Journal of Screenwriting

The Post-9/11 Hollywood Political Thriller Film

Pablo Castrillo — 2020-12-17

The American political thriller, since its irruption into popular film in the 1960s, until its most recent period of popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s, has consistently displayed two salient characteristics: on an extratextual level, it tends to keep a close relationship with the (geo)political environment at the time of production, with themes that resonate with the cultural moment, sometimes even referencing current events, and frequently challenging traditionally upheld American values with mistrustful attitudes toward the State, its institutions, the military, and a suspect corporate establishment. On the other hand, the textual configuration of these films reveals a problematic conformity with the traditionally dominant narrative-aesthetic norms of Hollywood cinema, featuring reactive agency in its protagonists, an unusual degree of subjectivity in its narration, and a remarkable degree of ambiguity in the dramatic resolutions of some storylines. These formal features enhance the thematic concerns and cinematic worldview of the political thriller genre, both creating and exploiting perplexity and paranoia in the audience, through highly demanding narratives that subtract the feeling of control from the viewer, and with a specific political intent that becomes exceptionally effective thanks to its entertainment value. The corpus of works analyzed to illustrate this trend covers theatrically released Hollywood films of the genre since 2001 until present day, with special attention to the impact of 9/11 and the War on Terror in their narrative premises and themes.

TV Mini-Series or Long-Form Film? Narrative Analysis of The Haunting of Hill House

Sotiris Petridis — 2020-12-17

In the last decade, television landscape has drastically transformed with the digitalization of the medium. SVOD platforms have been producing original content and changing the way of distribution and consumption of contemporary TV series. Netflix, one of the main platforms that initially started this change, has been systematically producing original content indented for binge-watching. The Haunting of Hill House is one of the recent examples of a Netflix original mini-series. In this article, I will analyze the overarching story of the series and I will argue that the structure of the narrative works more like a long-form film, rather than a TV series.

The CVR Narrative as a Moebius Strip

Soudhamini — 2020-12-17

Drawing on teaching sessions on scripting for VR that I conducted last year, alongside my own practice based doctoral research in Narrative or Cinematic VR predicated on the Deleuzian notion of Immanence, I would like to propose that the CVR screenplay is better understood as a moebius strip than a linear narrative, a tale that turns around on itself. But far from being un-orientable like its mathematical paradigm, the moebius narrative can be both oriented and scripted, as I hope to illustrate using student work as well as my own script iterations. Taking it to be both a model and metaphor, this paper will explore how a moebius narrative can be designed – and why design thinking is more suitable for this process than traditional screenwriting methods. While still very much an understanding-in-progress, I have found this conceptual framework useful both for practice and pedagogy, even in fact arising from them. This paper hopes additionally therefore to make a case for pedagogy as a research method in its own right, especially in the context of practice based research.

Developing new Deaf screenwriting talent

Abigail Davies — 2020-12-17

In Deaf film and TV, modest production budgets and limited training opportunities present considerable challenges for emerging screenwriting talent. This paper argues that orthodox approaches to developing screenplays must be expanded, when working in this context. The analysis focusses on an individual case study: the development of a half-hour TV drama between a professional hearing script editor and a novice Deaf screenwriter. Borrowing Gabriel’s idea of a ‘boundary rider’, it examines how the script editor works energetically to preserve the agency of the new screenwriter, while responding to the demands of an industrial commissioning process. It discusses the creative and cultural complexity of the editor - writer relationship, drawing on Gramsci’s elaboration of the subaltern and the theories of Foucault and Bourdieu. Macdonald’s Screen Idea Work Group is employed to explore the dialogical process of shared creation, which expands out to include production team, actors and interpreters via a uniquely adapted Table Read situated at the heart of the development process. The value of this powerful encounter for the screenwriter is reflected on as well as its cost. Overall it is contended that much greater investment is required to develop assured screenwriting voices to serve Deaf film and TV audiences.