Screenwriting Industrial Practices

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.

For over three decades, Italian viewers have been convinced that Penny Marshall-directed Big (1988) is a remake of the Italian film Da grande (1987), directed by Franco Amurri: it was released in Italian theatres the previous year and its concept is nearly the same. The truth is, the two films were shot almost simultaneously: therefore, it is logical – as well as documented – that the former could not possibly be inspired by the latter. This is why Italian critics and Film historians have never spoken of plagiarism, rather of "a casual, yet strange thematic resemblance" (Mereghetti 1998).
Big is narratively built according to the high concept formula (Thompson 1999), typical of most American cinema, but almost completely alien to Italian cinema. Yet, it is possible to trace several films definable as "fantasies of displacement" (Corliss 1998) or "magical comedies" (Schwartzbaum 1998) within the Italian landscape, precisely since the 1980s. In fact, a process of globalization of the collective imagination began at the time, creating more and more "elective affinities" between Italy and the United States. This paper will compare the two films by reflecting on the strange intersections between Italy and Hollywood, whereby the same concept may have travelled on parallel tracks during the same time frame.

Purification of biodiesel prior to utilizing it as an alternative fuel is an essential industrial practice. Low glycerol content is one of the important pointers needed for passing the EN 14214 and ASTM D6751 international biodiesel standards. In this study, choline chloride (ChCl) as salt and ethylene glycol and 2,2,2-Trifluoroacetamide as hydrogen bond donors (HBDs) were employed to synthesize two ammonium salt-non glycerol based Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES). The physical properties of the synthesized DESs were measured and analyzed. These DESs were utilized to remove all the free glycerol from the palm oil-based biodiesel. The results indicated that all the tested DESs were able to remove all free glycerol successfully. The Central Composite Design (CCD) of the Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was used to to experiment design and optimization of total glycerol removal using ethylene glycol-based DESs and 2,2,2-Trifluoroacetamide-based DESs. The maximum total glycerol removal by ethylene glycol-based DESs was obtained at 0.66 ethylene glycol mole fraction and at DES/biodiesel molar ratio of 3 with removal efficiency of 23.85% as well as by 2,2,2-Trifluoroacetamide-based DESs at 0.60 2,2,2-Trifluoroacetamide mole fraction and at DES/biodiesel molar ratio of 2.93 with removal efficiency of 29.29%. The reusability of these DESs for removing free glycerol and total glycerol content from palm oil-based biodiesel was also investigated. This study proves that both ammonium salt-non glycerol based DESs can be successfully employed to remove the glycerol from palm oil-based biodiesel. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01496395.2012.731124