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- Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
Journal of Screenwriting - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014
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Filling up the glass: A look atthe historiography of screenwriting
By Tom StempelAbstractThis article covers the historiography of screenwriting over the past 60 years, discussing whether there has developed a critical mass of scholars, writers, and publishers in the area. It begins with writings in the fifties, sixties and seventies by such writers as Pauline Kael and Richard Corliss, then spends time with the author’s experiences in writing about the history of screenwriting, and the problems he faced dealing with publishers. From there, the article moves on to the development of books about the history of screenwriting and screenwriters. There is a brief history of the rise, death and revival of Creative Screenwriting, which started as an academic journal and evolved into a magazine. The article notes that non-American academics got into the field earlier and in more depth than the Americans. The reasons American academia avoided the study of screenwriting are discussed, as is the recent growing involvement of American academics in the field.
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Written to be read: Apersonal reflection on screenwriting research, thenand now
More LessAbstractHaving been identified as an early contributor to the intensifying academic study of the (American) screenplay and screenwriting, the author presents a personal account of the circumstances which led to her own research in the 1990s and the publication of Written for the Screen: The American Motion-Picture Screenplay as Text in 1997. Additionally, she offers some reflections on the consolidation and institutionalization of screenwriting research and sketches a number of possibilities for future work in the field.
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Normatizing the silent drama: Photoplay manuals of the 1910s and early 1920s
By Terry BaileyAbstractThe first instructional manuals to cover the writing of photoplays for silent drama emerged in 1911. In the wake of ‘Scenario Fever’, their style was often hyperbolic, and they claimed a great need in the film industry for new dramatic scenarists. In truth, few readers of manuals, or clients of the ‘schools’ that often distributed them, attained professional status. This article uses primary and secondary sources to examine the origins and content of the silent screenwriting manuals, and determines that, despite their poor record in fulfilling their ostensible purpose, they served valuable social functions. By overlooking screen drama’s debt to Victorian theatre and vaudeville, they served to normatize screenwriting practice in its own right, and thus helped to legitimize film’s sense of itself as a new medium. The uniform nature of their content, shaped by manual writers who were often working scenarists, suggests their reliability in clarifying aspects of screenwriting practice that lay behind the creation of silent films, and justifies their use as resources in film studies.
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‘A story is not a story but a conference’: Story conferences and the classical studio system
By Claus TieberAbstractIn analyzing the script development of Grand Hotel (1932, Edmund Goulding), this article brings an insight into the workings of the classical studio system and the way screenwriting was organized and understood during this era. The protocols of story conferences that took place at MGM under the leadership of producer Irving Thalberg deliver an exhaustive picture of the whole process, from the first screen idea, to getting the rights for a novel, to the final discussions after the screening of a rough cut. The protocols deliver evidence of screenwriting as an ongoing work in progress that was done not by a single screenwriter, but by a group of film-makers, constantly discussing all elements of the production. The concerns of the participants of these conferences included more than just storytelling; they also focused on the emotional reactions of the audience and the presentation of stars. The criteria these decisions were based upon are not ‘rules’ of storytelling, but reasonable assumptions about the audience’s reactions. Screenwriting within the studio system was not an ongoing fight between screenwriters and producers, but an ongoing discussion about every detail of a film, constituting a rather modern and democratic system of film development.
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The pragmatic modernist: William Faulkner’s craft and Hollywood’s networks of production
By Ben RobbinsAbstractThis article analyzes the screenplays and treatments for two highly popular and critically acclaimed films, To Have and Have Not (1944) and Mildred Pierce(1945), on which Faulkner worked as a salaried screenwriter for Warner Brothers. Faulkner’s collaborative writing for To Have and Have Not demonstrates his ability to participate in and extend the construction of the cinematic archetype of the Hawksian woman on the level of action and language, a portrayal that both develops and transcends the portrayal of women within his own fiction. The article also illuminates the process through which Faulkner recycled content across the high–low cultural divide, borrowing from himself to include a hybrid scene from his modernist masterwork Absalom, Absalom! (1936) in Mildred Pierce, a noir melodrama starring Joan Crawford. The article further illustrates how Faulkner reconciled himself to the narrative mode of Hollywood through his use of ‘charged realism’. As such, Faulkner’s work for the screen would seem to confound a number of presumed modernist imperatives for artistic practice: autonomy, organic production, breaking with the past, formal innovation and disdain for objective realism. The article concludes by suggesting a way to reconcile the divergent skill bases of Faulkner’s screenwriting and modernist fiction by showing how he was able to imaginatively adapt his craft to inhabit and revisualize the structures of both genres.
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Start me up: Lean screenwriting for American entrepreneurial cinema
More LessAbstractThis article proposes a new approach to script development modelled after lean software development practices and entrepreneurial startup principles. First, it argues that the Hollywood mode of production and its methods of project development, when applied to microbudget film-making, are inherently wasteful and fail in the face of extreme uncertainty and unpredictability. Second, it argues that entrepreneurial screenwriters and writer/film-makers can adopt lean thinking in order to eliminate waste from their creative labour and enhance learning at every stage of development and production, adding value for their audience. Finally, it argues that inexperienced writer/film-makers are particularly susceptible to the false security of the ‘blueprint’ metaphor, often clinging to an original plan even as it fails them. The flexibility inherent to lean thinking, on the other hand, not only reduces waste but also enhances creativity and collaboration, increasing a project’s chances of success.
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Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson-Webb Library and Archive
More LessAbstractThis article provides an overview of the resources available at the Writers Guild Foundation Shavelson Webb Library in Los Angeles, California. Included is a history of the library, an explanation of the Writers Guild Foundation’s Archive, and discussion of the library and archive’s extensive holdings. The author details resources available online. The article also offers information on how to prepare for a visit to the library and best practices when conducting research or using the Writers Guild Foundation Library and Archive for scholarly or creative work.
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Reviews
Authors: JT Velikovsky, John Patrick Bray and Rob GreensAbstractThe Screenplay Business: Managing Creativity and Script Development in the Film Industry, Peter Bloore, 2013 London and New York: Routledge, 350 pp., ISBN 978-0415613330, p/bk, £26.99
Writing the Science Fiction Film, Robert Grant, 2013 Studio City: Michael Wiese Productions, 244 pp., ISBN 978-1615931361, p/bk, £17.99
Filmcraft: Screenwriting, Tim Grierson, 2013 Lewes: ILEX, 192 pp., ISBN 978-1908150714, p/bk, £19.99
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