Stayci Taylor

Script development and the hidden practices of screenwriting: perspectives from industry professionals

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the emerging body of research on screenwriting practice by drawing together perspectives from industry that reveal an often hidden aspect of the creation of a screen work – script development. Using the same set of interviews that informed a previous work, this article mines those same discussions for insights relating specifically to what is to date a largely unexplored element of screenwriting practice. The perspectives we draw together – from our pool of screenwriters, script editors, script executives and script consultants – serve to both highlight the ambiguity that troubles the term ‘script development’, and also contribute to wider research seeking to define both the concept and the practice for screenwriting scholars and practitioners from an industry outlook. It has been 10 years (at the time of writing) since Peter Bloore wrote of his research that, ‘none of the books available about the film industry and scriptwriting really covered the reality of development [and none] really dealt with the development process as I knew it’. His book is still one of only a few attempts to address this gap in screenwriting research, and so by focussing specifically on the people who experience it, the intention of this article is to try and articulate how we might better understand extant practices of script development.

Screenwriting and the higher degree by research: writing a screenplay for a creative practice PhD

ABSTRACT By approaching different aspects of screenwriting and its place in the growing field of creative practice research, this paper reflects on our experiences of undertaking PhDs by creative project. We acknowledge the challenges that come with any creative practice research degree, such as generating new knowledge in ways not always easily measured by more traditional rubrics, and are especially interested in the added complexities that arise with screenwriting, a practice with fewer PhD completions to draw from and with an uncertain footing in the fields of both (or neither) creative writing and screen production. In order to come to a better understanding of what it means to write a screenplay in the academy, and more specifically, how a researcher responds to the challenges of framing a screenplay as a research artefact, we posed a series of questions to ignite discussion and debate. Covering topics that range from research design to screenwriting-as-creative-writing, the themes below represent a summary of these questions, collated in a way that we hope will invite further conversations in the field of screenwriting-as-research.

No One Wakes Up Wanting to Be Homeless: A Case Study in Applied Creative Writing

What does it mean to write the city? And how do you write the city if you live on the streets? This chapter explores the implications of writing (and editing) the city through a collaborative creative project that non/fictionLab at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University has developed in Melbourne in conjunction with STREAT, a social enterprise that provides homeless youth and young people who are experiencing severe disadvantage with supported pathways from living on the street to a sustainable livelihood. As an experiment in applied creative writing, #STREATstories aims to foster a meaningful sense of belonging and connection through the making and distribution of place-based urban stories and poetic expression as a way to create prospects for social change. If we take maps to be representative documents, this case study asks: what is the potential for the act of mapping through a process of collaboration, and the maps themselves, to reconfigure representations of homelessness? Furthermore, if we explore the ways this project might be expanded, transferred and shared, what are the implications for who is represented, how they are represented and how the material outcomes are received by varied audiences? Through facilitating workshops, collecting stories and ‘composing’ the stories into material artefacts, we have explored both the potential for shared storytelling to positively affect participants and their communities—and the potential for applied creative writing to enrich the aims of social enterprise itself.

Digital Development: Using the Smartphone to Enhance Screenwriting Practice

In his chapter “Smartphone Screenwriting: Creativity, Technology, and Screenplays-on-the-Go”, Craig Batty argues that while technological advances might seemingly be breeding new types of screenwriting practice via apps and digital tools, in fact they are almost exclusively responding to market demands and facilitating existing, rather than inspiring new, practices: “every tool and app is still reliant on what the screenwriter brings to it” (Batty, p. 113, in: Berry and Schleser (eds) Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. Palgrave, New York, 2014). The question still remains: if technology can determine the type, style and form of screen media being produced (e.g. smartphone filmmaking, the web series), can it also influence the ways these works are written, beyond replicating what happens in the analogue world? How might the capabilities of mobile media shape and enhance the story-making practices of a screenwriter?

Telling stories to make it in Hollywood: Rebel Wilson, comedy and celebrity authenticity

ABSTRACT In 2015, writer, comedian and actor Rebel Wilson was at the centre of an exposé, courtesy of what she called ‘the shady Australian press’. Thrown into question were her birth name, age, upbringing and education – and, curiously, her authentic funniness, as if this too could be retracted retrospectively despite scene stealing turns in Hollywood comedies. In light of Wilson’s vindication, due to a clear win in her 2017 defamation case against Bauer Media, this article examines the preceding fallout for the actor. I argue that this case offers more than just another example of the authentic/inauthentic binary imposed upon celebrities, grounded as it is in a complex combination of Wilson’s gender, nationhood and contested comic turf. In drawing from Wilson’s work for broadcast, and in her capacities as both creator and star, I explore the interplay between those characters and the alleged falsehoods in her background. Situating Wilson in the tradition of comedian comedy, and exploring available parallels in the scholarship on Melissa McCarthy and Roseanne Barr, I track an emerging and possibly strategic separation in Wilson’s public and comic personas, arguing that this offers a clear illustration of the ways female comedians must navigate their celebrity and ‘authenticity’.

Text and the city: The teaching and practice of scripting cities for the screen

ABSTRACT Much has been written about screen cities, and within this literature it is suggested that the city itself becomes screen language with its light, colour, and architecture. But there are fewer, if any, scholarly explorations on the practice of screenwriting the city, whereby this language must first be realised in words. Moreover, traditional screenwriting models emphasise the importance of plot, but not necessarily the creation of those worlds into which viewers so readily enter. This paper draws from the authors own practice and pedagogy to discuss experiments in using the city – and the screen world more broadly – as a starting point for screen stories. It makes particular reference to the script development process of a Melbourne-set screenplay, and the development and delivery of an undergraduate media studio, one that used the location-as-inspiration approach suggested by Kathryn Millards invitation to ‘write for place’ (2014). In presenting the attendant discoveries, this paper aims to open a conversation around writing the city and the ways in which notions of ‘world’ impact upon, or intersect with, other aspects of screenwriting practice. It is hoped that this leads to practical ways, in learning, teaching and script development environments, to approach a storys world.