenced by several waves outside Hollywood, I examine the question of the globalization of the horror narratives in our times. My research, then, aims to explore how Robert Eggers’s work contributes to the continuation of the horror storytelling in the cinema and how its subversions are echoes from the globalization of the cinema. I first explore what post-horror means and how the films of the auteur fit in this so-called wave. With these defined questions, I also aim to recognize the narrative subversions that the post-horror brings, using the Eggers films The Witch (2015) and The Lighthouse (2019) as example. Ultimately, my conclusion efforts are to find out how can the post-horror contribute to the screenwriting theory.

Bio:
Tom Freitas, 28, born in São Paulo, Brazil, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Communication from FAPCOM (Brazil) and Master Degree in Film Studies from University of Beira Interior (Portugal). Tom works as screenwriter for films, TV and internet shows since 2016 and has written short films like Astenia (2018), IGOR (2020) and The Devil’s Village (2021), besides the TV series As Cidades Azuis (2020). His academic research focus is the relationship between narrative structures and horror films, as well the influence of these elements in the film industry

Fumagalli, Armando

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Dark Protagonists in Cinema and Tv

Abstract:
The narrative techniques of the last decades have been pushing boundaries for what regards the moral characteristics of the protagonist. While the old classical Hollywood formula suggested that the main character should be –especially in high budget movies- a good guy confronting some big and unexpected problems, more and more the writers have make a point of honor and of professional challenge to tell the story of characters with big moral flaws - if they are not what we would simply call “bad guys”, using technique more typical of independent and European films. The paradigm of this new wave has been in 2019 the incredible and unexpected commercial success of Joker. Also, a very successful recent film (both in box office and critics) has been JoJo Rabbit, who dared to present as a main character a young boy who is a nazi and admires Hitler…

This did not come as completely new, as we have seen more and more complex characters as protagonists in recent films like The Wolf of Wall Street or The Big Short. This revolution has arrived also in animation, with characters like the “not so good” Carl in Up or the “not classical good guys” in films like Wrecking Ralph and Despicable Me, all of them really big successes in terms of box office.

The fact of having a character with big moral problems for sure is also today not easy to manage: it requires some specific devices in terms of narrative rhetoric. Still, the viewer has to feel some empathy for these characters, also if he/she has these moral problems.

Is this a real revolution, or it is only a more sophisticated application of some good old rules of storytelling?

Starting from the analysis of rhetoric devices used in Joker and Jojo Rabbit and expanding to other contemporary films with bad guys as protagonists, the paper will try to explore this International new trend in writing for the mainstream audience.

Bio:
Armando Fumagalli is full professor of Semiotics and History of Cinema, and Director of the Master in International Screenwriting and Production at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a program that since 2000 has trained a new generation of successful writers and producers in Italy.

He is also, since 1999, a script consultant for the production company Lux vide: he has been consulting for many international TV series, like the 3 seasons of Medici. Masters of Florence (Rai – Netflix 2016- 2019) and Leonardo, starring Aidan Turner (Poldark) and Freddie Highmore (Neverland, The Good Doctor).

He has been working as consultant also for companies like Barilla, Endemol, Mediaset and Rai.

He has published and edited many books.. His book on the cinema industry Creatività al potere. Da Hollywood alla Pixar passando per l’Italia, Lindau, Torino 2013, has been published also in Spanish in 2014, Creatividad al poder, Rialp. His most recent book on screenwriting are L’adattamento da letteratura a cinema, 2 vols., 2020; Storia delle serie Tv (edited with Cassandra Albani and Paolo Braga), 2 vols, 2021 and also Paolo Braga – Giulia Cavazza –Armando Fumagalli, The Dark Side. Bad guys, antagonisti e antieroi del cinema e della serialità contemporanea, 2016;

He has been lecturing in Universities and screenwriting schools in Buenos Aires, Ciudad de Mexico, Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Pamplona, Santiago del Chile, Seville, etc.

Ganz, Adam

Royal Holloway University of London

Suggesting stories, Storyfinding Venatic narratives, and screenwriting

Abstract:
William Uricchio has recently began to use the concept of “Storyfinders “ which he contrasts to storytellers building on historian Carlo Ginzburg’s concept of “venatic narrative ” [From Latin vēnāticus (“of or pertaining to hunting”] Ginzburg posited that “the actual idea of narration .. may have originated in a hunting society, relating the experience of deciphering tracks.”

What Uriccihio calls Ginzburg’s” linkage of narration with the age-old practice of hunting, with making visible the invisible and drawing meaning from signs “

These ideas are developed by archivist filmmaker and theorist Rick Prelinger who posits that “Narrative is, at worst, packaging—and many films are already fairly arbitrary assemblies of emotional triggers, presented as attractive packages. A good yarn weaves its own scarf; it needs no excessive trim…. As we walk through a cemetery, the stones suggest stories.”

In this paper – drawing on three years experience working as head of the Writers Room at StoryFutures Academy a partnership to train Filmmakers and writers in immersive between Royal Holloway University of London and the UK’s National Film and TV School look at ideas of assembling narrative- and discuss on how I have been developing these in practice working with Marc Isaac’s The Filmmaker’s House (2020) which British film journal Sight and Sound called:

"an exploration of the notion of hospitality and its limits – but it also continues as a cinematic dialogue about creation, authorship, production, and product”

Bio:
Adam Ganz is Professor of Screenwriting at Royal Holloway University of London and Head of Wrtiers Rooms at StoryFutures Academy a UKRI funded collaboration between Royal Holloway University of London and the National Film and TV School to provide training and research in the immersive sector. Adam is co-author with Steven Price of Robert De Niro at Work: From Screenplay to Screen Performance (Palgrave 2020).
He has written for film TV and radio and is currently collaborating with Marc Isaacs on a sequel to The Filmmakers House

García Avis, Isadora

Showrunners of Spain: Outlooks and Challenges in the Post-TV Writers’ Room

with Ruth Gutiérrez and Pablo Castrillo

Bio:
Dr. Isadora García Avis is Lecturer in Audiovisual Narrative at the School of Communication Sciences, Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain), where she teaches modules on film and television narrative, screenwriting for television formats and transmedia storytelling. She obtained her PhD at the University of Navarra (Spain), with a doctoral dissertation on transcultural remakes in television. Her thesis was awarded the First Prize of Research in Audiovisual Communication, issued by the Audiovisual Council of Catalunya. Her main academic interests focus on adaptation studies, screenwriting, and television formats (more specifically, scripted series). She is a member of the SRN Executive Council since September 2021.

Gee, Maxine

Bournemouth University, U.K.

Practice Based/Led Working Group – Table Read Panel

This panel presents three research screenplay excerpts that explore a range of practice research processes undertaken by members of the working group. In one, transnational and posthuman filmmaking practices examine globalized screenwriting processes, in another the European murder mystery genre is transposed to South America, while the final excerpt explores a crossing of cultures and traditions. Each excerpt will be read by actors and last 10-15 minutes, with a preface by the researcher establishing the screenplay’s research context and key questions. The three researchers will attend in person, while the actors will join via a virtual medium (e.g. zoom).

Abstract:
Two people meet for the first time in a new city. While they don’t speak the same language, they manage to easily communicate as they spend a day getting to know each other and friendship flourishes. Are they both human? Are either of them really in the city? This research screenplay explores ideas of translation, human/posthuman interactions and the universal desire to form connection. This short screenplay also explores the intersection of human/posthuman writing practices; an experiment in collaboration between a human screenwriter and an A.I. The project is a collaborative piece of research between Dr Imke van Heerden, Principle Investigator of AI as Author (https://authorai.ku.edu.tr/), Visiting Assistant Professor in Department of Comparative Literature at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey; Dr Anil Bas, Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at Marmara University, Istanbul, Turkey, Senior Researcher: AI as Author (https://authorai.ku.edu.tr/); and Dr Maxine Gee, screenwriting practice researcher at Bournemouth University.

Bio:
Dr Maxine Gee is a Senior Lecturer in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University and Programme Leader for the BA in Scriptwriting for Film and Television. She holds a PhD by Creative Practice in Screenwriting from the University of York. In 2015, she was a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Summer Fellow, while in 2016 she became a Doctoral Fellow for the Humanities, film Research Centre at the University of York. As a creative practitioner, Maxine has written science fiction theatre and prose and is the co-writer of Tales of Bacon, a medieval comedy web series. Maxine has published on science fiction screenwriting for BSFA FOCUS magazine, and on posthuman noir in Cinema: Journal of Film and Philosophy. Her award-winning short films Terminal (2018) and Standing Woman (2020) have screened internationally at a range of film festivals.

Gonçalo, Pablo

University of Brasília

Chains, escape, freedom: speculating with Frances Marion’s unfilmed screenplays

Abstract:
This paper aims to shed light on some key aesthetic styles of Frances Marion, one of the most influential screenwriters in classic Hollywood. From 1912 to 1945, Marion wrote more than 180 film scripts, was twice awarded with Oscars, and directed two pictures. In addition to that, she was the head of the MGM Story Department for many years. Although Marion had a recognized career, this paper will emphasize unseen elements in her film dramaturgy. Using a speculative archeology methodology, I will look at two of Marion’s unfilmed screenplays: Chains, which is undated, and The Betrayal, which was written in 1943. Both screenplays tell stories of women characters looking for true love while fighting against pre-established ideas about marriage, sexism, and the traditional values of their isolated communities. Their plots explore the tensions between old marriage models and modern love, the feelings of complicity between mothers and daughters, and what the paths those women characters chart in order to achieve freedom. These screenplays display some themes and plots often found in many pictures written by Marion. Therefore, this essay will build up a retrospective archeology. Side by side with those unfilmed scripts, I will analyze films as Stella Dallas (1931), Minn and Bill (1930), The Champ (1931), and The Scarlet Letter (1926). Through a speculative archeology of unfilmed screenplays, I will point to aspects of her dramaturgy that were present but not evident in the pictures that made it to the screen. I propose a kind of critical fabulation and the historiography of its marginal stories and archives. I claim that unfilmed screenplays, and a speculative approach to them, may have a central role in digging up dispersed traces of screenwriters’ authorship. Even if a screenwriter was famous and awarded, as it happened with Frances Marion, she worth such archeology.

Bio:
Pablo Gonçalo is an assistant professor at the University of Brasília. He has been teaching undergraduate students for the last 14 years, in many Brazilian and international universities. He has been awarded key grants from different countries and continents, such as DAAD and Fulbright, and has been presenting in film congresses and seminars, such as SCMS, Film-Philosophy, NECS, Screenwriting Research Network, among other conferences held by Brazilian film studies associations. Pablo Gonçalo has been publishing constantly in journals, newspapers, and film review magazines. In 2016, he published his first book, which investigates the partnership between Peter Handke and Wim Wenders, as well as the role of screenwriters in film history. Focusing on a historical outlook on unfilmed screenplays, Gonçalo has been proposing a speculative archeology methodology. In his Post-Doctoral research, he has collected and analyzed unproduced screenplays written by classic Hollywood screenwriters and Brazilian filmmakers.

Grendene de Souza, Fabiano

Pontifical University Catholic of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS - Brazil)

The Short Film Screenplay in Brazil: Space, Dialogue and Social Criticism

Abstract:
Even though there are American books on short film screenplay, in Brazil, what can be seen is the influence of canonical script manuals, such as those by Syd Field and Robert McKee. Within this aspect, some of these authors' concepts (the three-act structure and the types of story plots) are transplanted to the short film format without significant adaptations. In this context, our research project emerged: "Creating Epiphanies in Minutes: The Art of Writing Short Films." This research project seeks to relativize the validity of the teachings of feature films for short films. At the same time, it aims to compare the format with theories about the short story and seek some characteristics in Brazilian short films that can support thinking about the short film screenplay. This presentation focuses on Grace Passo's short Republic (República, 2020, 15 minutes). In the film, a black woman is awakened by a phone call from a friend telling her that Brazil is a dream. As the country could end at any moment, she is in shock.

Shot in an apartment during the Pandemic, Republic is an example of how the unity of space can be used and subverted. Like many short stories, the action remains in just one space. On the other hand, in the film, the window, the door, and the phone conversations transform the place into a mirror of Brazil, bringing in such proposals a post-colonial discourse that is highly critical of the government of President Bolsonaro. This discourse is underlined by dialogues and monologues with theatrical lines, allowing comparisons with Cinema Novo. In this way, from Republic onwards, we will debate issues related to the short film script, bringing approximations with the literature, highlighting particularities of Brazilian cinematographic production.

Bio:
Fabiano Grendene de Souza is head of the Audiovisual Production Technology Undergraduate Program of Pontifical University Catholic of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS - Brazil). He wrote and directed eight short films: Five Suits (Cinco Naipes, 2004) received more than 20 awards in Brazil and abroad. He wrote and directed three feature films: The Last Road to the Beach (A Última Estrada da Praia, 2010), Change (Mudança, 2020) and Two Girls Descending the Stairs (Nós Duas Descendo a Escada, 2015). The process of writing of the screenplay of this last film was presented in 8th SRN International Conference (London). At the moment, he is developing the research project “Creating Epiphanies in Minutes: The Art of Writing Short Films”.

Gutiérrez, Ruth

Showrunners of Spain: Outlooks and Challenges in the Post-TV Writers’ Room

with Pablo Castrillo and Isadora García Avis

Bio:
Dr. Ruth Gutiérrez Delgado is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Film, TV & Digital Media, as well as Vice Dean of Students at the School of Communication (University of Navarra, Spain). She lectures in Epistemology of Communication and Screenwriting for Film and TV. As Visiting Professor, she also teaches a course on Fiction as Knowledge at Universidad de los Andes (Chile). Her research focuses on audiovisual poetics, myth and hero. She is part of the Research Group Knowledge, Myth and Action at Universidad Panamericana (Mexico).

Hart, Phoebe

Queensland University of Technology

The Local Impact of the Global #MeToo Movement – The Female Voice in Contemporary Australian Screenwriting

with Marilyn Leder

Abstract:
This paper evolves out of a study of three case studies of female feature filmmakers in the low budget, independent sector of the Australian screen industry since 2017. Filmmakers often face endemic sexism when it comes to the formulation of female voices and screen characters. Since the #MeToo era of social media activism and awareness-raising the tide has begun to turn. The participants of this study observed that while some impediments to expressing female voices in the low budget, independent sector continue, others have subsided, and a considerable number of promising developments are emerging. Screen Australia's Gender Matters and other initiatives by State-based screen agencies have encouraged this progress, but changes in the global socio-cultural discourse have been influential.

Bio:
Dr Phoebe Hart lectures in film, television and digital media at the Queensland University of Technology, and is principal of Hartflicker, a video and film production company. Phoebe’s research interests include the representation of gender, disability and sexuality on screens, documentary studies and creative practice theory and education.

Hermansson, Joakim

Dalarna University, Sweden

The hero's thematic journeys in advertisement films

Abstract:
In this paper, I examine how successful advertisement films can be understood through the complex thematic progression of the hero’s journey, as it outlined by Joseph Campbell, with theme as the actual hero. As Campbell, Patrick Colm Hogan, and others argue, characters and narrative structures in film and literature adopt global and evolutionary patterns. However, whereas the narratives of successful feature films commonly match inner, physical, and thematic dramatic developments in eleven, seventeen, or twenty-two steps, and forty to sixty scenes, the intense complexity of advertisement films, of six to sixty seconds long, is commonly ignored, and they are often analysed in much simpler terms, on the basis of three or four rhetorical factors and stages. I have previously argued that the stages of the hero’s journey can be translated into a purely thematic line of argument. In feature films each step in a thematic line of reasoning stretches over several scenes and perhaps ten minutes. In advertisement films the screenwriter may only have a half to three seconds to communicate each step of the rhetorical argument. In this presentation, I apply that model of reasoning to varied Swedish and American examples, ranging from Volvo and Klarna banking, eyeglasses, to Coca-Cola, to demonstrate how the multimodal complexity of award-winning commercials follow universal conventions, regarding perception and narrative structures communicate thematic content, with intense multimodal means. As a result, the presentation advances the notion that quality advertisement films demand complex screenwriting skills, and that the hero´s journey presents a universal tool for the transfer between conventional screenwriting and the production of content for social media.

Bio:
Joakim Hermansson teaches film production and screenwriting at Dalarna University. After a master in linguistics and literature, he gained his phd at Gothenburg University with a dissertation on what happens to the concept of adulthood as novels are adapted for the screen, with the screenwriting process in focus. He has published with Journal of Screenwriting, Journal of Adaptation, Literature/Film Quarterly, Cormac McCarthy Journal, and in New Perspectives on Adaptations. He is currently involved in a project regarding the narration in information and advertisement films

Herold Solon Pilegaard, Nathali

University of Southern Denmark

The creative potential of storyworlds in screenwriting and -development

with Heidi Philipsen

Abstract:
When you read books written by the so called ‘gurus’ of screenwriting like Field, McKee, Aronson, Walther, storyworlds (also called ‘world-building’) are rarely mentioned as a key tool for development of screenplays. But the usage of storyworlds is an essential way of handling and presenting the creative stimuli’s which can be a starting point for compelling stories for film or television. Whereas world-building processes typically initiate drawings, models, maps, and other visual tools, pre-phases in screenwriting are often dominated by written words and dramaturgical tools (e.g., a three-act-structure). Especially nowadays, in a time where storyworlds are huge players in audience engagement and fan behavior (Jenkins, 2006) it seems peculiar that the concept of storyworld is not a part of more screenwriting books. There are exceptions like Truby (2007) where this concept is included. In our presentation we wish to address the following topics from the conference call: Screenwriting teachers ‘gurus’ and their influence around the globe, and how toxic is the doxa? Paradigms of screenwriting and their global hegemony. Our research question is: How can world-building at an early stage of a screenwriting process initiate a foundation for the story to build upon? And does it represent a scaffolding or obstruction to the creative process? We conduct an empirical qualitative production study carried out at the ‘Screenplay Development’ program at The University of Southern Denmark. We have collected data through a survey and a case-study. Our aim is to reflect on possibilities and challenges when using world-building early in the development of a screenplay. Our study is theoretically based on storyworldand world-building perspectives from e.g., Ryan (2014), Ford (2007), Klastrup & Tosca (2020), Wolf (2012) and the understanding of ‘scaffolding’ from Wood, Bruner & Ross (1976) and Philipsen (2009).

Ianniello, Marco

University of Notre Dame Australia

Character Composition in Serial Drama Are “western” paradigms of character development relevant to scripting long form characters arcs in serial television drama?

Abstract:
Crafting and managing long-form character arcs has been at the core of serial storytelling since the Dickensian era, through to the evolution of the soap opera to the current streaming era of designing and scripting long-form serial drama. Perspectives on character development in television drama varies in both scholarly and industry texts: from those advocating a prevalence of stability and lack of change (see Pearson 2006, Yorke 2013, Mittell, 2014), to writers acknowledging that character change is occurring in both drama serials and series (See O’Meara 2015, Douglas 2011, Smith 2006). This paper will respond to the question: Are western paradigms of character development (hero’s journey) relevant to scripting long-form characters arcs in serial drama? It will contribute to the discourse, linking theory and practice to investigate the nature of the character arcs in recent television dramas to create a framework through which both screenwriters and theorists can discuss long-form character arcs in serial narratives. What this paper will arrive at is new term: character composition, and propose a shift in how screenwriting practitioners and scholars consider discussing and writing characters in serial drama. This highlights a need to start moving away from dominant Western paradigms of Hollywood features, such as hero’s journeys or linear arcs, and think more about character composition – which can greater express and illustrate, not only the physical and thematic journey of a character but the accumulation and depth of character commonly expressed in the literature. This research proposes a way to not simply appropriate Western feature film terms or discuss complex characters, but to have a more expansive, yet specific framework to craft and analyse the purposefully composed characters that must be meticulous crafted in serial dramas.

Bio:
Marco Ianniello is head of Film and Screen Production at The University of Notre Dame Australia. He is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter, and his work has screened at festivals around the world and on Australian television. He is currently completing a screenwriting practice Ph.D investigating the structuring of long-form screenplays and the nature of change in the television drama protagonist. Marco has recently published a number of papers derived from this research.

Igelstrom, Ann

The Universal Language of Storytelling: a help or a hindrance?

Abstract:
A universal language understood by screenwriters and other members of an international co-production team is increasingly essential for a project to succeed, particularly given the growth in collaborations across borders and continents. This paper discusses what a universal language within the film industry might look like and if relying on ‘traditional’ dramaturgical concepts and formats is a help or a hindrance. First the well-known traditional concepts are identified and terms such as the three (or five) act structure, turning points, inciting incidents, crisis, etc., are examined. The second step is to see in what way this traditional terminology is used during international co-productions involving more than two countries. The aim is to see if the terminology brings members of the production team from different countries closer together or pushes them apart. The paper also investigates if there is a ‘universal language’ when discussing characters and emotions, and if so, is that terminology as fixed as the traditional dramaturgical one? In its conclusion, the paper raises the question if there is a true need to modernise and change the traditional terminology or if the old ways provide a stable platform to work from.

Bio:
Ann Igelstrom completed her PhD on screenplay text analysis at Bangor University in 2014. She is currently based in Edinburgh and works as an independent researcher, guest lecturer and script consultant. She is the co-editor of the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of International Screenplay Theory and organiser of the 2021 SRN Early Career Researcher Symposium.

Keusch, Donat

Analyzing Screenplays presented on the international market: Development, Practice and Benefits of “The SSO- or *40-Steps-Method” From practical use to theory and back again

with Gabriele C. Sindler

Abstract:
The multilingual team of dfk*script*service analyzes 150 scripts per year from all over the world. Based on the concrete needs in film production and investment, domestic and worldwide distribution we offer analysis, evaluation, and improvement of scripts. Our basic tool is the newly developed and approved technique: the Story-Step-Outline (SSO) | *40-Steps-Method. For many years, we worked with this highly objectifying method for current film projects as well as for classics in teaching. This tool is designed to deconstruct the script into a concrete number of events, and sheds light to the author’s intentions in a psychoanalytical way. In a challenging learning process between theory and practice, the SSO | *40-Steps-Method was brought to life by • experiences in film production and distribution, • the encounter with František “Frank” Daniel – the best teacher of script writing and analysis. This political refugee was as decisively as discreetly involved in the worldwide successful ONE FLEW OVER THE COCKOO'S NEST and many others, • Paul Schrader’s’ meticulous and unique approach to script writing (his early work), • studies of drama theories, psychoanalysis, and the best films/scripts. Every successful film is based on a great script. The story, the characters and their universe, the topics and every other aspect must be fully worked-out AND fully adapted to the specifications of the 7th art. Our research and our experience show: a fully developed story for cinema consists of around 40 Steps in a 90 to 120 minute film. This is as true for classics as it is for current films:

• SOME LIKE IT HOT | 121’ | 40 Steps • THELMA & LOUISE | 130’ | 42 Steps
• AMADEUS | 153’ | 45 Steps • AMERICAN BEAUTY | 122’ | 41 Steps
• TITANIC | 194’ | 54 Steps | based on the analysis of the 156-page original screenplay dated Mai 7, 1996.
Too many European films hardly achieve 25 steps. The detailed SSO | 40*-Steps Script Analysis identifies the existing story-steps. It allows to ask questions and to provide comments on every story-step for making a good script great. We improved and discussed our approach on 3 continents with very divers filmmakers, producers, and experts.

Bio:
Academic studies Psychology, Journalism and Sociology at the University of Zürich.
Further Training Script analysis and script writing workshops with František “Frank” Daniel, Paul Schrader, Robert McKee and many more.
Studies of story and script writing theories.
Tutor and Board Member Co-founder and board member of FOCAL, the Swiss foundation for further training for film professionals; as well tutor at film schools and workshops in Europe and Africa.
Expert in film business & screenplay – Distributor (260 films released in Switzerland, theatrical and tv) – Producer (24 films, 116 awards at film festivals, amongst them a Golden Palm and the Jury Prize at Cannes, Silver Bears at Berlin, Golden and Silver Leopards at Locarno, Oscar and Golden Globe Nominations, French Césars, Italian Donatellos, etc.) – World Sales (154 films, the first awards for Turkish and Indian films at international film festivals) – Story editor and Script analyst, not mention or pen named, ghost analyst/writer.
After teaching together with Frank Daniel and Paul Schrader dfk developed the basic of a very refined script analysis approach: “The SSO- or *40-Steps-Method” (link: 40-story-step-outlinesystem).
The production “YOL” (The Way) was awarded with the Golden Palm at Cannes and was released again as completed and restored film 2017 at the Cannes Classics programme as “YOL – The Full Version”.

Kokeš, Radomír D.

Masaryk University

Narrative construction in Czech silent cinema storytelling: National and international tendencies

Abstract:
In my paper, I will ask two more general questions that are related – and for which such a small and peripheral national cinema like Czech cinema seems to be a suitable explanatory tool. In doing so, I am going to focus on the silent period, when Czech cinema represented a relatively diverse and still rather unexplored field of artistic possibilities. My project follows the research tradition of the poetics of cinema, so it works with a combination of detailed analysis of films, knowledge of particular scripts and screenwriting manuals, and taking into account contemporary practices within the filmmaking community. First, I am interested in what identifying features of international models of screenwriting and narrative can tell us about such cinema, whose production is primarily intended for a local audience. In what ways have filmmakers responded to these models? What has this meant for the shape of local screenwriting and films – and to what extent? Second, I am interested in what modes of narrative construction alternative to the internationally established practices of the 1920s can tell us about international narrative norms. What patterns of other options can we discern in the silent period and why? In my paper, I will develop these two perspectives using the example of the Czech silent period. We can observe (a) several synchronic alternatives of the narrative construction of feature films and (b) successive diachronic shifts in the artistic choices of specific filmmakers. As the ability of Czech films to compete with foreign films in Czech distribution grew more robust, the dilemma of following and not following the Hollywood model entered a new context.

Bio:
Radomír D. Kokeš is an assistant professor in the Department of Film Studies and Audiovisual Culture at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic. Primarily he examines the narrative and stylistic poetics of Czech cinema through 1933, the spiral narrative as an innovative schema of audiovisual storytelling, and features of seriality in fictional worlds. He published two books in Czech – Rozbor filmu [Film Analysis] (2015) addresses techniques of systemic film analysis and in Světy na pokračování [Worlds to Be Continued: Analysis of the Possibilities of Serial Storytelling] (2016) he introduces his own serial fiction poetics.

Koskinen, Arto

Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture; Department of Film, Television and Scenography

Teaching Screenwriting Inside Out

Abstract:
This paper discusses the vital importance of expanding screenwriting curriculum to include the teaching of screenwriting technics and tools derived initially from students’ own life experiences, emotional memories, and insights. On one hand it emphasizes the importance of learning the basic tools and traditions of screenwriting, and on the other hand challenges the order in which basic elements need to be taught to students. My paper highlights the inherent problem found in certain screenwriting students “race for originality” that tends to imitate films they have already seen rather than deriving inspiration from a world which they are better familiar with. The paper discusses the common experiences shared by screenwriting professors and introduces examples and results where the stories have first been solidly rooted in the writer’s own experiences. The paper is based on qualitative research materials collected from workshops I have conducted for screenwriting students in various film schools in Finland and Belgium during 2017-2021. The workshops were structured so that students commenced by finding ideas derived from certain single life experience or memoir and applied them onto film scripts inspired by David Colb’s experiential learning method (1984). Later, the students and their teacher’s answered questions about the experience, whether the process was rewarding, unpleasant, beneficial and so on in finding and writing a story. In the conference presentation I will open on the method and process used in collecting the material and introduce the result of the inquiries. I will suggest that instead of emphasizing traditional structures and tools of storytelling in teaching screenwriting, teachers should first and foremost guide students towards their personal sources of their individual experiences and memories, highlighting their own personal potential and originality

Bio:
Arto Koskinen is a Doctoral Candidate in Aalto University, and his research focuses in the Screenwriting pedagogy. Arto Koskinen works as a Senior Lecturer in Tampere University of Applied Sciences in Finland. He teaches screenwriting and dramaturgy as well as directing. Arto has written and directed screenplays for screened couple of short films, tv-movie (Hiding place for two), one Theatrical movie (The Handcuff King), documentaries (among others: “Nokia Mobile – Story of a mobile phone”) and true crime podcast series. (Felix Kersten Files and Mannerheim’s Agent

Krauß, Florian

University of Siegen

Glocal and extended screenwriting in DRUCK/SKAM Germany

Abstract:
Local and national aspects are still highly relevant in a globalized world. The intersection of global and local dimensions has been termed glocalization (e. g. Robertson, 2014) and becomes particularly visible in format adaptations: These are on the one hand embedded in a transnational television market (see Chalaby, 2012) and on the other hand made for specific territories. In my paper I concentrate on DRUCK (2018–), the German adaptation of the Norwegian youth transmedia drama SKAM (2015–17) and analyse a glocalization in its screenwriting process on the basis of interviews with different production members. I argue that it has been particularly online media which shaped the glocal screenwriting of DRUCK. The show’s project network (Windeler and Sydow, 2001) and screen idea work group (Macdonald, 2010) took up the real-time approach of SKAM (in which scenes and sequences that comprised the full episodes were first published as online clips at the exact times when they took place in the fictional story world, see e. g. Sundet, 2020). However, the practitioners updated this real-time, transmedia narration and distribution to the online media environment which had changed both in Germany and globally, in the young target group and through transnational platforms since the SKAM phenomenon. To handle the different platforms and the linked transmedia world-building (Jenkins, 2007) in screenwriting and further production steps a new social media production department was created. Together with the head writer, the social media producer had to think of the series’ wider fictional universe and decide if posts on online platforms fit the larger narrative and the characters (see Krauß and Stock, 2021). With the new profession of the social media producer, DRUCK does not only point to adaptations which can be labelled as glocal but in addition to extended areas of the screenwriting.

Bio:
Florian Krauß is a research fellow at the department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany. He was previously a substitute professor in Media Literacy at the Technische Universität Dresden, a lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Siegen and a research associate at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam. Furthermore, he is a co-founder of the Netzwerk für Drehbuchforschung (Network for screenwriting research in the German-speaking world) and works as freelance script editor for Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR; “Bavarian Broadcasting”, member of the public-service ARD network). Recent publications on media industry studies and screenwriting research in Journal of Popular Television, VIEW Journal of European Television History & Culture, Critical Studies in Television, and others.

Langkjær, Birger

University of Copenhagen, Denmark

Social schemes and the unexpected: The scenic unit in Ruben Östlund’s storytelling

Abstract:
Most film narratives use characters to forward the plot. These characters are psychologically specified (a type of character with a particular backstory) and they have wants and inner needs, which shape the story arc. In this account, each scene is a stepping-stone, or a beat, that reveals character traits and gets the plot going. This is not quite so in the films of Swedish director/scriptwriter Ruben Östlund. First, his focus is less on the story arch than on the single scene. This is not to say that there is no story, only that the unfolding of the complete story is less salient than the unfolding of single scenes, which tend to have standalone qualities, also in terms of their duration. Second, the scenic unit does not reveal single characters and their psychology as much as it plays upon and deepens the audiences’ understanding of the social nature of the situation. Scenes often depict challenges and disturbances to the execution of complex social performances by social actors, often leading to embarrassment. As a result, the characters do not advance, nor do we get to know them in any detail. Rather, the scenic situations of which they are part develop due to their social logic, yet in unexpected ways. I intend to analyze this emphasis on the scenic in some detail.
The center of my analysis will be on how the structuring of each scene through social schemes actually infuses the scenes with entertaining surprises.

Bio:
Birger Langkjær is Associate Professor in Film Studies at Dept. of Communication at University of Copenhagen. His main research is in cognitive film theory, narratives and emotions, sound and music in film and television series, realism in Danish cinema as well as experimental approaches to aesthetic issues. He has published in numerous journals and edited volumes, and he is the author of three books

Larkin, Kim

SAE Institute

Dual Language screenplays and Hybrid Identities

Abstract:
This study explores the use of multiple languages within screenplays as a method of cultural representation. Code-switching between languages has been a common occurrence of people with multiple cultural identities. The examination of dual languages and code-switching within a screenplay offers insight into the representation of hybrid identities and extends the understanding of co-existing cultural experiences. Code-switching language within a screenplay acts as a signifier to alternate between the different cultural worlds, experiences and consciousness of characters within the text. Representation within film is often studied through the aesthetics of a finished film, or by the experiences of the film’s creators. However representation can also be explored through the script, understanding the literary positions established prior to its interpretation by directors and actors. This paper comprises of case studies of the scripts ‘The Farewell’ by Lulu Wang and ‘The Half of It’ by Alice Wu. It does this through an exploration of issues of self-representation by first-generation Asian-Americans female screenwriters who create content for English-speaking and post-colonial audiences. This research explores the value of dialogue and its importance in strategic narrative and character creation. It examines how Wang and Wu use code-switching between languages in their screenplays to explore and convey multiple consciousnesses, perspectives and realities. Using multiple languages within a screenplay offers an extension of the understanding of borderless representation. These case studies generate insight into the unique experiences and perspectives of hybrid cultural identity and how self-representation can be demonstrated globally through global identities.

Bio:
Kim Larkin is a recent Masters of Creative Industries graduate from SAE Institute Australia and holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Monash University. She has a strong interest in media representation and globalisation, and is currently researching self-representation within screenwriting, with a particular focus on women of colour. Kim’s recent thesis “Identity before Production: an analysis of representation in screenwriting” explored how first-generation Asian American women demonstrate their identity and experience on screen through the screenplay discipline. She has a strong interest in Asian media, intersectional feminism and the future of film and television with the emergence of hybrid cultural influence and globalisation. Kim is planning on pursuing this line of research in 2022 as she embarks on a PhD.

Leal, Rafael

Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ), Brazil

The embodied script and the end of writing

Abstract:
Unsuited to properly describe immersive and interactive narratives, the traditional linear screenplay sees a new script format emerging: the embodied script.

Considering the script as an evolving form and following Kath Dooley’s note on the need for more work towards ‘the physical format of the VR screenplay’ in CVR research (2017: p. 170) this chapter approaches the concept of embodied script in a more radical way, bringing the material nature of the body (Sobchack 2004) into consideration during the creative process. Dooley (2019) seeks to write an ‘embodied screenplay’ by involving the reader’s body in the experience of reading the text - but what if there is no reader or written text to be read?

More a prototype than a blueprint, more a mockup than a descriptive plan, the embodied script can be described as a playable rough demo of the story, in which other members of the crew can base their work and collaborate towards the final form of the screenwork. As a boundary object (Davis 2018), instead of inspiring the crew members to produce different versions of the script adapted to their specific needs in the context of production, the embodied script will be a VR collaborative platform that proposes a narrative and allows creators and their fellow crew members to experiment a glimpse of what they want the screenwork to be.

This also echoes a trend described by Flusser (2011), who sees the decadence of the alphabet and the epistemology associated with it and anticipates the return to a nonlinear image-based thought, instead of the linearity associated with the alphabet and the written language.

Bio:
Rafael Leal is a screenwriter, VR artist and executive producer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Professor of Screenwriting at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and PhD Candidate in Film at Fluminense Federal University, Rafael was awarded by DAAD with a Doctoral Research Grant and developed part of his doctoral dissertation at LMU München. Considering theory and praxis as being inextricable, in his Ph.D., Rafael researches Screenwriting Poetics in immersive and interactive media, and has been creating more and more for these new media. With a long trajectory writing and developing flatties, his credits include the feature film “Cedo Demais/Too Soon” (FOX), and TV shows “A Dona da Banca/Queenpin” (CineBrasilTV) and “Jungle Pilot” (NBC Universal), whose development was the subject of the chapter “Transcultural Collaboration in Screenwriting: Jungle Pilot’s Case Study”, published in the book “Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World” (Cambridge Scholars).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm9481567/

MacNeill, Marie

Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK

In Search of Mermaids: is there universality in screenwriting and storytelling?

Abstract:
Mythical creatures, alongside wonder, folk, and faery tales form the basis of familiar plots and tropes. Enchanted worlds and age-old stories allow the (screen) writer to explore issues of today through the plots of yesterday.
Crucially, allowing the reader and the viewer to understand the protagonist’s journey; vicariously share the hope in a happy ending; and to dispel our lack of control in the chaos of life and our own preordained unhappy ending. From Homer to Carter, metaphor, deviation, retelling, and cross-pollination occurs.
The order of the day moulds and twists the tale, drawing in new ears and eyes: the alchemy of reinvention, but what of the original? How is it possible that similar ancient stories are found across the world?
How did stories with a particular local resonance come to be replicated or created thousands of miles away at a time when it took more than 80 days to travel around the world?
How did the story of a creature half-fish, half-human land on so many shores?
Sightings include: The Mermaid of Zennor; the Songkhla in Thailand; Lasiren, a water spirit in Haiti; the Kaaiman from South Africa; and The Little Mermaid from Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersson.

In 2021 a group of screenwriting students ventured out on a Beachcombing for Stories trip in Cornwall. Looking for hag stones, seaweed, and shells they later sat on a sea wall, pencil and notebook in hand.
This experiment offered up pause for thought and allowed their minds to stray.
Fortified by the power of the sea and the salty air, they landed ideas for a dozen monologues.
And in the foreground, a little out of focus, below a sun-drenched rock, a splash was heard, followed by the flick of a scaly tail.

Bio:
Marie Macneill is a senior lecturer at the School of Film and Television, Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK. She is a writer, script editor and story consultant.
She works across film, television and theatre. Recent publication: The Palgrave Handbook of Script Development (Editors Stayci Taylor, Craig Batty) Chapter: Constructing Criticism without Crushing Confidence: Cultures of Feedback in Television Script Development (2022).
Her theatre play The Coastguard toured in 2020; she has co-written a short film The Hag Stone (shooting March 2022); and is developing a feature film Three Storms.
All are connected with her research. Marie was selected to be part of the BBC Writersroom – Cornish Voices from 2020-2021, where she developed and wrote the pilot for a 6x60’ TV series End of the Line.

Maras, Steven

The University of Western Australia

Screenwriting, the Doxa, and Symbolic Violence

Abstract:
‘The doxa’ is a term widely used in screenwriting research and has almost become an anchor concept in the discussion of manuals and handbooks. Usually traced back to the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, it has found important applications in the work of Ian W. Macdonald and Bridget Conor. This paper returns to the concept of doxa in Bourdieu’s original works, in order to re-examine the idea of doxa, especially in its relationship to other concepts such as ‘symbolic violence’. While not insisting on a strict fidelity to Bourdieu, and recognising re-invention of the term in screenwriting research, the paper explores the possibility that the concept of doxa may have been taken up in particular and partial ways. The paper makes some suggestions on what a re-framed concept of the doxa may provide for screenwriting research.

Bio:
Steven Maras is the author of Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (2009) and editor Ethics of Screenwriting: New Perspectives (2016). He is foundation co-editor of the Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting book series.

Marinov, Samuel

Bakhtin's theory of chronotope and its possible applications in screenwriting research and analysis (part I)

Abstract:
While Bakhtin’s theories of carnival, dialogue, polyphony, and heteroglossia are relatively well known in literary and film criticism (for example, Alexandra Ganser, Julia Pühringer, Markus Rheindorf, 2006) as well as screenwriting (such as Simon Weaving, 2013; Eleonora Recalcati, 2018; Clarissa Mazon Miranda, 2018; just to name a few) Bakhtin’s other major work, the theory of chronotope, is virtually unexplored either in film or screenwriting research and analysis.

Initially, the idea chronotope was developed by Einstein’s teacher German Minkowski in the 1880s, and later was expanded by Einstein himself, in his theory of space-time continuum.
Bakhtin, who studied philosophy under the most prominent Neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen at Marburg University in Germany, became first familiar with the concept of chronotope in 1920s through the work of Ernst Cassirer, the fellow student of the Cohen, called: Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, and later through the lectures by the famous Russian biologist and philosopher of science Alexei Ukhtomsky, who in turn applied the theory of chronotope to biological systems.
Bakhtin reformulated this notion of time-space continuum to the literary and artistic works. Bakhtin indicated that his goals is to treat artistic chronotope as it exists in the isolated reality of a work of art, specifically, and I quote, “…in the literary and artistic chronotope, there is a fusion of spatial and temporal signs in a meaningful and concrete whole...
Time is condensing, becoming artistically visible; space is intensified, drawn into the movement of time, plot, history...” (end quote).

In my presentation I will attempt to elucidate the main aspects of Bakhtin’s chronotope theory, specifically its ontological and epistemic elements, as well as its possible practical applications in screenwriting research and analysis.

Mathews, Phil

Bournemouth University

Motivation and character arcs. A truly global approach or the pervasiveness of a western narrative hegemony?

Abstract:
This paper will discuss the character arc narrative form as defined by Mathews (2018) as a narrative mechanism for revealing character motivation and consider whether it is a global narrative form or simply part of a pervasive doxa that has been inculcated into global cinema.
Having Identified and evidenced the form within screenwriting doxa, questions will then be posed in relation to global cinema and television that reflects, imbibes or transforms the character arc and to what ends.

Global cinematic and television examples such as City of god (2002) The Return (2003) Squid game 2021 and Valentin (2002) will be considered in relation to the character arc and consider whether there is a case of amorphous global narrative approaches at play, or more to do with the pervasiveness of the hegemony? is this where may theo discuss whether the character arc narrative form evidenced in these examples offers a truly global narrative form or whether this is a reflection of a pervasiveness to western narrative forms that has come to form the hegemony?

Bio:
Dr. Phil Mathews is a senior lecturer and programme leader for MA Scriptwriting at Bournemouth University and Deputy Head of department for media Production.
Mathews gained his practice based doctorate in screenwriting in 2018 and prior to this wrote for Doctors BBC1, and co-wrote the BAFTA nominated short Soft, 2006.
Mathews’ research interests cover romance genre, the pedagogy of screenwriting, screenwriting practices and approaches.
Recent conference papers include: What is Love SRN 2021,
Telling Stories: opportunities for word-of-mouth communication. Co presented with Dr. Fiona Cownie at the Academy of Marketing conference. University of Hull, 2017.
Transforming Love, the role of the character arc in transforming genre conventions, presented at the BAFTSS 5th Annual Conference, Bristol University, 2017.
‘Mapping the scriptwriters journey’ Paper presented at the annual ALD in HE Conference at the University of Hull, 2017.
Shooting Scripts: Bridging the Academic and professional practice gap. Paper presented at the annual HEA conference Manchester University, 2017.

Mathijs, Ernest

RITCS, School of Arts

Sois belle et tais-toi: the dominance of the male gaze in global screenwriting

Abstract:
Stories from cinema around the globe have mostly been written from a male perspective. French actress Delphine Seyrig is known for her work for Chantal Akerman, Jean-Claude Carriere, Marguerite Duras, Alain Resnais and Francois Truffaut. But in 1976 she started filming the documentary Sois belle et tais-toi where she interviewed dozens of actresses to assess their perception of how stories included (or, better, refused to include). Amongst the interviewees were Jane Fonda, Ellen Burstyn, Barbara Steele, Maria Schneider, and Louise Fletcher. The conclusion was unanimous: no meaningful parts existed for women characters.

This paper focuses on (1) Seyrig’s original documentary report of her research (Sois belle et tais-toi, 1981), (2) on recent interviews with women who originally appeared in the documentary as well as contemporary actresses and filmmakers from three continents (including diaspora filmmakers), and (3) on a COVID-inflicted rehearsal project with actors-in-training who were asked to reflect on Seyrig’s documentary to assess the extent to which screenwriting and storytelling today has changed in comparison to almost fifty years ago.

Amongst the key factors isolated in the paper are (1) the role of unique conversational dialogue exclusively between women characters; (2) the significance of women characters as ‘plot devices’ or ‘enablers’; (3) the function of a global perspective (esp. for women characters with so-called ‘international’ or ‘exotic’ backgrounds); (4) the extent to which mechanisms of ‘exploitation’ (sexualized or other) in the portrayal of women characters as ‘sexy’, ‘attractive’, or ‘damsel in distress’ have persisted in narrative cinema; and (5) the cued (or un-cued) visual representation of women characters (and actors) in storytelling.

Epilogue: This project is part of the research of Carly Wijs and Ernest Mathijs of the RITCS Screenwriting research group, and it will result in a documentary (provisionally entitled 12-3-21), of which preliminary footage will be shown.

Bio:
Ernest Mathijs lectures in the MA program screenwriting at the RITCS school of Arts in Brussels. He is also a professor of Cinema and media studies at the university of British Columbia(Vancouver). His books include Cult Cinema, Watching the lord of the Rings and The Cinema of David Cronenberg.

Mazon Miranda, Clarissa

Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade (Brazil)

The case of the partridge hunt

Abstract:
This script is an adaptation of the book "O caso da caçada do perdiz" (The case of the partridge hunt), from 2008, of the Brazilian author José Clemente Pozenato. It is a detective story, inspired by Agatha Christie's, detective Poirot, that has as its arena the Brazilian South of the 1920's. A murder happens during a partridge hunt in the countryside of the Southernmost state of Brazil in the 1920’s. Hilário Pasubio, a policeman who never wanted to be a detective, is the only one in a position to solve the crime. The murder could be closer than anybody thinks. This is a story that shows that justice is not always a clear field of action, leaving some grey areas where men can have moral doubts against a verdict.

Screenwriting of Brazilian biographical productions in the context of globalized streaming

Abstract:
The emergence of Brazilian TV series and films in streaming platforms such as Netflix, and Prime Video or platforms of channels like HBO is a reality nowadays. These international arena of exhibition for TV series and films are impacting the way in which Brazilian screenwriters work in order to uniformize their style to the Hollywood way of telling stories. This paper targets its research in movies and series about historical figures as Santos Dumont, Irmã Dulce, Alan Kardek, Hebe, and Elis Regina, which recently have been transformed in series or films by Brazilian screenwriters and are in exhibition in platforms of broad international access. The universality of these period stories is broadened by the easier path available nowadays for an international distribution platform. This research has as theoretical framework the academicians Welch, Davino, Massarolo (2021); Bejarano (2019); Teodoro, Davino (2014); Galiza (2021); Melo, Silva (2018); Duncan (2020); Bernardi, Hoxter (2017).

Bio:
Holds a Ph.D. in Literature at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (Brazil) since 2018; a Master in Mediatic Communication at the same institution (2012) and a bachelor in Journalism by Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (2005).
As researcher she is a member of the Association of Adaptation Studies and of the Screenwriting Research Network.
Works as a lecturer for Antonio Meneghetti Faculdade; as a journalist for the magazine Performance Líder and as cultural manager for the Recanto Maestro Youth Orchestra.
Has completed several short courses of screenwriting and direction from differente institutions: Escola São Paulo (São Paulo – Brazil - 2013); Fluxo School (Porto Alegre – Brazil - 2014); Gotham Writers (NY – USA - 2018); Screenwriting for young Audiences with Gabriella Mancini (on-line - 2021); Pirilampo Campaign of Movies for Young Audiences (on-line - 2021); Direction and Screenwriting Courses at Academia Internacional de Cinema (São Paulo – Brazil - 2021). As an independent director and screenwriter, she has worked in four documentaries.

McCann, Beth

Beth McCann, University of Salford, Manchester, U.K.

A Calling

Abstract:
In 1980’s Liverpool, a terrace house acts as a retreat for a group of lost women, guided by their disillusioned spiritual guardian. As a newly appointed matriarch, Summer, a streetwise graduate finds herself grappling with the truth and her role in the group after losing her soul mate to the calling.
She must find a way to keep the family together and face life when she is sent her greatest lesson.

The aim of this practice as research thesis is to develop a framework that looks to provide practical and flexible, fertile options that respond to the question, ‘‘What processes are needed to support a writer in adapting their own feature film script into an episodic long form series that offers returnable potential?’ Posing this question highlights the inherent problems that writers face when adapting their own work.

How do they possibly start, what do they leave out and how can they stimulate and demonstrate that their story offers enough narrative potential to warrant invariably more than 6 hours of screen time?
It also identifies the challenges for script development facilitators and educators, of how to provide creative systems that guide and motivate writers to look beyond their source material which enables them to explore character complexity that generates multiple narrative threads?

This research provides a theory based, industry inspired and writer focused foundation, that supports the practicing writer, script development facilitator and/or educator.

Bio:
Beth McCann is an PhD student at Liverpool John Moore’s University, her research focuses on the
writers’ process of adapting a stand-alone feature film into a long-form episodic narrative. Alongside
her own adaptation, Beth is developing a flexible adaptation framework for writers that will act to illuminate areas of fertility using the lenses of Character, World and Time.

McVeigh, Margaret

Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Australia

Tracing Patterns in Landscape and Meaning in Global Cinematic Storytelling

Abstract:
Cultures from all around the globe tell stories that explain the inter-relationship of man and the landscape. Cultures from all around the globe tell stories that share lessons about life.
Cultures from all around the globe stories tell stories that use landscape as the backdrop to story.
The role of landscape in cinematic storytelling has been extensively discussed in film theory, particularly in terms of the role of landscape as narrative backdrop, versus landscape as an aesthetic and metaphorical component of story.
While there is much research regarding Western story patterns and the lessons they share, there is a gap in Transnational Cinematic Storytelling regarding landscape as “the” story pattern and its role in the way meaning unfolds, particularly as characters travel and learn through journeying through landscape.
This paper will investigate landscape as pattern in Transnational Cinematic Storytelling traditions and discuss how the influences of these patterns may be traced in the work of contemporary screenwriters including, for example, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011), Ivan Sen’s Beneath Clouds (2002), Rachel Perkin’s One Night the Moon (2001), and Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000). Through interviews with these Writer/Directors and a textual analysis of their films, it will consider the role of landscape in storytelling and knowledge making, the place of character, the ways in which stories are constructed and told and the significance of these story elements in making meaning in Transnational Cinematic Storytelling, so as screenwriters and storytellers, we can may consider new ways of making and telling cinematic stories.

Bio:
Dr Margaret McVeigh PhD is Head, Screenwriting & Contextual Studies, Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Australia. She is 2021-2022 Chair of the SRN (Screenwriting Research Network International). Margaret holds a Masters of Screenwriting by Creative Practice and a PhD in Film and New Media Narrative. She has extensive national and international industry experience in Public Relations and Post-Production and has worked as the Commissioning Editor for Wiley publishers and as a Writer for the Australian National Broadcaster’s ABC Splash.
Margaret is co-editor of Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World (2017). Her chapter, Work in Progress: the Writing of Shortchanged in The Palgave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), explores her creative process in writing a feature film, development-funded by Screen Queensland.

Mellaerts, Ruth

RITCS School of Arts, Brussels

The (un)importance of conflict: looking for different storytelling modes

Abstract:I submit this paper wearing many hats: as a professional practicing screenwriter, as a teacher of screenwriting, and as someone who avoids conflict on a personal level. The latter shouldn't matter, were it not that conflict, according to Western screenwriting gurus, is considered the most important building block of drama.

‘A woman who is afraid of conflict decides to become a professional screenwriter.’
Permeated with a classic story model, we can see a story unfolding.
We detect a character arc: the searching screenwriting student becomes a confident teacher. Supported by McKee, Egri, Vogler, Yorke or Lavandier, she now teaches film students about the importance of conflict.

Yet her students aren’t always as easily convinced. They ask questions she used to ask. What about slice of life stories? What if my protagonist is passive? But they ask new questions as well: If those screenwriting gurus mainly use examples of older movies, often made by men, how can we know their theory applies to contemporary stories, told through more diverse voices?
The teacher is confronted with a new call to adventure. Maybe the quest wasn’t finished after all.

What does the dramaturgical framework consist of when we talk about stories in which conflict is not central? This question led me to Kishotenketsu, a story structure that dates to ancient times in Japan, China and Korea. The way this structure features conflict, but doesn’t center on it, made me revisit movies I had analyzed before, like Parasite and Never let me go. This paper reflects on the universality of stories, how we cannot ignore our own perspective, and the possible blind spots this perspective entails.
I will present the journey I am on, in search for the (un)importance of conflict. Which building blocks can we use to construct universally compelling stories?

Bio:
Ruth Mellaerts (1986) studied Literature and Languages at the University of Leuven and Screenwriting at RITCS Brussels. In this school she is currently teaching Dramaturgy and Screenwriting, while also working as a professional writer. She has worked in theatre, wrote a book of short stories, and works as a screenwriter for short films and television. At RITCS she is part of a research group in the writing department, that investigates contemporary dramaturgy. Her research is about the connection between classic storytelling modes and stories told from new perspectives, through diverse voices.

Milligan, Christina

Auckland University of Technology

Storytelling in Māori films: a path to decolonization

Abstract:
It is a truism in the script development world that ‘the particular is universal’.
In other words, if a story is told through characters and settings that are true to their origins, the story will travel because we are all human beings and we all share versions of the same hopes, dreams and fears.

Such a framing is arguably a key to the success of two of the best-known features from Aotearoa New Zealand: Once Were Warriors (1994) and Whale Rider (2002).
Both these films tell Indigenous stories but take an orthodox (Hollywood) approach to their storytelling in terms of structure and characterization.
This ‘universalizing’ approach presents real dilemmas to those whose stories are being told: these are Māori stories, and the orthodox framing obscures in both films the underlying colonial history that frames the world from which the stories are taken.
This presentation discusses the storytelling techniques used in universalizing these two films and compares them with two more recent films made by Māori: Mt Zion (2015) and Warū (2017).
Both these latter films bring very different storytelling techniques to the fore, particularly in terms of characterization, but also in terms of how theme is explored and how the plots are structured.
Both, in a sense, work from the inside out, starting with the reality of the Māori characters and their worlds, rather than imposing a form of characterization and structure developed and refined in another (Western) culture.
There are dimensions of difference in the Indigenous world that the Indigenous filmmaker can bring to their practice and the presentation will discuss specifically how qualities from te ao Māori (the Māori world) of manaakitanga (care for others), whānaungatanga (kinship) and tikanga (the right way of doing things) are all brought into play in the storytelling of Mt Zion and Warū in a way that is not present in the earlier films. In this way, it seeks to address questions of how Hollywood’s mode of storytelling represses other modes and presents examples of decolonized storytelling

Bio:
Christina Milligan is a researcher-practitioner in screenwriting and screen production at Auckland University of Technology.
She is an award-winning producer of feature and television dramas and documentaries and much of her industry work reflects her indigenous heritage as a member of the Ngāti Porou tribe of the Māori people. She is completing a PhD thesis on the work of the Indigenous screen producer.
Christina serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Screenwriting and is the government-appointed Chair of Te Puna Kairangi / Premium Production Fund, supporting high-end film and television production as part of the New Zealand government’s response to the effects of Covid-19 on the screen industry.

Mullins, Anthony

Griffith Film School, Sessional Lecturer and Member of the film school’s Industry Advisory Council, member of the Australian Writers’ Guild

Beyond the Hero’s Journey — using character arcs to challenge the “triumphant” and “transformative” worldview of the Hero’s Journey in order to encourage alternative storytelling approaches and voices.

Abstract:
Using a variety of case studies, my presentation will demonstrate how the well-known concept of “characters arcs” may be more flexibly employed to embrace a diverse range of storytelling types, formats and voices that go far beyond the restrictive formulas of the Three Act Hero’s Journey. As I have argued elsewhere (Mullins, Beyond the Hero’s Journey, 2021), the Three Act Hero’s Journey privileges a particularly “triumphant” and “transformative” style of storytelling which implicitly excludes voices that attempt to articulate a more complex, ambivalent or unresolved worldview. In particular, the dense, mythic and jargon-heavy language employed by Campbell and Vogler — “Seize the Sword”, “Master of Two Worlds”, “The Freedom to Live” — presupposes a particular story resolution which assumes that the protagonist will emotionally transform and, as a result of this transformation, everything will work out well for them. But, even before one considers more transnational approaches to storytelling, the claimed “universality” of the Three Act Hero’s Journey is dubious even within the Western industry, especially for television writers where the “beginning, middle and end” of the story is often unknown and emergent and the storytelling landscape is dominated by celebrated antiheroes who rarely, if ever, emotionally transform (e.g., Tony Soprano, Don Draper, Selina Meyers). Using diverse case studies, as well as visual aids to map the protagonist’s unique progression, I will demonstrate how the concept of “character arcs”, which is used widely in industry settings, including television, can be more flexibly deployed to help conceive, structure and analyse a wider range of story types and formats, as well as encourage unique voices whose ideas do not fit the confines of the Three Act Hero’s Journey

Bio:
Dr Anthony Mullins is a BAFTA and AWGIE award winning screenwriter and educator. He has a Doctorate of Visual Arts from Queensland College of Arts where he teaches and is a member of the school’s Industry Advisory Council. His book Beyond the Hero’s Journey (2021) is published by New South Publishing in Australia and Old Castle Books internationally. Anthony’s first short film (STOP, 2000), was nominated for the Palmes d’Or for short films at the Cannes Film Festival and one of his first TV assignments was writing and directing two spin-off web series for the US television series LOST, one of which won a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Interactive Television (Dharma Wants You, 2009). His work on Spooks Interactive (2008) won two BAFTAs for Interactive Television. Anthony was the development executive and script editor on Safe Harbour which won the 2019 International Emmy Award for Best Mini-Series.

Neilan, Chris

Edinburgh Napier University

Reimagining the First Act: Hou Hsiao-Hsien and the Languorous Cinema of Place

Abstract:
According to the conventional (Western) model, the typical first act is split into two distinct sections, each with distinct functions. The first (1.1) functions primarily to establish a protagonist and to interrupt their life with an inciting incident. The second (1.2) functions to move the protagonist from the shock of the interruption to the decision to pursue an active goal, culminating with a turning point.

Alternative first act approaches exist, however, which create correspondingly different viewing experiences. In Goodbye South, Goodbye (1997), Hou Hsiao-Hsien presents a first act notably different to the conventional model, and in doing so finds the narrative time and space to focus less on how pressurised plot events and active criminality impact upon his characters, and more to explore the ways his characters interact within their crime milieu. Hou’s style is ‘contemplative, elliptical’, defined by ‘an ability to transform the small events and gestures of everyday life into resonant images with lasting emotional power’ (Vick, 2008: 201).

Goodbye South, Goodbye demonstrates his predilection for the resonance of the everyday: far more than plot, Hou focuses on the way his characters speak to each other, care for each other, eat together, within the world of low-level criminality in which they reside. Their criminality is background—foregrounded, instead, is a meditation on place, the tonalities of the Taipei shanty, and their manner of surprisingly intimate, familial togetherness.

This audio-visual essay will examine similar approaches in Hou’s other works, including Daughter of the Nile (1988) and The Assassin (2015), as well as comparable approaches in Western films by Robert Bresson, Jean-Pierre Melville and Jim Jarmusch.

Bio:
Chris Neilan is an award-winning author, screenwriter and filmmaker.
His hybrid novel about love and abuse in the film industry, Stellify, is available from Broken Sleep Books.
He has twice been shortlisted for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, and his films have played at festivals across four continents, winning several awards.
He has several chapters and articles due for publication in 2022, focused on narrative structure in the screenplay, and is completing his PhD in creative writing (screenwriting) at Manchester Met.

Novrup Redvall, Eva

University of Copenhagen

Writing entertaining family fiction with a natural science mission: The case of the Danish television Christmas calendar ‘Christmas of the Comets’

TV 2 and the production company Nordisk Film were fond of the idea and hired showrunner Jenny Lund Madsen to head the writing of the series. Based on literature on writing for children and family audiences (Brown 2017; Hermansson and Zepernick 2018; Redvall and Christensen 2021) and qualitative interviews with Jenny Lund Madsen, Marie Breyen and Anja C. Andersen, document analysis (of e.g. the press material, reviews) and observation studies at industry events (such as THIS Series festival in 2021), the case study explores the process of creating a Christmas calendar with an arena and a storyline where natural science elements are naturally integrated in each episode.

Building on theories of transmedia storytelling (Ryan 2015), the case study also explores the extensive transmedia universe ‘Universet udenom’ (the universe around) which was created around the series and the way in which this mirrored the action and conflicts of the fictional story.

Bio:
Eva Novrup Redvall is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen where she heads the Section for Film Studies and Creative Media Industries.
She has published widely on screenwriting and production, e.g. the monograph Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing.
She has been a member of the SRN network since its founding and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Screenwriting and is one of the three book series editors for Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. From 2019-2024 she is the PI of the research project ‘Reaching Young Audiences: Serial Fiction and Cross-Media Storyworlds for Children and Young Audiences’ supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark, grant: 9037-00145B.

Obano, Rex

Royal Holloway, University of London

Cultural Neo-Colonialism in British/ African Film: The narrative, the Development and the Creation of an "elsewhere"

Abstract:
When neo-colonialism is applied to screenwriting it describes the idea that the apparent variety of stories conceals a deeper conformity to Western narrative paradigms and the concern is not only that it limits the range of narratives that can be told but also perpetuates the myth that the colonised are victims in need of colonisation.
The purpose of this study is to investigate by looking at literature - where post-colonial writers have managed to successfully decolonize their writing by using a variety of paradigms and literary techniques – whether black British screenwriters and developers received of a post-colonial education - can effectively decolonize their screenplays.
In the last few years films that have received funding from the BFI and written by black British screenwriters have perpetuated colonial paradigms especially in the way they have portrayed their protagonists.
In these films all the protagosists are in foster care, there is a notable absence of fathers, they all feature inspirational teachers, the main characters lack agency and control over their own destiny, and their protagonists’ emotions are symbolized only through aggression. However, in Wole Soyinka’s literature, for example, he managed to mould the English language to reflect his historical mythology and, in so doing, change the nature of the literary protagonist from one seeking personal elevation to a protagonist who embraces the fate of the entire community. Similarly, the Kenyan writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o wrote solely in Gikuyu in order to renounce lingering colonial ties.
Akala, in his address at the Oxford Union, argues that Thiong’o, Soyinka and other postcolonial writers “may have been schooled in the colonial system but they were educated elsewhere”. And so by borrowing from these of paradigms, language and literary techniques black British screenwriters are able to find an ‘elsewhere’.

Bio:
Rex Obano is a Teaching Fellow in Screenwriting at Royal Holloway, University of London where he is also studying for a PhD.
His research focusses on cultural neo-colonialism and its effect on black-British screenwriting.
As a writer he has written for the stage, television, radio and film.
His theatre includes Slaves (Theatre 503) and The Door Never Closes (Almeida Theatre).
His radio includes Someone’s Making A Killing In Nigeria; Burned To Nothing; Oil on Water; Faith, Hope and Glory – Series 1 and 2 (BBC Radio 4) and Lover’s Rock; As Innocent As You Can Get, City College and The Moors of England (BBC Radio 3). His current commissions are Faith, Hope and Glory – Series 3 (BBC Radio 4). Rex has a feature film and in development with Pencil Trick Productions and is a writer for the television series Black Tudors (Brit-Box/Silverprint) and Shakespeare and Hathaway (BBC).

Oltolini, Maria Chiara

Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore

Once Upon a Time in Japan: Ponyo and the Ecological Fairytale

Abstract:
Like any other form of fiction, films provide entertainment and help us understand the world we live in, both mirroring and contributing to reframe our perspective on reality.

Since the 1910s, the tradition of filmmaking has been driven by Hollywood. Deeply entrenched in North-American culture, US cinema is based on a welldevised system of principles of plot construction and narration which date back to Aristotle.

Yet today there seems to be a new interest for other diegetic models, many of which originated from Asia. Proof of this can be found in the rise of Korean drama, and in the record sales of anime and manga (Japanese animation and comics).
The late fortune of Studio Ghibli is a clear example, with the Japanese director Miyazaki Hayao receiving numerous accolades including an Academy Award for his movie Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (2001).
The success of Ghibli films has certainly benefitted from their frequent use of adaptation of famous children’s books, a long-lasting partnership with Disney, and increasingly refined marketing campaigns. However, they also appear to follow their own narrative rules - which consistently diverge from the classical premises canonized by Hollywood - without losing any of their appeal and universality. On a closer analysis, this peculiar diegetic structure can be seen as an expression of a more fluid vision of the world, related to the ‘yin and yang’ concept, but eventually speaking to all.
Focusing on Miyazaki’s Gake no ue no Ponyo (Ponyo) (2008), this paper aims at studying how storytelling and animation techniques concur to create meaningful messages and compelling fiction in Ghibli’s films, with special attention to the representation of nature and the theme of transformation. This will be conducive to comprehend the Studio’s underpinning worldview, why it matters, and what we can learn from it

Bio:
Maria Chiara Oltolini has a BA, MA, and PhD from Università Cattolica (Milan), where she has been working as a Teaching Assistant in Semiotics and History and Industry of International Cinema for several years. Her research interests include children’s literature and adaptation as a form of intermedia and intercultural expression, focusing on the relationships between Japanese visual culture and world’s literature.
She is also an author of children’s fiction, who started to work at the animation studio Calon (Wales), writing episodes for tv series for children (YoYo, Inui, Julio Bunny).

As a freelance, she wrote the autobiographical novel of an Italian youth with tetraparesis (MP3 - Sulle ruote me la rido, 2017). She also wrote episodes for other international animated series (BatPat, Berry Bees, Grisù il draghetto). A project based on her PhD thesis, which centred on the Japanese “World Masterpiece Theater” case, has been approved for publication by Bloomsbury Academics.

Paletz, Gabriel M.

Prague City University and The Prague Film School (Czech Republic)

Writing Sound in the Screenplay: Innovations in the Hollywood Form

Abstract:
The conventional assumption that the soundtrack belongs to the provinces of shooting and post-production has become self-fulfilling in the format of the contemporary Hollywood feature screenplay. Because the format privileges dialogue and visual descriptions, creative uses of the soundtrack are usually left to later phases of filmmaking. Most popular manuals on screenwriting have chapters on structure and character—but not sound. Young filmmakers neglect the soundtrack because they lack the expressive tools to incorporate sound into their screenplays. Even the writers of the Hollywood success A Quiet Place (2018; sequel 2021) had to invent ways to convey their story centered on sound. Although sound is a global form of storytelling, the contemporary Hollywood script format is not conducive to globalizing screenwriting through sound.

This presentation draws on examples from the great silent-era female screenwriters, director-screenwriters such as Bresson, Welles and Kubrick as well as the Quiet Place script, to show how screenwriters can alter the Hollywood template in simple ways to incorporate more features of sound into their screenplays.

We can adapt a three-column format to train young screenwriters in sound; extend the current practices of capitalizing and underlining sound effects; add an acoustic environment to a scene heading, employ a few symbols to show the flow of diegetic to non-diegetic sounds, indicate just a few aspects of music and format audio rhythms, among designing other creative conceptions of sound for the screenplay.

Rather than infringing on the work of sound designers and composers, these refinements would show the respect of screenwriters for the crucial crafts of sound. Past practices and amendments to the current Hollywood format can unite screenwriters with their fellow filmmakers in the creation of the soundtrack, making film authors new collaborators in sound.

Bio:
After earning the first PhD from the University of Southern California in film history with a minor in film production, Gabriel M. Paletz now teaches screenwriting to students from five continents in Prague, Czech Republic. Inspired by presenting at the SRN Conference, this year he curated and presented a program dedicated to the great women screenwriters of Hollywood silent cinema at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto film festival in Pordenone, Italy. He has just finished a book on the creative practices, including screenwriting, of Orson Welles across the mass media. From presenting at international festivals and publishing in journals and magazines such as Film Quarterly and Variety on the creation of great screenplays from Sunrise, Citizen Kane, Vertigo and The Shop Around the Corner to Gone Girl and Nightcrawler, he is now composing a book on screenwriting

Pfeiler, Martina

University of Vienna

Ulrich Steindorff’s Das Seebiest (1930) as Economic and Ethic Treatments

Abstract:
Dämon des Meeres is a (lost) German sound production by Warner Bros.
It was produced by the Austrian-Hungarian emigré director Michael Curtiz in California in 1930, featuring the German actor Wilhelm Dieterle in its popularized global hunt for the white whale Moby Dick.
To the disappointment of Moby-Dick enthusiasts, Melville scholars, and film scholars alike, Dämon des Meeres has still not resurfaced in any of the world’s archival collections.
However, I was able to locate eight out its nine Vita Phone Sound Discs, as well the previously unexplored screenplay Das Seebiest by Ulrich Steindorff, in addition to several treatments,shedding fascinating light on the socio-political, global undercurrents of screenwriting in a climate of growing nationalism as a “fluid text” (Bryant 2002).
Ulrich Steindorff was born in Berlin in 1888 and died in Sherman Oaks, California, in 1978. He was a well-known journalist in the Weimar Republic (Raabe qtd. in Schuhmann 120), and he had penned a review of Dieterle’s performance as Brutus (Schütze 80). In an increasingly anti-Semitic climate, he was forced to leave Germany and emigrated to the United States in 1933, where he began to use the pseudonym Ulrich S. Carrington, working as a Mark Twain translator and as a playwright.
This paper explores how Ulrich Steindorff translates and adapts Grubb Alexanders’ screenplay of Moby Dick, the 1930 American sound version of the popular Warner Bros. production The Sea Beast (1926), adapted to the screen from Beth Meredyth’s screenplay.
In view of the conference’s main subject, I seek to address how Steindorff’s Germanlanguage screenplay not only draws on the global stock market crash in October 1929, but the 2 extent to which it offers an economic recontextualization of the global hunt for the white whale in Melville’s Moby-Dick that neither the American silent version, nor the American sound version, engages.
And, most crucially, despite the growing nationalistic and racist climate at the end of the Weimar Republic, Steindorff constructed a version of Ahab, renamed Christoph in the final script version, who takes sides with social minorities and ethnic others.
As such, the transcultural creative reception puts forth an attempt at signaling racial equality despite ethnic differences. Ulrich Steindorff’s script version as well as the connected archival material suggest that the German Warner Bros. adaptation subversively engaged in the global politics of the day, offering – by way of Melville – a transcultural model that seeks to overcome “fixed cultural identity base[d] on race, ethnos, religion, or ideological commitments” (Epstein 328). It comes, however, as no surprise that the German reception following the premiere in March 1931 was less than favorable.

Bio:
I currently work as as a senior researcher at the University of Vienna (ERC/FWF “Poetry Off the Page”). Previously I taught as interim commissionary chair of American Studies at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, specializing in U.S. literature, culture and media.
I completed my Habilitation with a thesis titled Ahab in Love: The Creative Reception of Moby-Dick in Popular Culture (in preparation for publication).
I am the author of Poetry Goes Intermedia: U.S. amerikanische Lyrik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts aus kultur- und medienwissenschaftlicher Perspektive and Sounds of Poetry: Contemporary American Performance Poets (2003) and have published articles in Lit/Film Quarterly, Leviathan.
A Journal of Melville Studies, The European Journal of American Studies, to name just a few. My research interests include: American Studies, Transnational and Global Studies, Adaptation Studies, Film and Media Studies, Digital Archives, Reception Studies and U.S.-American and British Poetry.

Philipsen, Heidi

University of Southern Denmark

The creative potential of storyworlds in screenwriting and -development

Abstract:
When you read books written by the so called ‘gurus’ of screenwriting like Field, McKee, Aronson, Walther, storyworlds (also called ‘world-building’) are rarely mentioned as a key tool for development of screenplays. But the usage of storyworlds is an essential way of handling and presenting the creative stimuli’s which can be a starting point for compelling stories for film or television.
Whereas world-building processes typically initiate drawings, models, maps, and other visual tools, pre-phases in screenwriting are often dominated by written words and dramaturgical tools (e.g., a three-act-structure).
Especially nowadays, in a time where storyworlds are huge players in audience engagement and fan behavior (Jenkins, 2006) it seems peculiar that the concept of storyworld is not a part of more screenwriting books. There are exceptions like Truby (2007) where this concept is included.
In our presentation we wish to address the following topics from the conference call: Screenwriting teachers ‘gurus’ and their influence around the globe, and how toxic is the doxa?
Paradigms of screenwriting and their global hegemony. Our research question is: How can world-building at an early stage of a screenwriting process initiate a foundation for the story to build upon?
And does it represent a scaffolding or obstruction to the creative process?
We conduct an empirical qualitative production study carried out at the ‘Screenplay Development’ program at The University of Southern Denmark. We have collected data through a survey and a case-study.
Our aim is to reflect on possibilities and challenges when using world-building early in the development of a screenplay.

Our study is theoretically based on storyworldand world-building perspectives from e.g., Ryan (2014), Ford (2007), Klastrup & Tosca (2020), Wolf (2012) and the understanding of ‘scaffolding’ from Wood, Bruner & Ross (1976) and Philipsen (2009).

Prokhorov, Artem

HSE University

Propp and Campbell united: Russian and Western story structures together in Pixar animation

Abstract:
Vladimir Propp's famous book ‘Morphology of the Folktale’ (1968) contains the universal scheme of Russian fairytales’ structure, while Joseph Campbell’s ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’ (1949) offers the comparable hero’s journey scheme (‘the monomyth’), which is based on the study of world myths and legends. There are several pieces of research exploring American animation in the context of Propp's and Campbell's universal story schemes separately, but there is no work that attempts to combine the two concepts for a specific case study yet. Recent research by Glenda Hambly 'The not so universal hero's journey' (2021) indicates that it would be more correct to call monomyth the ‘Western’ paradigm, while there are other ways of storytelling among different countries and nations.

That is why this current study poses the question: do Propp's and Campbell's schemes contradict each other in any way in practice, or could they work together fully in the same story? To answer this question, the study focuses on highlighting Propp's (‘Russian’) and Campbell’s (Western) structures in several Pixar cartoons, including ‘Coco’ (2017) and ‘Luca’ (2021).
The results of the study show that Propp's and Campbell's schemes both apply to these stories and work together in it, even though they do not have many obvious points of intersection within the plot. As a result of the analysis, it is possible to compare the two schemes on a more general level, establishing an approximate correspondence and even mutual influence of their elements, and eventually constructing a universal scheme of Pixar hero’s journey.
Thus, the study shows how modern American animation internally combines Russian fairytales with Western myths and legends to create high-quality and entertaining stories.

Bio:
Artem Prokhorov worked as script editor and screenwriter for the Star Media cinema production
company (Moscow, Russia) on projects including Ischeika (Sleuth) (2015–present), Probujdenie (Awake) (2021), Serdce Parmy (Land of Legends) (2022).
He is also a creator and writer of ValorMainStream Youtube channel (2012–present), which contains parody sketches and to date has over 190 thousand subscribers and 30 million views.
Currently, Artem is a Ph.D. student in the Art and Design School of HSE University, Moscow, and a senior lecturer in its Faculty of Communications, Media and Design. His interests include cinema and television series dramaturgy, web projects’ development, and all forms of screenwriting. Artem’s studies have already appeared in several journals, including Journal of Screenwriting and Metaphor and Symbol.

Renn-Giles, Danica

Royal Holloway University of London, UK

Towards an understanding of the role of film and viewer value-alignment in local and global fiction film preferences

Abstract:
Many film and screenwriting scholars suggest that mainstream fiction film narratives express social values and that viewers prefer films whose (characters’) values align with their own (e.g., Cattrysse, 2010; McInerny, 2013).
However, this idea has not been tested empirically yet - a gap the present work seeks to start to fill.
To determine the content of film and viewer values, the Schwartz (1992) Theory of Basic Human Values was employed, which defines four higherorder values – such as self-enhancement (e.g., wealth, success according to social standards) and self-transcendence (transcending selfish interests, e.g., justice, caring for close others) – that have been investigated empirically by numerous cross-cultural studies.
Respondents of an online questionnaire were shown one of four different types of film loglines, each of which described a protagonist motivated by one of the four higher-order values.

Study participants were then asked which values they expected the film as a whole to endorse (for more details on the proposed relationship between character and film values see the study on film value communication presented at SRN 2020/21), to rate their own values, and how interested they were in watching the film. These data were analysed by forming an index of the alignment of the expected film values with participants’ own values, which were then used to predict film interest.
The conference paper will present the findings of this study and discuss their relevance for local and global mainstream fiction film preferences based on the seven world regions of cultural value orientations identified by Schwartz (2006) and on the pan-cultural value preferences identified by Schwartz and Bardi (2001)

Bio:
Danica Renn-Giles is a psychologist with a longstanding interest in screenwriting and the application of psychological insights to character development.
Having completed a BSc and MSc in Psychology at the University of Tübingen (Germany) and worked as a behaviour change consultant with the private and public sector, she is now pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD in psychology and screenwriting at Royal Holloway University of London (UK), supervised by Prof Anat Bardi and Prof Adam Ganz.
She is also a regular guest lecturer for the MA Screenwriting at Royal Holloway and has worked as story and audience insight consultant for StoryFutures, a government-funded initiative supporting creative businesses with R&D of immersive technologies.

Robles, Brenda

Aalto University, Finland

The first asides of House of Cards (NETFLIX 2013-2018), a case of a backstory-based character construction compared against the first soliloquy of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

Abstract:
I will argue that the “pain” mentioned by Frank Underwood in the first scene of the series, has the potential to be analyzed as a psychoanalytic origin, similar to the one in Richard III, even though the references and comments from its screenwriter, point in the opposite direction, that Francis’ mention of pain is only a “worldview”.
A phenomenological approach to character construction based in the psychoanalytic analysis of character of Richard III, developed by scholar Bernard J. Paris, will serve as a basis to construct the argument that the main character of the series, Frank Underwood is susceptible to be analyzed as a backstory-based character.
The analysis of scenes in which Frank’s backstory is mentioned, in combination to the theoretical use of backstory in screenwriting, will help demonstrating that the literal mention of “pain” by Frank, has deeper repercussion in his character development, attached to a psychoanalytic interpretation of “pain” because of a difficult past.
Shakespearean Character Studies, justifying a reading of character that goes beyond the text, and screenwriting theory use of backstory will help the discussion of using backstory to create character’s motivation

Bio:
She is currently a doctoral student at the Helsinki Film School (ELO) at Aalto University in the area of screenwriting. Her research interests are character creation and its juxtaposition to classic and contemporary dramatic theory.
She pursues a practice-based artistic research, based on her experience gained as a visiting researcher at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography at Aalto University and a Master of Arts in Screenwriting at Napier Edinburgh University. In 2021, the script-based paper “Greta Ruiz and the Signs of Love” was published in the Sightlines: filming in the Academy issue

Rudolph, Pascal

University of Potsdam

Sounding Scripts: A Typology of “Screenplay Music”

Abstract:
In 2020 and 2021, I received permission from Lars von Trier to see his private collection at the Danish Film Institute, which includes unpublished screenplays and other production documents.
After years of researching the music in von Trier’s films, I asked myself: What role does music play in these scripts? How is the sound dimension described? What is the concept of music in screenplay development?

At some point I noticed that the planning and description of music differed. At the same time, I recognized patterns in the material. From the way music was integrated into the scripts, five music concepts eventually crystallized: music as a montage element, music as text, music as performance, music as sound and music as a dramaturgical tool.
In this paper, I present these music concepts with brief examples, whereby it is irrelevant whether the music, the scene or even the film was realized.

The screenplay plays as little of a role in film music research as music does in screenplay studies.
Only recent contributions are devoted to this sound design, which is what I would like to build on.
In doing so, I hope to raise awareness of the screenplay as a possible object of study in film music research and of music as a possible object of study in screenplay studies, and at the same time to provide an initial toolbox for future analyses with my "Typology of Screenplay Music".

Bio:
Pascal Rudolph finished his PhD in musicology at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Previously he studied Musicology, Music Education, and German Literature and Language in Potsdam, Berlin, and Shanghai with distinguished scholarships, and graduated his master’s with distinction (M.A. & M.Ed.).
His doctoral project explores the use of pre-existing music in Lars von Trier’s films (book forthcoming). Outgrowths from his previous and current work have been published in Music & Science (2018), ZGMTH (2019), Song and Popular Culture (2019) as well as IASPM Journal (2020), and he has presented his research at national and international conferences.
In addition to his current position as a research and teaching associate in musicology at the University of Potsdam, he works as a music supervisor and a freelance musician. In 2020 and 2021 he was a DAAD research fellow at the University of Copenhagen and the Danish Film Institute.

Russo, Paolo

Oxford Brooks University, UK

Screenwriting as a complex system

Abstract:
This paper outlines initial findings from underpinning research that aims at modelling screenwriting (with an emphasis on film and television) through complex systems theory; or, better, as a nested complex system embedded in other, higher-level complex systems.

Despite still current misconceptions, studies of narratives as complex systems can be traced back to Russian Formalism (in particular, the contributions of Jury Tynjanov) and therefore even pre-date the “official” birth of complex systems theory. But only in the last couple of decades a new cross-disciplinary approach picked up substantial pace, often (although not always) driven by the advent of widespread interactive media – see the work of the European Narratology Network, the RIDERS project based at Heriot-Watt University, the “Narratives and Worlds” project (involving the universities of York, Freiburg and Aarhus), Ohio State University’s “Project Narrative”, the “Future Narratives” project led by Christoph Bode, as well as of individual scholars such as Merja Polvinen, Richard Walsh and Susan Stepney to name but a few.

Given these strong narratological foundations, scholars in film and other screen media studies have proposed similar approaches in recent years (Sabine Schenck; Poulaki and Grishakova): generally speaking, though, the scope of their investigation is limited to the complexity of feature film narratives – and, more precisely, narrative structures – and all too often tends to rely on analogies and axiomatic reasoning. Even the rare study whose title promises to venture into an investigation of the screenplay (i.e. George Varotsis’ Screenplay and Narrative Theory) falls well short of delivering on such promise since it hardly ever tackles (or mentions) screenwriting or the screenplay at all.

This research aims to fill this gap by introducing an ontology of screenwriting that both formalizes/expresses/structures its content and its relational properties, and outlines its application, functional and knowledge domain. Such an ontology redefines screenwriting as a complex dynamic system nested hierarchically within higher-level complex systems with which it constantly interacts well beyond the ever-important narrative domain. In this paper I argue though that, unlike most other complex systems (which are nonlinear), screenwriting derives its emergent quality from a peculiar combination of both linear and nonlinear properties and processes that are best understood by wedding complex systems theory to a cognitive framework. This paper will provide a few examples from select case studies to help capture the dynamic property of screenwriting as a complex system, thus modelling the proposed ontology for future use.

Bio:
Paolo Russo is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University (UK).

He is a long-standing member of the Screenwriting Research Network – of which he also Chairperson until recently; sits on the editorial boards of Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies and L’Avventura – International Journal of Italian Film and Media Landscapes; and is Research Lead of CIRIN (Creative Industries Research & Innovation Network).

Among his publications: ‘Dream Narrative in Inception and Shutter Island’ (Routledge 2014); 'Migration Told Through Noir Conventions in The Unknown Woman and Gomorrah'' (Peter Lang 2015); ‘Storylining engagement with repulsive antiheroes in Gomorrah – The Series’ (Journal of Screenwriting 8:1 2017); ‘(The Facts Before) The Fiction Before the Facts: Suburra’ (Palgrave 2018); and ‘HBO’s Boardwalk Empire: constraining history into the serial drama format’ (Toronto University Press 2019). He co-editor of the special issue of Fotocinema “El ‘sueño europeo’: narrativas fílmicas, televisivas y fotográficas de una crisis” (2020) and of the forthcoming Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (Palgrave, due out 2022).

Russo is also a professional screenwriter, currently working at Season 2 of the animated series Topo Gigio for Italian broadcaster RAI.

Sarmet, Érica

Universidade de São Paulo (USP)

Excess, horror and the wild pleasure in fiction feature screenplays

Abstract:
In my ongoing Ph.D. research, I rely on the notion of excess to think about the modes of sensorial construction in fiction film screenplays.
I intend to show there are filmic writings that can envelop readers/viewers in blankets of desires or tension games by employing strategies of appealing to the body, sensations, and feelings that characterize what I have been calling useless writing. I use "useless" in the sense of not being utility-oriented, i.e., writing that is not necessarily focused on the advancement of the plot, but helps create moods, atmospheres, sensualities and perhaps mess up old colonial narrative paradigms in the process.
Useless writing challenges the most widely spread tradition in screenwriting courses worldwide, that of screenwriting manuals. Subscribed to the ocularcentric tradition of film criticism and theory, most manuals were and still are based on hegemonic Western ideas of individual, conflict, obstacle, success, and failure that fit perfectly with colonial notions of love, family, home, race, nature, gender, and sexuality.
One of the most relevant and perhaps least discussed aspects about manuals is how they emphasize a type of “active” or “direct” writing, devoid of figures of speech, abstraction, qualification of nouns and verbs (McKee, 2007) which supports its supposedly universal approach to narrative structure.
Thus, in this presentation, by approximating the notion of excess to the wild (Halberstam, 2020; Gudnyas, 2020), I seek to identify viscous vestiges excess leaves in the text’s body, in this case, excerpts from the screenplay of independent Brazilian horror-thriller film Friendly Beast (O Animal Cordial, 2017), written and directed by Gabriela Amaral Almeida.

Bio:
Érica Sarmet is a screenwriter, filmmaker, and researcher from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Ph.D. Candidate in Film Studies at Universidade de São Paulo, their research addresses excess in fiction feature screenplays. They have published papers and book chapters on Brazilian women's film history, Brazilian lesbian history, pornography and post-porn, queer cinema, and TV series.
Writer and director of the short films LATIFÚNDIO (2017) and A WILD PATIENCE HAS TAKEN ME HERE (Sundance Film Festival 2022), they were also researcher and script assistant to MEDUSA (Anita Rocha da Silveira, Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight 2021). Currently, Sarmet is developing two fiction feature film scripts for production companies in São Paulo and is preparing to shoot their next short film, the documentary Vollúpya.

Sheinbaum, Diego

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México

Reworkings of the Melodramatic Cinematography Tradition in Mexico: Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Beatriz Novaro and Laura Santullo

Abstract:
Melodrama is the oldest popular art in Latin American cinema. In Mexico, this genre has been nurtured by three master narratives: religion, nationalism, and modernization. This proposal explores the way in which three prominent contemporary Mexican screenwriters rework the plots, characters, spaces, and motifs of this broad film genre, and how they move away from the Hollywood narrative paradigm and attack the tradition of the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema and the soap operas. The three authors began their careers at the end of the 20th century in the context of the so-called “New Mexican Cinema”. Their screenplays explore the subjectivity of the feminine protagonists in very different ways, altering a genre where the women were a simple projection of male desire. While Paz Alicia Garciadiego (1949) turns upside down the traditional image of the Mexican mother showing the repressed energies, Beatriz Novaro (1953) explores the capacities to build ties of solidarity between women, and Laura Santullo (1970) uses melodrama to point out the abuses by large corporations in the era of globalization and neoliberalism, and the potential acts of resistance of the citizens. The proposal explores the possibilities and limitations that melodrama offers to screenwriters from the Global South, and the psychological, ethical, and political consequences of this type of narration and its reworkings.

Bio:
Diego Sheinbaum (Mexico City, 1974) Doctor in Comparative Literature and researcher at the Poetic Center of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). His lines of research are: 1) The reflexive, parodic and carnivalesque tradition in Literature and Cinema; 2) Poetics and Rhetoric of the Screenplay. He has been a screenwriter for National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Maroma Producciones. In 2017 he published his book Kafka, Defoe, and Dostoevsky in the Writings of J. M. Coetzee and in 2021 The Poetics of Slaughterhouse-Five. His most recent articles are “Reflections on Cinematographic Writing in Mexico (1965-2013)” and “The Poetics of Aristotle among Hollywood Screenwriters”.

Sindler, Gabriele C.

Analyzing Screenplays presented on the international market: Development, Practice and Benefits of “The SSO- or *40-Steps-Method” From practical use to theory and back again

For many years, we worked with this highly objectifying method for current film projects as well as for classics in teaching. This tool is designed to deconstruct the script into a concrete number of events, and sheds light to the author’s intentions in a psychoanalytical way. In a challenging learning process between theory and practice, the SSO | *40-Steps-Method was brought to life by • experiences in film production and distribution,
• the encounter with František “Frank” Daniel – the best teacher of script writing and analysis.
This political refugee was as decisively as discreetly involved in the worldwide successful ONE FLEW OVER THE COCKOO'S NEST and many others,
• Paul Schrader’s’ meticulous and unique approach to script writing (his early work),
• studies of drama theories, psychoanalysis, and the best films/scripts. Every successful film is based on a great script. The story, the characters and their universe, the topics and every other aspect must be fully worked-out AND fully adapted to the specifications of the 7th art.
Our research and our experience show: a fully developed story for cinema consists of around 40 Steps in a 90 to 120 minute film. This is as true for classics as it is for current films:
• SOME LIKE IT HOT | 121’ | 40 Steps • THELMA & LOUISE | 130’ | 42 Steps
• AMADEUS | 153’ | 45 Steps
• AMERICAN BEAUTY | 122’ | 41 Steps
• TITANIC | 194’ | 54 Steps | based on the analysis of the 156-page original screenplay dated Mai 7, 1996. Too many European films hardly achieve 25 steps. The detailed SSO | 40*-Steps Script Analysis identifies the existing story-steps.
It allows to ask questions and to provide comments on every story-step for making a good script great.
We improved and discussed our approach on 3 continents with very divers filmmakers, producers, and experts.

Bio:
Screenplay expert

Guest lecturer at the dffb, the Free University Berlin and the Academy of German Economy for Further Training:
– Script writing | Script analysis
– Writing for TV-series | Development of TV-series
– Journalism for press and public relations | Journalism for environmental issues
– Tutor for the intensive dfk*films Berlinale workshop for European students.

Worked as
– Head of departments | Managing director for institutions in culture, media and further training;
– Writer for ORF, RTL, SAT1, ZDF and production companies in Austria, Switzerland, Germany and Finland.
– Active for dfk*films and dfk*script*service since 2002 as writer, story editor and script analyst.

dfk*films | dfk*script*service: Since the establishment of CACTUS’ Scenario Service department in the 90s and its successor DFK FILMS LLC Zürich more than 3000 screenplays and treatments were analyzed on behalf of distributors, film producers and investors.

All these projects with their screenplays were looking for financing on the international market to attract investors or to sign pre-sales’ license agreements.

The statistics of the script*service confirmed that 97% of the negative and 76% of the positive evaluations turned out to be correct regarding the failure or the success of the films’ theatrical releases.

We are happy to share our expertise, our skills and practical experience through workshops, further education, and lectures.

In Europe, Africa and most recently in China we trained established and aspiring film professionals in English, German, and French.

Smith, Ash Eliza

University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Worldbuilding Consortium (Junk Planet)

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore: Environmental Futures and Post-Pastoral Speculation in Flyover Country

Abstract:
During the Spring of 2021, students at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln worked to imagine a near-future collapse of our planet. From tabula rasa, the storytellers had to work to rebuild a vision for the Great Plains 300 years in the future—Neobrara, a city that emerged from the detritus of the current civilization.

We worked with Tere Bosch and Nacho Trossero at Austral University in Buenos Aires, Alex Mcdowell at USC, and a cadre of eleven other institutions worldwide as a part of a global consortium.

Although we were working with local and regional cultures, economies, terrain, etc., we were still communicating with our counterparts in other countries.
This process became a way to iterate on and develop a methodology that centers on co-creation and co-authorship globally in our respective cities and towns.
We could also engage co-authorship on a global scale through the consortium network yet propose more local alternative ecologies that reflect on possibilities that shape urban-rural interdependence.
Many different projects sprang forth from this process, such as scripts, films, and web series, to name a few.

This panel and paper hope to explore the methodologies we are using to create new stories that may solve problems, re-imagine systems, and invoke global change.
Worldbuilding by design is a practice that decenters the notion of the single author and includes a diverse understanding of expertise and research by seeking out and asking questions from scientists, engineers, farmers, and custodians (et. al.).
Students can find experts to flesh out the world from weather and currency to future languages. Story remains the central goal and imperative when the research, extrapolation, and ideation is complete; the screenwriting must begin. What if more writers rooms and think tanks adopted this methodology?
How does local and global interdependence in our worldbuilding project facilitate change?

Bio:
Ash Eliza Smith is an artist-researcher who uses storytelling, worldbuilding, and speculative design to shape new realities.

With performance as both an object and lens, Smith works across art+science, between fact+fiction, and with human+non-human agents to re-imagine past and future technologies, systems, and rural-urban ecologies.
She is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Arts at UNL.
Ash grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina and has worked as a producer, director, performer, and writer for various studios and media platforms.
Her research lab within the Carson Center of Emerging Media Arts: Story, Worlds, Speculative Design Lab, uses design fiction and narrative to solve problems, re-imagine systems, and build worlds.
Ash has been in post-production of Southern Devices, a docu-fiction filmed in her hometown about data centers, mineral mining, and the digital afterlife. Her film co-authored film, Candy Ego, is forthcoming.

Solbakken, Ole Christian

Kristiania University

Pre-words storytelling – a report from an experimental writing process

Abstract:
It is a truism that cinema consists of images. But can images also play a role in the development of screen stories, not as storyboard tools, but as a shortcut to and trigger for the screenwriter’s narrative imagination? This paper is an early report from a screenwriting process that was initiated by an exploration of my material through the production of drawings.

At the outset of the writing of my psychological thriller “Josefine has gone missing” an image came to my mind: A search party on a big open field – someone was missing. This image sat with me for a while, then I began to draw. “To draw is to see” is a well-known credo for artists.

As a screenwriter, I am not a trained visual artist; the method I employed was intuitive and improvisational. As I produced the images, I did not know what I was going to draw – rather, I made myself follow the line, the hand, the body. What appeared on the page was often something that was charged by emotion and driven by intuition. Even a failed scribble could set in motion a thought, a feeling, or a new layer to the story.

This practice is related to what Welby Ings described in his article “Renegotiating the screenplay: Drawing as a method for narrative development in a short film” (Journal of Screenwriting, 2021) as gestational drawings: “Gestational drawing begins with the faintest of impressions; a potential moment in the story or a thought about how something might feel.”

The pen on the paper and the trust in my intuition were the main tools of the initial screenwriting process. I never wrote a word, I just drew; a pregnant woman pushed a man over a cliff; the gutting of a fish; the pregnant woman masturbating in a car; two illicit lovers discovered in a forest. The images I produced gave away to new images, to new discoveries, to a narrative. It was thinking through drawing. The story and the synopsis came from the images. I was seeing the story before telling or writing it.

As a screenwriter and a teacher of screenwriting I am interested in developing new methods for my colleagues and students to discover their stories. Instead of letting my students try to wring out a synopsis, my new endeavor is to let them engage in the playful activity of drawing, that might allow them to see their stories before they try to tell them.

This paper reports on a method that was the first step – finding the narrative through drawing – in a screenwriting process that is still in progress. In writing the actual screenplay, I will continue to draw – to see and to find what else might be lurking in the depths of the story.

Bio:
Ole Christian Solbakken is a screenwriter and an associate professor in Screenwriting at Kristiania University College in Oslo. He has written the animation film “Christmas on Cattle Hill” (2021), and is currently developing others projects for the big screen.

Stutterheim, Kerstin

Edinburgh Napier University

Natural Light (Természetes fény) (H 2021, Nagy Denes) in dialogue with Come and See (USSR 1985, Klimov)

Abstract:
Although it is known that the tradition of narrative-performative arts and hence film history presents a wide variety of dramaturgical options, ‘the Hollywood Model’ established over the last 5 decades often get understood and propagated as the one promising global success and standard.
The discourse within film theory and media studies dominated by academics from the Anglo-American world classifies movies from the Eastern Part of the world as ‘different’, as unconventional.
With my presentation, I’d like to discuss firstly how dramaturgy and aesthetics of Natural Light (Hun/Lt/F/D 2021 D: Nagy Dénes) is resulting from Hungarian film tradition and moreover conventions of dramaturgy and aesthetics having a tradition within East European Cinema; and, secondly, in which way this movie can be understood as an answer / in dialogue to Klimov’s Come and See (Иди́ и смотри́, USSR 1985)

Bio:
Professor in Creative Practice and Head of Research at School of Arts and Creative Industries; Edinburgh Napier University.
Here she teaches e.g. within the MA Screenwriting programme.
Dramaturg, Filmmaker, researcher.
Host of the 7th Annual SRN conference in 2014 in Potsdam.
Most recent monograph: Modern Film Dramaturgy – An Introduction, (Peter Lang 2019); Parallel Lines (UK2019/20, 58 min).
She is one of the editors of the series Klassiker des osteuropäischen Films (Classics of East European Cinema), and member of the board of editors for the CILECT-publication on teaching and learning documentary for the 21st century, to mention a few.

Tieber, Claus

University of Vienna

The Autor as Musical Advisor

Abstract:
The roles of the members of the SIWG are mostly described by their professions. In my paper I want to demonstrate, that the division of labor is not as strict, and that screenwriters took over different tasks, and used all devices of filmmaking, especially music to tell their stories.
The case at hand is that of Austrian screenwriter Walter Reisch, whose screenplay for The Great Waltz (1938) is compared and contextualized with screenplays of Hollywood musicals as well as Austrian music films from the 1930s.
The role of the screenwriter as musical adviser and the terms and conditions of this task will be discussed.

Bio:
Claus Tieber is currently the Principal Investigator of a research project about screenwriting musical numbers.
He teaches Film Studies at universities in Vienna, Brno, Kiel and Salamanca. Claus sat on the Executive Council of the SRN for several years, most of them as chair person; he is a founding member of Netzwerk Drehbuchforschung, which promotes academic screenwriting research in German-speaking countries.
After working as a commissioning editor for TV movies at the Austrian Broadcast Company (ORF) he wrote his Habilitation (post-doc thesis) about the history of the American screenplay (Schreiben für Hollywood: Das Drehbuch im Studiosystem, Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008) and switched from practice to research.
His publications also include a monograph on storytelling in silent cinema (Stummfilmdramaturgie. Erzählweisen des Amerikanischen Feature Films 1917 – 1927) and an edited volume on film music in silent cinema (The Sounds of Silent Films: New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2014, ed. with Anna K. Windisch).

Torres Pereira, Ana Sofia

CITAR - Catholic University of Porto
CIDETH - ISCIA

How Women Write Films: A Case Study of Portuguese Cinema

Abstract:
Women write women’s films. Women tend to write dramas and comedies and show no interest or talent in other genres. Women favour female characters. Women do not know how to write stories about strength or men. These are just some of the assumptions and the reasons that have been given by several researchers and people in the movie industry to justify the lack of women screenwriters in different countries around the world - in the United Kingdom (e.g. Sinclair, Pollard & Wolfe 2006), in the United States (e.g. Bileby & Bielby 2002, McCreadie 2006, Lauzen 2018), in Europe (Aylett 2016). Women write differently than men. That is why they tend to be passed over when working in cinema. This, in turn, leads us to question how women write. Portugal is a country where the auteur theory prevails. Thus, screenwriters tend to be disregarded in favour of the director who also writes. Finding a space for the study of screenwriting in Portuguese cinematic culture is challenging, but trying to study how Portuguese women screenwriters develop their art is almost impossible. In a country where cinema is predominantly male (e.g. A.C. Pereira 2014, A.S. Pereira 2020), and where storytelling finds many forms taken from different cinematic references (Italy, France, Spain, United States), building a theory and a female screenwriting paradigm is fundamental to trace how storytelling in cinema has been created and how it can evolve. This paper aims to explore the ways in which Portuguese women have tried to write themselves into the movie industry and what they have taken from different storytelling paradigms to do so. What is the Portuguese female doxa for screenwriting and for storytelling? And how can we use it to allow for a new perspective on Portuguese women screenwriters to emerge?

Bio:
Ana Sofia Pereira completed her Ph.D funded by a scholarship by FCT in 2020 on the topic "Women Screenwriters: A Dynamic Definition of language in the Feminine in Portuguese Cinema". She founded Cimbalino Filmes, a Portuguese production company, right out of college, and she has worked as a freelance screenwriter and script doctor for several production companies both in Portugal and in North America. Her latest work as a screenwriter and script supervisor includes the TV series 2’ Minutos para Mudar de Vida that was broadcast early in 2019 in primetime on one of Portugal’s major networks, RTP1. Additionally, her documentary TV series Virgínia: Searching for the Lost Film won ICA’s funding for its development in 2020. For the last 15 years, she has taught screenwriting at a university level in several national and international institutions, namely her Alma Mater, the School of the Arts, Universidade Católica Portuguesa.

Tremblay, Gabrielle

Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

The Dominance of the English Language in Screenwriting Research

With this paper, we do not seek, under any circumstances, to “bring to trial” the SRN.
Rather,we want to account for phenomena associated with the dominance of the English language
within our Network – keeping in mind that those issues necessarily outflow just as much as
they integrate the Network.
In our paper, we will cite work on systemic discrimination and the linguistic dominance of
English in research. Both sitting at different ends of the “Anglo-spectrum”, we also intend to
use our personal experiences of the dominance of English in the academic world as exemples.
Our goal is to highlight some problematic aspects of the current language status quo and, we
hope, spark a collective reflection within our Network.

Bio:
Gabrielle Tremblay is a professor in screenwriting studies for the Department of Literary
Studies at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM). She is a member of the
Interuniversity Research Center on Quebec Literature and Culture (CRILCQ). Her recent and
current work focuses on the links between literature, cinema, society, and screenwriting
practices in Quebec. In 2015, she published Scénario et scénariste, a book dedicated to the
institutional recognition of screenplay and screenwriting practices in France. Her doctoral
thesis addressed the question of reading screenplays. With this work, Gabrielle affirms, on
the one hand, the screenplay as a simultaneously literary and cinematographic textual form,
and, on the other hand, the act of reading screenplays as an experience of mediation,
transposition, adaptation and, even, as an act of creative nature. A book drawn from her
thesis is to be published in 2022.

Trossero, Ignacio

Universidad Austral, Buenos Aires Argentina.
Facultad de Comunicación. Worldbuilding Consortium (Junk Planet)

World Building Storytelling - Junk Global Consortium - Argentina Chapter

Abstract:
The "Worldbuilding" methodology, developed by Alex McDowell, allows to design a world in a systemic, holistic and collaborative way.

The world, solidly built and supported by rigorous research, becomes a narrative container of rules, stories, characters, scenarios and situations that emerge logically and organically from its core, giving rise to multidisciplinary processes of creative innovation.
In developing this process design, technology and storytelling converge, generating the development of innovative ideas and the discovery of solutions to problems that are perceived in the fictional world but can be applied to the real world. During the creation process, the "World builders", -designers of worlds, use a certain ethnographic base, as a place from which to begin to imagine future possibilities.
How can “Worldbuilding” impact the way we tell stories? How does this methodology allow students from different fields and countries to co-create a world by changing the traditional way of Storytelling?
Based on a collective provocation the different perspectives nourish an organic world, a new alternative reality that is visualized through multiple systems of representation.
In this process, a feedback loop is created whereby imagining a new world we can understand our own and envision new possibilities for the future.
The world of "Junk" developed by professors and students at Universidad Austral from Argentina will be presented, guided by Alex McDowell and in parallel with a Consortium of Universities from around the world.
The idea was to imagine a fictional future and a collective story that would develop in the territory of the Iguazu Falls, located in Misiones, Argentina.
The “World builders” explore the possibilities of the territory.
For example through the lenses of experts on Iguazu Falls, Artificial intelligence and sustainable construction.
The mandala framework gives the possibility to create the rules of the world in a collective, organic, transdisciplinary and holistic way where every participant creates characters and stories that converge and live in the world

Bio:
Ignacio Trossero is a Social Communicator who teaches Storytelling and Worldbuilding through imagination and collaboration.
He is a co-founding member of the Austral World Building and works in different projects with the Worldbuilding methodology mentored by Alex McDowell.
He works as a member and project leader of the Junk Planet Worldbuilding Consortium where he coordinates the schools of the project.
He is co-author of a publication on World Building and education for social innovation that will be published in the 30th edition of the Knowledge Forum at UANL in Mexico. Ignacio is a script consultant and a technical advisor on filmmaking, cinematography and video editing.
He is a Professor of Worldbuilding and Audiovisual Storytelling for design and communication students of the Universidad Austral.
He is currently a candidate for the Master in Content Management of the Universidad Austral and his thesis is on Branded Content strategies for Latin America audiencies.

Turina, Romana

Bournemouth Film School - Arts University Bournemouth, UK

Globalizing Screenwriting in Class – a Pilot Project for a Novel Method in the Teaching of Character Development

Abstract:
The teaching of character’s development is supported by a plethora of manuals. However, in practice the Western paradigm draws from the idea of the character’s sheet/profile, describing the qualities of the character, its background, and its backstory. Often perceived as an ‘easy fix’, in Film Production Departments students underestimate the process of character development and give more attention to plot development in the hope to see their short films produced because commercially viable.

What is more, often pockets of perceived untranslatable originality coming from the Global South or the East, via the person of international students, are forced into a set of standardised types recognizable to the western audience - due to commercialised readings and emphasis on the “industry approved vocational skills” (Petrie, 2014). Reacting to this situation, and building on previous theories (Parker, Seger, Horton, Miller, Batty), I tested the core/paradox method, which developed from ideas of both predictable and unpredictable qualities that bring the character to life (Seger 1990).

The method introduces the idea of the character as an entity that is born as a brain, with one core and one paradox, before it is implanted within a body and story universe. The contribution to the academic study in the field is to be seen.
The application of this new method allows for the student to work on characters’ brains to consciously embody within different cultures, and times.
Additionally, this simplified process enables the students to understand the function of the character in the story and the screenplay starting from the format of the short film.

Bio:
Romana Turina holds a PhD from the University of York in Theatre, Film and Television. Her research was shortlisted for the AHRC Research Award. Currently, Romana is Head of Subject (Screenwriting) at the Arts University Bournemouth, appointed as Senior Lecturer in Film. Her research activity is focused on character development processes for short films, new forms of screenwriting, and the dialogic tension between image and text in the essay film form. Most recent publications include:
• Journal of Screenwriting (2022) Special Issue entitled: The New Screenplay? Emerging Styles, Modes and Languages. Editors: Romana Turina and Gabrielle Tremblay.
• Journal of Screenwriting (2023) Special Issue entitled: Screenwriting for Virtual Reality: Exploring Technologies, Practices, and Paradigms. Editors: Romana Turina and Kath Dooley.
• Turina, R. (2023). The Core/Paradox Method: Teaching/Learning Character Development for Short Films. Intellect.
• Independent, short, and controversial: the script development of San Sabba, in Batty C. and Taylor S. (2022), Script Development: International Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. In press.
• Narrative Experiences of History and Complex System, in Walsh, R. & Stepney, S., Narrating Complexity, New York: Springer, pp. 123-141.

Vågnes, Øyvind

University of Bergen, Norway

Narrativizing Cultural and Collective Trauma in Mad Men

Abstract:How is the often contested narrativization of cultural and collective trauma negotiated in the writers's room? Analyzing the evolution of two episodes from the third season of Mad Men, "The Arrangements" (Andrew Colville and Matthew Weiner) and "The Grown-Ups" (Brett Johnson and Matthew Weiner), my paper is based on studies of the various versions of the episode scripts contained in the Mad Men collection housed by the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas, focusing in particular on how two events – the self-immolation of Thich Quanc Duc in Saigon on June 11, 1963, and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22 the same year – are portrayed in the series.

Holding script binders, drafts, outlines and notes, the collection in Austin is a unique resource for research on the process of screenwriting. The Mad Men writing team would plan an episode with an outline, followed by writer's first and second drafts, and a concept meeting draft. These early-stage documents are succeeded by drafts in various stages of development: a pre-production draft, a tone meeting draft, and then white, blue, pink, yellow, green, and goldenrod production drafts, several of which contain handwritten annotations by Weiner and other writers. Included in the episode materials are also binders belonging to the script coordinator and to Weiner, including casting notes, call sheets, storyboards, and other documents. Sharing some of my reflections from an article in progress on the narrativization of trauma in Mad Men, I will look at how specific scenes undergo transformations in the creative process from early draft to shooting script.

Bio:
Øyvind Vågnes (https://www.uib.no/en/persons/Øyvind.Vågnes) is currently working on a book on Norwegian television drama (2010-2022), as well as a string of articles on the depiction of trauma in tv series. Having published widely on trauma and visual culture in the past, his most recent research interrogates the various contested questions writers are faced with in engaging with individual and collective trauma in serial narrative. Among his publications are Zaprudered: The Kennedy Assassination Film in Visual Culture (2011), "Lessons from the Life of an Image: Malcolm Browne's Photography of Thich Quang Duc's Self-Immolation" (2015), "A Day in History: Andrea Gjestvang's 22 July Photographs" (2017), and "For at det ikkje skal skje igjen: Tv-dramaet 22. juli" (on the tv series 22 July) (2020). Vågnes teaches at the master's program in screenwriting at the University of Bergen and has published five novels in his native language (https://www.tiden.no/forfatterprofiler/oyvind-vaagnes), with a sixth coming out in 2022.

van Heerden, Imke

A Meeting: AI-Assisted Screenplay Generation

Bio:
Dr Imke van Heerden is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Koç University's Department of Comparative Literature in Istanbul. She is recipient of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Türkiye's International Fellowship for Outstanding Researchers (2020–2023) and Principal Investigator of AI as Author (authorai.ku.edu.tr).

Verelst, Karin

RITCS School of Arts

Technology, representation, narration. Universality from another point of view

Abstract:
When cinema globalised, screenwriting, the modus of storytelling specific to cinema, globalised with it.
But even though ‘canonical’ narrative forms (like the Three Act structure) exert an enormous influence in the industry, it is clear that many different culturally determined approaches to screenwriting exist, and that it cannot be reduced to a few basic paradigms. Is there another way to address the question of screenwriting’s presumed universality?
My take on this question is that narrative structures present in screenwriting cannot be properly understood independently from the production of cinema as a whole.
The ‘cinematic apparatus’1 allows for a particular kind of staging of fictitious worlds by organising spatiotemporal experience such that spectators can participate in a world which is not their own while sitting motionless in a dark space gazing at a wall.
This setting enables the suspension of disbelief so that the spectator can mentally ‘enter’ the world in which the actual story unfolds. This almost hypnotic quality precedes the narrative structure of the story itself. What are the conditions of possibility, the ultimate boundaries, which the machinery of cinema imposes on its potential narratives? Storytelling indeed always involves two realities: the reality of the story told and the reality in the story told — as Bakhtin famously noted2 .
The narrative structure and the editing process build on these fundamental conditions by creating the impression of evolution, continuity and causal interconnectedness within the spatiotemporal field. Therefore, if we want to assess the universality of screenwriting, we need to look not only at the narrative structures involved3 , but also at the deeper structures by which the succesful representation of the fictitious reality created in the story in relation to its audience is achieved. My aim in this paper is to identify and clarify these underlying limiting conditions

Bio:
Karin Verelst (1965) is a philosopher of science (Brussels Free University), interested in ‘world building’ both in art and in science. She got her PhD (The Ontology of Paradox) in 2006. She teaches dramaturgy and philosophy at the RITCS School of Arts in Brussels, where she also is part of the research group at the writing department, focusing on cinematic reality experiences in new technological environments.

Weinstein, Anna

Kennesaw State University, US

The Women Writers of Film & Television Website Project: Curated Research & Soft Launch

Abstract:
This paper will detail my research underway since Fall 2020, excavating the names and work of women film and television writers frequently left out of conversations about U.S. screenwriters of significance. This research is funded by two generous grants from my university, including the Center for Africana Studies and the Office of Research, which have offered support from ten undergraduate student scholars and one graduate research assistant. The resulting scholarship will be a website called Women Writers of Film and Television, which will allow users to input search criteria and find film and television programs written by women. The soft launch is projected for summer 2022, and the hard launch for summer 2023. With this paper presentation, I will share short biographies of some of the most intriguing women writers whose names have to date been lost in the archives, and I will reveal the website design, features, and plans for the public launch, as well as any complicating factors, questions, and technical difficulties in bringing this website to fruition. For the soft launch, the content will be entirely women screenwriters from the U.S; however, my goal with this site is to continue adding content to include women screenwriters from around the globe. Though there has been an increased focus on women film and television directors in the past five years, there remains little public discussion of women screenwriters and even fewer resources available to support those interested in this area of contemporary industry studies and film and television history. As of now, there is no available resource where users can input keywords and search for screen stories written by women. With this paper presentation, I would welcome the opportunity to solicit feedback from my international screenwriting colleagues so that I may implement changes before the hard launch the following year

Bio:
Anna Weinstein is an Assistant Professor of Screenwriting at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, where she teaches courses in screenwriting and women’s representation in film and television. She is coordinator of KSU’s Graduate Certificate in Screen and Television Writing and a member of the Gender and Women Studies Program. Anna is founding editor of the PERFORM: Succeeding as a Creative Professional book series (Routledge), which includes six volumes to date, including Writing for the Screen (2017) and Interactive Storytelling for the Screen (2021). She frequently publishes interviews with women filmmakers in Film International, and she contributed an essay to Jule Selbo and Jill Nelmes’s Women Screenwriters (Palgrave, 2015). Her book Writing Women: Creating Complex Female Characters for Film and Television is forthcoming from Routledge. Anna is currently developing a fantasy television series based on The Jack Tales (1943) with producer Robert Mitas (Ratched) and director Jay Russell (The Water Horse).

Welch, Rosanne

Stephens College, USA

From Jeanne to Suso to Julie to Spike: How Jeanne Macpherson’s Manual on Screenwriting Influenced Italian Realism which Influenced Black Independent Film in the U.S.

Abstract:From the Call for Papers this presentation serves as a response to both “Addressing historical migration of screenwriting and screenwriting teachers” and “Globalizing Screenwriting”. It will trace the ways a manual about screenwriting by silent film writer Jeanne Macpherson (known as Cecil B. de Mille’s “write hand” because she wrote his two most-money-making epics) influenced screenwriting in Europe and how the product of those European screenwriters in turn inspired the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers (the L.A. School) -- and their ideas fueled Spike Lee.

It all begins when Emilio Cecchi, a literary critic who soon became artistic director at Cines Studios in Rome, traveled to the U.S. to study how Hollywood films were being made. He brought back Macpherson’s manual on screenwriting. His daughter, Suso Cecchi d’Amici read and began to utilize Macpherson’s ideas as she moved from translating literary works to reading screenplays for feedback to finally writing one herself and becoming the queen of Italian neorealism. Through her work in neo-realism her writing in turn influenced the Los Angeles School of Black Independent Film Makers including names such as Charles Burnett, Billy Woodberry, Haile Gerima and Julie Dash.

Those screenwriters came full circle by drawing on the history of black independent silent films in America from the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the Norman Film Company and (Oscar) Micheaux Productions. Both neorealism AND the discovery of Micheaux Productions influenced the screenwriting of Spike Lee. Finally, when he became the first Black man to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival (where Suso had once served) his choice of films influenced yet another generation of filmmakers who likely never heard the name of Jeanne Macpherson.

Bio:
Rosanne Welch, Phd, looks forward to welcoming you all to SRN 2023 which will be held in Columbia, Missouri on the campus of Stephens College where she serves as Executive Director of their MFA in TV and Screenwriting and teaches the History of Screenwriting. '
Her television credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel.
She edited When Women Wrote Hollywood (2018), runner up for the Koppelman Award; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia (2018 Outstanding References Sources List and Best Historical Materials List, by the ALA); and wrote Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture (2016).
Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting, on the Editorial Board for Written By magazine and as Secretary to the Executive Committee of the SRN.
Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” from the TEDxCPP is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JFNsqKBRnA and other recorded lectures on her YouTube Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrRosanneWelch

Welles Schock, Michael

Writer, Independent Scholar

Samurai to Six-Guns: Personal Reflections on a Failed Trans-national Genre Adaptation

Abstract:
In 2011, Japanese director Ken Ochiai and American writer Michael Welles Schock were tasked by Sedic International to adapt the 1963 chanbara film 13 Assassins (Jūsannin no Shikaku, recently remade in Japan under the same title and genre [2010]) into a screenplay for a English-language film in the “Western” genre. However, early presumptions of the compatibility of the two genres (based largely upon the successful genre-switching remakes of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, and Sanjuro) gave way to a reality of fitting a square peg into a round hole.

Instructed to preserve the original plotline while appealing to a trans-Pacific audience, the attempted adaptation revealed sharp incompatibilities between the culturally-embedded codes of the source and output genres. This presentation gives a first-person account by the writer and director on the discrepant themes, structures, and content obstructing the attempted genre translation, as well as the difficulties of a trans-Pacific story development process.
We shall also briefly consider the Western-genre Kurosawa adaptations in an attempt to identify causes for their success in comparison to our own

Bio:
Michael Welles Schock is a screenwriting instructor and interdisciplinary screencraft theorist located in Portland, Oregon, USA.
He is the author of Screenwriting Down to the Atoms and Screenwriting & The Unified Theory of Narrative, Part I and Part II.

Wijs, Carly

RITCS, School of Arts

Sois belle et tais-toi: the dominance of the male gaze in global screenwriting

Bio:
Carly Wijs is a Dutch actress, director and writer for both theatre and fiction. She has been part of the RITCS research group since 2016 and teaches both in the writing department and Drama at the RITCS school of Arts in Brussels.

Yule, Eleanor

Liverpool John Moores University

Liminality and hybridity in Ben Sharrock’s Limbo (2020)

Abstract:Scottish director Ben Sharrock’s award winning screenplay, Limbo (2020), charts the day to day existence of a group of four asylum seekers exiled to a remote Scottish Island. Described as social realist, surreal and absurdist cinema, Limbo is a bitter sweet study of liminality both in subject and form. The screenplay fuses and subverts the inward looking paradigms of Scottish life encapsulated in cinema by Miserablism (Manderson & Yule, 2014) and the Kailyard (McArthur, 1982) with the ‘exilic’ (Naficy, 1998) approaches and ‘dead pan’ (Woolley, 2021) techniques of international auteurs; Aki Kaurismäki; Pavel Pawlikowski and Elia Sulemia. Like these filmmakers, Sharrock hybridises national, stylistic and generic boundaries, while at the same time deflating, “the often hyperbolic representations of refugee tragedy in more mainstream representations.” (Woolley, 2021)

Written, set and shot in North Uist, Sharrock’s choice of location creates a ‘distinct purgatorial feel’ (Ritman, 2020). Similar to Renton (Ewan McGregor) and his Trainspotting (1996) cohort, Limbo’s Omar (Amir El-Masry), a young Syrian oud player from Damascus and his eccentric Afghan roommate, Farhad (Vikash Bhai) are found coatless, displaced and alienated in the Hebridean ‘great outdoors’.
A lone Highland phone box, resonant of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero (1984), is Omar’s only unreliable link to the outside world. But rather than perpetuate ‘tartanry’ (McArthur, 1982),
Limbo keeps an objective distance and exposes “the variance between political rhetoric that Scotland is a welcoming place, open to all, and the realities of a country, like everywhere else, has its problems with racism” (Harrision, 2021).
Sharrock seamlessly hybridises genres mixing social realist techniques, such as casting real refugees in the film, with moments of surrealism and absurdity (Farhad has a pet rooster; Omar talks to his dead brother before seeing the Northern lights).
This mixture of style and tone which “reframes the often objectifying humanitarian gaze” keeps the audience at a distance and reminds us of the suppression of immigrant trauma, (Harrision, 2021) and “the unknowability of the experience” (Woolley, 2021).

Bio:
Dr. ELEANOR YULE is a Scottish writer, film director and senior screenwriting lecturer at Liverpool John Moores University. Since her award-winning feature film, Blinded (2004), she has been commissioned to write numerous screenplays including drama documentaries, adaptations and horror. Her practice based PhD pioneered a new screenwriting methodology for the writing of Medieval screenplays She co- authored with Dr David Manderson, The Glass Half Full – Moving Beyond Scottish Miserablism (2014, Luath Press), which looked at the impact of social realism in film and literature within Scottish culture.

Zágoni, Balázs

Babes-Bolyai University, Hungarian Department of Cinematography and Media Cluj, Romania

Michael Curtiz's unknown screenwriter 150 years from the birth of Transsylvania’s first glocal screenwriter

Abstract:
The city of Cluj in the region of Transylvania had a prosperous film production in the silent era. It was called the "Hollywood on Somes" (the river that runs though the city.) More than sixty feature films were produced from 1912 to 1918.

Michael Curtiz made three of his early features here in 1914, just as well as Sir Alexander Korda in 1916. The man behind the local film production is little known: Jenő Janovics, the director of the National Theatre in Cluj, a local film pioneer.

As the names above suggests, he was really gifted in discovering early film talents, future Oscar-winners. He brought them to Cluj, mentored them, to make films with the local actors. The films then were released in the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire, and abroad.

It's even less known, that Janovics wrote the screenplays for all the films Curtiz shot in Cluj. Most of them is lost, but one, the Exile, was discovered in 2008 in the USA, and later restored in Hungary. It’s screenplay was also preserved.

After 1914, Curtiz went back to Budapest, then in the turmoil following WW1 to Wien, then emigrated to Hollywood, while Janovics stayed in Cluj. During WW2, as a Jew, he was heavily persecuted. He survived the war, but just with a few months.

He is credited for more than thirty screenplays.

In this paper I would like to present his work, and his concept of adapting local stories into films that would appeal for global audiences. (His first film, the Yellow Foal was released with 137 copies in many countries, including Japan.) As an example I would use the original silent script of The Exile compared with the silent feature film Curtiz made of it.

Bio:
Balázs Zágoni is one of the founders of Filmtett, a Cluj based film journal and NGO for cinematic culture and education. He earned his DLA in 2012 at the University of Theatre and Film Arts in Budapest with a thesis on contemporary European and Hollywood screenwriting.
He has written several articles on film, thirteen books for children and young adults and other media products. He joined the team of Babes-Bolyai University in 2018, where, as an assistant professor, is teaching creative writing, screenwriting and film history. Lives in Cluj with his wife and three children.

Zaluczkowska, Anna

Leeds Beckett University

Writer/Reader as Performer

Abstract:
There has always been a close relationship between writing for drama/performance and screenwriting as is evidenced by the continued and extensive studies of Aristotle (Laurel 1991; Kallay 2010) in the digital age. However, when we come to consider new forms of media, many suggest the need for new forms of writing (Millard 2014; Murray 2012; Riggs 2019). Millard (2014) urges us to look back at past practices, particularly experimental forms, and mine them to discover current applications while Stephanie Riggs (2019) asserts that immersive/interactive forms mean the end of storytelling as we know it.

Such scholars question our understanding of what it is to write for the moving image, that writing for visual and immersive environments is shifting and changing, and that more interesting or pertinent ways can be found to express our ideas. However, even as they decry the end of more classical dramatic forms (Konetiz 2015) most scholars can agree that performative processes are at work in all writing endeavours for digital work. This presentation takes a closer look at global dramatic forms and interactive media.

It will challenge narrow western centric versions of ‘traditional storytelling’ and suggest that many alternative models, such as cyclical African oral storytelling forms, Asian structures with different tension arcs, and forms of participatory theatre as advocated by Boal could better be applied as paradigms for transmedia, interactive and immersive work. In particular the presentation looks at the role of the writer and their relationship to the audience discussing the participative elements which many (Jenkins 2006; Bernardo 2011) say are crucial to most new media forms and suggests that maybe we should expand the remit of the writer/creator in interactive work so that elements of performance are embedded in their practice.

Bio:
Anna Zaluczkowska is a Reader in Film and teaches screenwriting at The Northern Film School, Leeds Beckett University.
She is an award-winning writer and filmmaker and her research is related to all forms of storytelling with a particular interest in participation and new media narratives.
She is a member of, and a regular contributor to, the Screenwriters Research Network, SIGN and is a management committee member of the European COST initiative INDCOR into Interactive Digital Narratives.

Bios Chairs

Batty, Craig

Craig Batty Professor Craig Batty is Dean of Research (Creative) at the University of South Australia. He is the author, co-author and editor of 15 books, including Script Development: Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives (2020), The Doctoral Experience: Student Stories from the Creative Arts and Humanities (2019), Writing for the Screen: Creative and Critical Approaches (2nd ed.) (2019) and Screen Production Research: Creative Practice as a Mode of Enquiry (2018). He has published book chapters and journals articles on the topics of screenwriting practice, screenwriting theory, creative practice research and doctoral supervision. Craig is also a screenwriter and script consultant, with experiences in short film, feature film, television and online drama.

Braga, Paolo

Paolo Braga, Ph.D., is lecturer at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, where he teaches Screenwriting. At Università Cattolica he also teaches at the Master in International Screenwriting and Production. He has published extensively on the topics of the construction of empathy with character and of US television series. The rhetorical and persuasive dimensions of storytelling are his general research area, which he has treated in several articles and essays. Among his most recent publications is Words in action. Forms and Techniques of Film Dialogue (Peter Lang, 2015).

Černík, Jan

In my research I combine an interest in the topics of Czech and Czechoslovak cinema, film industries, and screenwriting with a theoretical framework of analytic philosophy. I believe that in an exploration of audiovisual culture, we have to consider the applicability of our findings. I graduated in film studies and philosophy and received my Ph.D. degree in film history in 2018. Recently I edited a special issue on screenwriting in Studies in Eastern European Cinema. Besides research in screenwriting history I am interested in the stylometry of screenplays, and cognitivist theories.

Fumagalli, Armando

Armando Fumagalli is full professor of Semiotics and History of Cinema, and Director of the Master in International Screenwriting and Production at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, a program that since 2000 has trained a new generation of successful writers and producers in Italy.

He has been working as consultant also for companies like Barilla, Endemol, Mediaset and Rai.

He has been lecturing in Universities and screenwriting schools in Buenos Aires, Ciudad de Mexico, Los Angeles, Madrid, New York, Pamplona, Santiago del Chile, Seville, etc.

Ganz, Adam

Adam Ganz is Professor of Screenwriting at Royal Holloway University of London and Head of Wrtiers Rooms at StoryFutures Academy a UKRI funded collaboration between Royal Holloway University of London and the National Film and TV School to provide training and research in the immersive sector. Adam is co-author with Steven Price of Robert De Niro at Work: From Screenplay to Screen Performance (Palgrave 2020).
He has written for film TV and radio and is currently collaborating with Marc Isaacs on a sequel to The Filmmakers House

Davies, Rosamund

Rosamund Davies is a member of the International Screenwriting Research Network and a senior lecturer in screenwriting at the University of Greenwich.
Her research focuses on writing practices within the media and publishing industries and the production and business structures in which they take place.
Rosamund has contributed several articles to the Journal of Screenwriting, including ‘The Screenplay as Boundary Object’(2019) Journal of Screenwriting, 10 (2). pp. 149-164.

Other recent publications include:
‘Nordic noir with an Icelandic twist: Establishing a shared space for collaboration within European co-production’ (2020). In: Craig Batty, Stayci Taylor (eds.), Script Development: Critical Approaches, Creative Practices, International Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan

She is co-editor (with Paolo Russo and Claus Tieber) of the book The Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (forthcoming 2022). London: Palgrave Macmillan

Gee, Maxine

Dr Maxine Gee is a Senior Lecturer in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University and Programme Leader for the BA in Scriptwriting for Film and Television. She holds a PhD by Creative Practice in Screenwriting from the University of York. In 2015, she was a Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science Summer Fellow, while in 2016 she became a Doctoral Fellow for the Humanities, film Research Centre at the University of York.
As a creative practitioner, Maxine has written science fiction theatre and prose and is the co-writer of Tales of Bacon, a medieval comedy web series. Maxine has published on science fiction screenwriting for BSFA FOCUS magazine, and on posthuman noir in Cinema: Journal of Film and Philosophy.
Her award-winning short films Terminal (2018) and Standing Woman (2020) have screened internationally at a range of film festivals.

Georgieva, Irena

Irena Georgieva is a student at the University of Vienna and she holds a Bachelor's Degree in Mass Media and Communication Science. Currently she's doing a Master's Degree in Theatre, Film and Media Studies and is interested in working in the film industry, especially in the Production or Post-Production part.

Gonçalo, Pablo

Pablo Gonçalo is an assistant professor at the University of Brasília. He has been teaching undergraduate students for the last 14 years, in many Brazilian and international universities. He has been awarded key grants from different countries and continents, such as DAAD and Fulbright, and has been presenting in film congresses and seminars, such as SCMS, Film-Philosophy, NECS, Screenwriting Research Network, among other conferences held by Brazilian film studies associations. Pablo Gonçalo has been publishing constantly in journals, newspapers, and film review magazines. In 2016, he published his first book, which investigates the partnership between Peter Handke and Wim Wenders, as well as the role of screenwriters in film history. Focusing on a historical outlook on unfilmed screenplays, Gonçalo has been proposing a speculative archeology methodology. In his Post-Doctoral research, he has collected and analyzed unproduced screenplays written by classic Hollywood screenwriters and Brazilian filmmakers.

Iordanova, Dina

Dina Iordanova is based in Scotland, but she also worked in various other parts of the world.
She is Professor Emerita in Global Cinema at the University of St Andrews and Honorary Professor in CompLit at the University of Hong Kong. Her work over the years has been on the cinema of Eastern Europe and Asia.

She also led extensive work into the study of international film festivals and other aspects of cinema's transnational circulation -- which also led to her direct involvement with film festivals in various capacities, from board service to jury member. Earlier this summer, she gave a keynote at the Visible Evidence conference on documentary cinema in Gdansk, masterclasses at the Sarajevo Film Festival, and talks on Ukrainian cinema in Prague and on trauma representations in recent Yugoslav film in Berlin.

Krauß, Florian

Florian Krauß is a research fellow at the department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen, Germany. He was previously a substitute professor in Media Literacy at the Technische Universität Dresden, a lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Siegen and a research associate at the Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, Potsdam. Furthermore, he is a co-founder of the Netzwerk für Drehbuchforschung (Network for screenwriting research in the German-speaking world) and works as freelance script editor for Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR; “Bavarian Broadcasting”, member of the public-service ARD network). Recent publications on media industry studies and screenwriting research in Journal of Popular Television, VIEW Journal of European Television History & Culture, Critical Studies in Television, and others.

Kandioler, Nicole

Nicole Kandioler is Assistant-Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna.
Her research concerns Eastern European film and media cultures at the intersections of Postcolonial and Postsocialist Studies as well as Gender Media Studies.
Her objects of study include pre- and postcinematic media forms from historical paintings and longitudinal documentary film series to TikTok, conceptual art, design and architecture.
In addition, she has a strong interest in queer film and television productions, an interest that she currently pursues (together with Andrea B. Braidt) in a research project named “Queer Cinema Austria” by inquiring into the ways in which a history of queer cinema (reception) in Austria can be written.

Leal, Rafael

Rafael Leal is a screenwriter, VR artist and executive producer from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Professor of Screenwriting at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and PhD Candidate in Film at Fluminense Federal University, Rafael was awarded by DAAD with a Doctoral Research Grant and developed part of his doctoral dissertation at LMU München. Considering theory and praxis as being inextricable, in his Ph.D., Rafael researches Screenwriting Poetics in immersive and interactive media, and has been creating more and more for these new media. With a long trajectory writing and developing flatties, his credits include the feature film “Cedo Demais/Too Soon” (FOX), and TV shows “A Dona da Banca/Queenpin” (CineBrasilTV) and “Jungle Pilot” (NBC Universal), whose development was the subject of the chapter “Transcultural Collaboration in Screenwriting: Jungle Pilot’s Case Study”, published in the book “Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World” (Cambridge Scholars).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm9481567/

McVeigh, Margaret

Dr Margaret McVeigh PhD is Head, Screenwriting & Contextual Studies, Griffith Film School, Griffith University, Australia. She is 2021-2022 Chair of the SRN (Screenwriting Research Network International). Margaret holds a Masters of Screenwriting by Creative Practice and a PhD in Film and New Media Narrative. She has extensive national and international industry experience in Public Relations and Post-Production and has worked as the Commissioning Editor for Wiley publishers and as a Writer for the Australian National Broadcaster’s ABC Splash.
Margaret is co-editor of Transcultural Screenwriting: Telling Stories for a Global World (2017). Her chapter, Work in Progress: the Writing of Shortchanged in The Palgave Handbook of Screen Production (2019), explores her creative process in writing a feature film, development-funded by Screen Queensland.

Milligan, Christina

Christina Milligan is a researcher-practitioner in screenwriting and screen production at Auckland University of Technology.
She is an award-winning producer of feature and television dramas and documentaries and much of her industry work reflects her indigenous heritage as a member of the Ngāti Porou tribe of the Māori people. She is completing a PhD thesis on the work of the Indigenous screen producer.
Christina serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Screenwriting and is the government-appointed Chair of Te Puna Kairangi / Premium Production Fund, supporting high-end film and television production as part of the New Zealand government’s response to the effects of Covid-19 on the screen industry.

Novrup Redvall, Eva

Eva Novrup Redvall is Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen where she heads the Section for Film Studies and Creative Media Industries.
She has published widely on screenwriting and production, e.g. the monograph Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing.
She has been a member of the SRN network since its founding and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Screenwriting and is one of the three book series editors for Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting. From 2019-2024 she is the PI of the research project ‘Reaching Young Audiences: Serial Fiction and Cross-Media Storyworlds for Children and Young Audiences’ supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark, grant: 9037-00145B.

Russo, Paolo

Paolo Russo is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University (UK).

Russo is also a professional screenwriter, currently working at Season 2 of the animated series Topo Gigio for Italian broadcaster RAI.

Schätz, Joachim

Joachim Schätz is a postdoctoral University Assistant at the Department of Theatre, Film and Media Studies at the University of Vienna.
He currently leads the third-party funded project "Educational film practice in Austria" (2019-2022, FWF), which is carried out in collaboration with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Digital History.
The histories of useful cinema (e.g. industrial, advertising and educational film) and intermedia formats like the travelogue and travel lecture (see: colinrossproject.net) have been key topics of his research.
Other areas of research and publication include the poetics and politics of comedy and theories of the detail. Most recently, he has co-edited an anthology on domestic thrillers, Gewohnte Gewalt. Häusliche Brutalität und heimliche Bedrohung im Spannungsfilm (Vienna 2022).

Schwarz, Stephanie

Born in Vienna, studied theatre, film and media studies as well as philosophy at the University of Vienna.
Currently working on the dissertation project "Construction of cultural and symbolic capital in Woody Allen's concept of dramaturgy and narratology".
In addition, lectures at the film and television science colloquium in Zurich and Munich at the UNESCO Institute in Vienna and at the annual conference of the International Association Danses Macabres d'Europe in Graz.
Publication in MEDIENwissenschaft recensions/reviews at the University of Marburg, as well as in gift - magazine for independent theater work, dance and performance and the Berliner Schauspiegel.

Stutterheim, Kerstin

Professor in Creative Practice and Head of Research at School of Arts and Creative Industries; Edinburgh Napier University.
Here she teaches e.g. within the MA Screenwriting programme.
Dramaturg, Filmmaker, researcher.
Host of the 7th Annual SRN conference in 2014 in Potsdam.
Most recent monograph: Modern Film Dramaturgy – An Introduction, (Peter Lang 2019); Parallel Lines (UK2019/20, 58 min).
She is one of the editors of the series Klassiker des osteuropäischen Films (Classics of East European Cinema), and member of the board of editors for the CILECT-publication on teaching and learning documentary for the 21st century, to mention a few.

Thanouli, Eleftheria

Eleftheria Thanouli is Professor in Film Theory at the School of Film at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
Her research interests include the representation of history on film, film narratology, digital cinema, film and politics and world cinema.

She has contributed chapters in key publications, such as
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Film Theory (London: Routledge, 2013),
The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013) and
The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics (New York: Routledge, 2016).
She is the author of three monographs: Post-classical Cinema: An International Poetics of Film Narration (London: Wallflower Press, 2009),
Wag the Dog: A Study on Film and Reality in the Digital Age (New York: Bloomsbury, 2013) and
History and Film: A Tale of Two Disciplines (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018).
Her forthcoming book is entitled A Guide to Post-classical Narration: The future of Film Storytelling (Bloomsbury, New York).

Tieber, Claus

Claus Tieber is currently the Principal Investigator of a research project about screenwriting musical numbers. He teaches Film Studies at universities in Vienna, Brno, Kiel and Salamanca. Claus sat on the Executive Council of the SRN for several years, most of them as chair person; he is a founding member of Netzwerk Drehbuchforschung, which promotes academic screenwriting research in German-speaking countries.
After working as a commissioning editor for TV movies at the Austrian Broadcast Company (ORF) he wrote his Habilitation (post-doc thesis) about the history of the American screenplay (Schreiben für Hollywood: Das Drehbuch im Studiosystem, Münster: Lit Verlag, 2008) and switched from practice to research.
His publications also include a monograph on storytelling in silent cinema (Stummfilmdramaturgie. Erzählweisen des Amerikanischen Feature Films 1917 – 1927) and an edited volume on film music in silent cinema (The Sounds of Silent Films: New Perspectives on History, Theory and Practice, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian, 2014, ed. with Anna K. Windisch).

Welch, Rosanne

Rosanne Welch, Phd, looks forward to welcoming you all to SRN 2023 which will be held in Columbia, Missouri on the campus of Stephens College where she serves as Executive Director of their MFA in TV and Screenwriting and teaches the History of Screenwriting. '
Her television credits include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel.
She edited When Women Wrote Hollywood (2018), runner up for the Koppelman Award; co-edited Women in American History: A Social, Political, and Cultural Encyclopedia (2018 Outstanding References Sources List and Best Historical Materials List, by the ALA); and wrote Why The Monkees Matter: Teenagers, Television and American Popular Culture (2016).
Welch serves as Book Reviews editor for Journal of Screenwriting, on the Editorial Board for Written By magazine and as Secretary to the Executive Committee of the SRN.
Her talk “The Importance of Having a Female Voice in the Room” from the TEDxCPP is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JFNsqKBRnA and other recorded lectures on her YouTube Channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrRosanneWelch