[ecrea] Re-thinking the Screenplay: a conference

>University of Leeds, UK
>University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland
>
>Re-thinking the Screenplay
>University of Leeds
>12th September 2008
>
>
>Call for Presentations and Papers
>
>The practice of screenwriting is now an established taught subject in
>Universities around the world.   The theory of screenwriting lags some way
>behind, and this conference redresses that imbalance by inviting colleagues
>to reflect on the key document ­ the screenplay ­ and on the processes that
>surround its use.
>
>This is the first conference organised by the Screenwriting Research
>Network based at the Louis Le Prince Centre, Institute of Communication
>Studies, University of Leeds (www.leeds.ac.uk/ics), in partnership with
>research colleagues at the University of Art and Design Helsinki
>(www.taik.fi/elo/english).  Our intention is to draw together colleagues
>who are actively researching and reflecting on screenwriting, whether
>through traditional or practice-based research, and at both pre- and post-
>doctoral level; and to extend membership of the Network as support for
>ongoing research.
>
>Speakers will include film-maker Dr. Kathryn Millard (Macquarie, Aus); film-
>maker Prof. J.J. Murphy (Wisconsin-Madison, USA); animation expert Prof.
>Paul Wells (Loughborough, UK); screenwriter Prof. Michael Eaton (Nottingham
>Trent, UK) (tbc); film historian Prof. Graham Roberts (Liverpool John
>Moores, UK); and colleagues from Helsinki.
>
>Proposals may be based on any aspect of the presentation and development of
>the screen idea.  This includes comparative practice between cultures and
>industries worldwide; critiques of the conventional Western screenwriting
>model; analogies with practice in other fields (such as music); the
>presentation of different genres of performance (such as dance) and of
>different forms of film-making (such as animation); the industrial
>practices of script development; practice external to the mainstream; non-
>literary industrial practice such as pre-visualisation; historical and
>intermedial analysis of practice; and new technical advances in
>screenwriting and pre-viz software. Registration for the conference will
>open in May 2008.  Video-conference presentations may be possible.
>
>Proposals and enquiries by July 14th 2008 to:
>Ian W. Macdonald
>Louis Le Prince Centre for Cinema, Photography and Television
>Institute of Communication Studies
>University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK.
>Phone:  (+44) 113 343 5816              Email:  (i.w.macdonald /at/ leeds.ac.uk)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>University of Leeds, UK
>University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland
>
>Re-thinking the Screenplay
>University of Leeds, United Kingdom
>12th September 2008
>
>Background Notes for the Conference
>Ian W. Macdonald
>University of Leeds, UK
>
>
>Screenwriting, the generation of ideas for screenworks and the process of
>development of the screen idea before production are complex collaborative
>creative activities.  They raise questions about existing and future
>industrial practice, structures, and power; about cultural variation and
>influence (particularly from the USA); and about individual taste,
>judgement and habitus.
>
>There is however, very little research of substance into the
>conceptualisation of screenworks for production purposes, despite
>the purity of working with screen ideas relative to the messier
>pragmatics of film production.  Research work is isolated, and has tended
>to be dominated by Aristotelian dramaturgy.  It may seek analogies with
>practice elsewhere, such as Willem Capteyns work on a musical structure
>in screenwriting.  Practice has rarely been mapped outside how-to
>manuals; as such its defining conditions, its work and its values are often
>assumed to be natural rather than critically understood.
>
>The screenplay is both process and product, surrounded by industrial
>convention and rarely questioned as an appropriate industrial tool.  The
>essential research question might be formulated as:
>
>What, if we were to re-invent the screenplay, would be the most appropriate
>way of describing the screen idea?
>
>The significance of this question is that it opens up a critique of
>conventional industrial practice and raises questions about what is
>believed to constitute a film or screenwork, and about how that screenwork
>is constructed.  It is about reading and interpreting documents intended to
>describe the screen idea, and about the interaction of those agents
>concerned with constructing the screenwork.  There is also the practical
>question of how a physical document, the form of which was inspired by
>theatre practice in the 1900s, might meet the challenges of expressing a
>screen idea in the 2000s.  Indeed, one question is whether a screenplay
>should be in written form at all.  Pre-viz software, for example, may
>have been developed from technical
>
>
>storyboarding needs, but what does it tell us about how we choose to
>conceptualise our film, as a writer or reader of that screen idea?
>
>Re-thinking the Screenplay is a research group that was formed in late 2006
>within the Louis Le Prince Research Centre, based at the Institute of
>Communication Studies (ICS), University of Leeds.  The group became a small
>network when it became clear that interested scholars tended to come from
>across the world, but were isolated.  The need to link up and exchange
>views has become paramount, and planning for this conference began in March
>2008.
>
>Our discussions on screenwriting as practice and product have considered:
>
>1.      The present industrial: What is currently acceptable practice for a
>writer within the current (Western) conventional industrial model of the
>screenplay, in film or television.
>2.      Essentialism: The elements of a screenwork that are important to
>establish, in expressing a screen idea.
>3.      Comparative practice (other disciplines): How the process that is
>the screenplay maps on to similar compositional processes, such as a music
>score.
>4.      Comparative practice (other cultures): What other areas of film-
>making differ from conventional UK (which now tends towards US) practice,
>including different types of film such as animation, and practice in other
>countries, including India and China.
>5.      Outside dominant practice: How film-making practice where the
>screenplay has less (or no) application expresses the screen idea, such as
>dance narrative on film.
>6.      Communication: How meaning is created between writer and reader
>(and later viewer).
>7.      Historical development and intermediality:  how the development of
>current screenwriting practice has been informed by earlier practices.
>8.      Non-literary practice: The impact of non-written screenplay or
>visualisation practices, particularly the potential in new PC-based
>software.
>
>
>Such research questions are not concerned primarily with proposing actual
>changes in industrial practice. The aims are to authoritatively show where
>the screenplay form is limited, to offer reasons why this is the case, and
>to suggest other possibilities for expressing, or understanding the
>expression of, the screen idea.  We suggest the value of this research
>activity is important both for practitioners and for theorists, if indeed
>these are separate. It lies in the comprehensive critical analysis of the
>screenplay form and of screen idea development practice from different
>informed viewpoints, in mapping conventional practice and in the possible
>development of potential forms of expression and documentation of the
>screen idea outside the current conventions.

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Nico Carpentier (Phd)
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Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Free University of Brussels
Centre for Studies on Media and Culture (CeMeSO)
Pleinlaan 2 - B-1050 Brussels - Belgium
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