A Mani-Pedi-Anti-Counter-FESTO for Queer Screen Production Practice

In this audiovisual essay, four practitioner-academics seek to identify and address the need to reimagine queer screen production. Traditional heteronormative storytelling dominates the screen production landscape, necessitating a challenge to create more inclusive and diverse narratives. Through the creation of a manifesto essay film, the researchers collectively reflect on their creative practices, synthesize their approaches, and develop a new vision for queer screen production. The result demonstrates the value of embracing: sustainable practices, queer kinship-making as filmmaking, alternatives to hegemonic forms, queer shame, queer failure, eternal adolescence, and the disruption of the ever-forward momentum (among other approaches). Manifesto-making as a method encourages creative practitioners to question the status quo of screen production contexts and strategies, and to think critically about the storytelling norms in broader creative practice. The researchers argue that such an approach can enable creative practitioners to pave the way for new, innovative collaborations and contribute to a more inclusive and diverse creative landscape. This film enacts the opportunities that arise when considering the spectrum of screen production in broader, ‘queerer’, ways, through notions of kinship-making, polyphony and the ‘queer art of failure’ (Halberstam 2011). The disruption of dominant narrative models can be considered in the context of queer theory’s critiques of heteronormative temporality, asking how queer approaches to narrative construction might challenge the heteronormative markers of success and happiness, or what Elizabeth Freeman calls ‘chrononormativity’ (2010). Using ‘manifesto as method’, the film combines the authors’ separate practices in filmmaking, screenwriting, mobile media and documentary in ways that deviate from mainstream categorisations, production hierarchies and workflows

Comedy writing as method: Reflections on screenwriting in creative practice research

Comedy writers use their practice to raise questions and create awareness about social, political and cultural issues, but can these practitioners be considered academics? With creative modalities of enquiry now commonplace in universities – where research is used to shape one’s practice, resulting in creative work that embodies that research – when does comedy writing start to take on a different function? In this article, we discuss comedy screenwriting in an academic setting, arguing that it has potential as a rigorous mode of research that can sit happily alongside art, design, creative writing and media practice. Much has been written about creative practice research, yet not so much has been written about the form this type of research takes; specifically, why one might choose comedy to express, embody or otherwise perform the findings of research. Here, then, we draw on our experiences of undertaking screenwriting projects using comedy to discuss the ways in which researchers might use the comic mode to present their findings in imaginative, innovative and fun ways that can expand understanding and, potentially, garner impact

Teaching screenwriting through script development: Looking beyond the screenplay

In this chapter, we focus on screenwriting pedagogy through the lens of script development, asking what we might glean from industry that helps our students to learn about aspects of writing for the screen beyond the screenplay itself. In other words, is script development a more viable pedagogy for teaching and learning the craft of screenwriting, one that exposes students to the wider world of industry and career'success' than merely focusing on the writing of a script? This is a sentiment shared by Noel Maloney (2018) in his study of screenwriting curricula in Australia, the UK and Europe. For example, he reported on those pedagogies that focus on holistic script development, such as the National Film School of Denmark (with an integrated writers' room approach to teaching), which, as we go on o outline here, are perhaps more useful for the contemporary writer trying to navigate the expanding yet precarious screen industry

The comedy web series: Reshaping Australian script development and commissioning practices

This article argues that, for Australian comedy series creators, the web platform has opened a new space in which the ‘rules’ of script development are being expanded, enhanced or otherwise refashioned through having direct connection with and input from their audience. With the audience’s potential as a ‘comedy gatekeeper’, the web series audience becomes integral to the ways in which these texts are developed, namely skipping the erstwhile second-guessing of demographic tastes by more traditional broadcast development executives and commissioners. Referring to a range of well-known Australian comedy web series, such as Bondi Hipsters (2011–2017) and The Katering Show (2015–17) – including what their creators, writers and audiences have said about them – we investigate the processes behind the success of these series to argue that a new form of script development has emerged: namely, that development is both facilitated and influenced by the direct line that exists between comedy creators and their viewers. Furthermore, we suggest that through such a collaborative and open-access process of script development, comedy writers and performers might also benefit from an expanded form of talent development

Script development:Defining the field

Through an extensive survey of the field, this article asks, what is script development? How is it defined in industry discourse and in screenwriting scholarship? While definitions of script development can be found across the spectrum of screenwriting and screen production resources, ranging from the instructional guidelines offered by funding bodies to references in the how-to market, the article posits that academic scholarship on the practice is still emerging. As such, this article seeks to establish a platform from which we can both define and conceive of further research into script development - however it might be named, practiced and studied - possibly as a sub-discipline of screenwriting studies and/or central to the study of screenwriting practice. The article brings together extant definitions and documented experiences of script development, to offer a basis from which to discuss both academic and practice-based approaches to the phenomenon. While not suggesting that the practice of script development should be standardized or limited by definition, the article does argue for the importance of investigating the available definitions and identifying the gaps in literature. By seeking out the various angles and overlaps of those researching in this field, the article proposes to begin a conversation and invite further research around what script development is and looks like in various international contexts

We Thought We Knew What Summer Was

Overwhelming catastrophic events have become part of the ‘new normal’ of climate change. This essayistic, collaborative lived experience report by a group of writers, each of whom lived through Australia’s 2019—2020 Black Summer of catastrophic bushfires, demonstrates how the effects of shared but different proximate relations can produce an affective, care-ful account of the lived experience of climate change. Our project asks: how might a practical entanglement with others allow for a meaningful response to climate change? How might collaboration allow for a mode that places care at the centre of writing practice