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2017 •
The process of selecting which screenplays to “greenlight”, or fully finance for production, is one of the most important stages in film production since the cost of acquiring and developing a screenplay is negligible compared to the later costs of producing, marketing and distributing a film. Despite this, very little is known about the contribution that elements of a film’s narrative make towards a film’s box office performance. In this thesis I examine the widely-received idea that “primal” aspects of film protagonists, including their personality traits, motivations and emotions, contribute significantly towards a film’s universal appeal as measured by worldwide ticket sales. I also interrogate the proposition that certain protagonist qualities are universally liked by audiences. Drawing on models of human behaviour advanced by evolutionary psychologists, I propose that an evolutionary framework will illuminate our understanding of film protagonists and their associated audience appeal. I report the development of a new instrument to assess differences in film protagonists’ emotions, motivations and character traits, and then use this questionnaire in five studies. Through analysis of 170 films exhibited in North America and China between 1995 and 2014, I find the questionnaire to be comprehensive. I also find that the psychological attributes of a film protagonist may be used to predict the territory in which a film is preferred, whether a film is likely to rank in the top ten at the North American box office and whether a high-budget film is more likely to be a global box office hit or flop. These findings are consistent with evolutionary theories, which would suggest that screen characters’ traits, motivations and emotions are writers’ emulations of universal adaptations to evolutionary selection pressures, reshaped through aesthetic and cultural processes. I conclude that an evolutionary framework offers useful insights into which aspects of film protagonists may be universally liked. It also reveals cross-cultural variation in audiences’ preferences for films with protagonists with certain attributes. Finally, I argue that this knowledge may benefit the industrial greenlighting process and screenwriting pedagogy.
Between 2007 and 2012 more than 100 new books on screenwriting have been accessioned to the United States Library of Congress. The present work reviews 68 of these books and another 27 manuals on screenwriting published since 1979, the year of publication of The Foundations of Screenwriting, Syd Field’s seminal work on this discipline. This article seeks to explore the range of Aristotle’s influence on these manuals and to suggest that there should be a second reading of Poetics, that considers not only its didactic and technical dimension, but also that pertaining to philosophy and wisdom, and thus the professional interest for writers and viewers.
This article provides an overview of linguistic research into dialogue in episodic television and the linguistics of screenwriting. It classifies relevant research into five categories: (1) genre; (2) audiovisual translation and language learning; (3) the relationship between television and society; (4) how characters and worlds are built; and (5) the nature of TV dialogue and its relationship to the audience. The main focus is on discussing research that falls into categories three to five and on outlining the potential for useful connections between linguistics and other disciplines in these areas. The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of linguistic research on TV dialogue, and to encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and collaborative research projects on television writing, in screenwriting research and beyond.
This thesis is a practice-led inquiry into the practice of screenwriting with the intention of comparing and contrasting the actual process of screenwriting with the methods and rules espoused by both commercial screenwriting manuals and the approach adopted within the Academy. After establishing the theoretical framework for the approach towards the practice-led research and its relationship to the form and content of the exegesis, I will review the conventions and ideas that inform and govern the approach towards the teaching and training of screenwriters. This will be followed by an analysis of the process of conceiving and writing an original screenplay, through the interrogation of a detailed development journal that was maintained throughout the development of the screenplay, including those moments where as writer I followed directions and ideas that ultimately had to be discarded. Throughout this section I will identify and share the variety of influences that informed me as a writer, with the intent of providing an exploration of the writer at work, revealing the self as writer, and the writer as researcher. I will also explore specific aspects of the manualist approach towards screenwriting with particular reference to the ‘hero’s’ journey and to genre. An essential element of the inquiry is an exploration of the status of the screenplay itself, and the status of the screenwriter within the industry and within film theory. Finally, I will consider firstly how my own practice as a screenwriting tutor has altered as a response to the practice-led inquiry, and in consequence how this might inform the development of a different approach towards the education of screenwriters, particularly within the Academy.
Submitted Thesis This thesis is a practice-led inquiry into the practice of screenwriting with the intention of comparing and contrasting the actual process of screenwriting with the methods and rules espoused by both commercial screenwriting manuals and the approach adopted within the Academy. After establishing the theoretical framework for the approach towards the practice-led research and its relationship to the form and content of the exegesis, I will review the conventions and ideas that inform and govern the approach towards the teaching and training of screenwriters. This will be followed by an analysis of the process of conceiving and writing an original screenplay, through the interrogation of a detailed development journal that was maintained throughout the development of the screenplay, including those moments where as writer I followed directions and ideas that ultimately had to be discarded. Throughout this section I will identify and share the variety of influences that informed me as a writer, with the intent of providing an exploration of the writer at work, revealing the self as writer, and the writer as researcher. I will also explore specific aspects of the manualist approach towards screenwriting with particular reference to the ‘hero’s’ journey and to genre. An essential element of the inquiry is an exploration of the status of the screenplay itself, and the status of the screenwriter within the industry and within film theory. Finally, I will consider firstly how my own practice as a screenwriting tutor has altered as a response to the practice-led inquiry, and in consequence how this might inform the development of a different approach towards the education of screenwriters, particularly within the Academy.
Women Screenwriters: An International Guide
Screenwriting & Feminist Rewriting: The Lost Films of Jaddan Bai (1892-1949)This is an essay on two lost films by music composer, director, singer, producer, actress, and screenwriter Bai Jaddan Bai. Starting with Talash-e-Haq/Search for Truth (1935) Jaddan Bai wrote and produced films that often featured socially ostracized actresses, singers, and performers as heroines. Plots revolved around the many hardships and insults suffered by these protagonists as they displayed symptoms of sexual amorality, consumerist avarice, or plain bad luck. Given that Jaddan Bai had herself been a renowned tawa’if (courtesan) and singer it would appear that she transposed her own dilemmas onto her characters, even playing them herself on screen. At the same time, one can read fascinating parallels in plot and moral philosophy with the transnationally circulating fallen woman melodrama. Such a reading enables us to see connections across urban sites which were similarly grappling with anxieties about female sexuality and consumerism. The “modern girl” who had embraced fast cars, fashion, and sexual freedom, featured centrally in this globally circulating mode, even starring in Jaddan Bai’s second directorial venture, Madam Fashion (1936).
Journal of Screenwriting
Teaching screenwriting in a time of storytelling blindness: the meeting of the auteur and the screenwriting tradition in Danish film-making2010 •
Journal of Screenwriting
'Script as a hypothesis: Scriptwriting for documentary film'2017 •
2017 •
Quarterly Review of Film and Video
Oishi, Eve. “’High-Class Fakery’: Race, Sex and Class in the Screenwriting of Winnifred Eaton (1925-1931)”2006 •
2008 •