Course Materials for 'Understanding Screenwriting' - FA/FILM 4501 12.0, Fall and Winter Terms, 2002-2003

Overview, Outline, Readings and Guidelines (for students) with the Schedule of Lectures and Screenings (for private use of EWC) for an extraordinary double-weighted full-year course for advanced students of screenwriting, meeting for six hours weekly with each term of work constituting a full six-credit course, that the author was permitted to teach within the Graduate Programme of the Department of Film & Video, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University during the academic years 2001-2002 and 2002-2003

How does one do a Practice-Based PhD in Filmmaking?

This paper seeks to explore the issues raised by the process of engaging in a practice-based PhD in Filmmaking. As a sole practitioner the screenwriting doctoral student is able to explore her practice through the development of a screenplay, but what of the potential doctoral students who may wish to explore their specialist and professional filmmaking practices but who are unable to operate as sole practitioners, because of the collaborative requirements of the professional filmmaking model. Using the experience of the screenwriting doctoral investigation, and particularly the exploration of the relationship between methodology, exegesis and the creative artefact, we explore a potential model that would enable all filmmaking specialists to engage in doctoral research. Art students engaging in practice-based doctoral research do so in an environment formed by Government requirements that demand cultural, environmental and economic impacts as well as a methodology that to a large extent is formed by social science measures of value. Using this framework as a starting point we attempted to identify a suitable model that would enable filmmakers to undertake practice-based doctoral research

Spengler's List: Screenwriting, the Wilderness and the Civilising Death of the Arts

A lament upon the dying of the art of screenwriting, alongside the other 'liberal arts', provoked by the pondering of two texts: Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West and John Livingston's The Fallacy of Wildlife Conservation

Course Materials for 'The Screenwriters' Cinema - Jhabvala, Hopcraft and Curtis', FA/FILM 4128/5128 3.0, Fall Term, 2006-2007

Outline and Examination (for student use) and the Schedule of Lectures and Screenings [for private use of EWC] for an upper-level one-term course for advanced students of screenwriting on the work and achievement of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Arthur Hopcraft and Richard Curtis offered during the Fall Term of 2006-2007, typical of the half-term courses taught by the author during the final decade of his teaching

The Screenplay Business: Managing creativity in script development in the contemporary British independent film industry

A screenplay is sometimes said to be a blueprint for a film, and its genesis and development is therefore important to our understanding of how films are created. Film business studies has traditionally avoided close study of the screenplay development process, perhaps as a result of the film studies emphasis on analysing the text of the completed film, and the auteur theory emphasis on the importance of the director; both of which may have marginalised the study of development and the creativity of development practitioners. Professional screenplay development is a team activity, with creative collaboration between screenwriters, producers, development executives, financiers, and directors. So how does power and creative control shift between members of this team, especially as people arrive or leave? And how does this multiple authorship affect the auteur theory idea that the director is the creative author of the film? This research sets out to open debates around the process and nature of the business of script development, and consider how development practitioners experience, collaborate and participate in the process of screenplay development in the UK today. It uses original interviews, observation and hermeneutic reflection; and asks how cross-disciplinary ideas around creativity, managing creative people, motivation, organisational culture, and team theory could be used to consider how the creative team of writer, producer, director and development executive can work effectively together. It proposes new theories, including defining the independent film value chain and the commitment matrix, analysing changing power relationships during development, and establishing new typologies around film categories and their relationship to funding. The core of this PhD by Prior Publication is the book The Screenplay Business: managing creativity and script development in the film industry. The supporting paper explores the contexts of film industry studies; the film value chain; auteurship and screenplay studies

Homebound: STS-M1301 A Study on Television Writing in the Science Fiction Genre

This project is a scene-by-scene outline of an original television pilot script in the science fiction genre. The outline is based on research conducted in both the television and science fiction fields, providing the project with a firm foundation in television screenwriting structure as well as insights into the characteristics of the science fiction genre. Additional research was carried out on the topic of developing realistic, engaging characters for the screen. This project serves to broaden the writer’s portfolio upon graduation while giving him a chance to study the world of television, which contains numerous differences from the field of cinematic arts

Expressions, Spring 2017

College of Humanities and the Arts Newsletter, Volume 1