Mosaic narrative a poetics of cinematic new media narrative

This thesis proposes the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative as a tool for theorising the creation and telling of cinematic stories in a digital environment. As such the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is designed to assist creators of new media narrative to design dramatically compelling screen based stories by drawing from established theories of cinema and emerging theories of new media. In doing so it validates the crucial element of cinematic storytelling in the digital medium, which due to its fragmentary, variable and re-combinatory nature, affords the opportunity for audience interaction. The Poetics of Mosaic Narrative re-asserts the dramatic and cinematic nature of narrative in new media by drawing upon the dramatic theory of Aristotle’s Poetics, the cinematic theories of the 1920s Russian Film Theorists and contemporary Neo-Formalists, the narrative theories of the 1960s French Structuralists, and the scriptwriting theories of contemporary cinema. In particular it focuses on the theory and practice of the prominent new media theorist, Lev Manovich, as a means of investigating and creating a practical poetics. The key element of the Poetics of Mosaic Narrative is the expansion of the previously forgotten and undeveloped Russian Formalist concept of cinematurgy which is vital to the successful development of new media storytelling theory and practice. This concept, as originally proposed but not elaborated by Kazansky, encompasses the notion of the creation of cinematic new media narrative as a mosaic – integrally driven by the narrative systems of plot, as well as the cinematic systems of visual style created by the techniques of cinema- montage, cinematography and mise-en-scene

Work in progress : the writing of Short changed

Work in Progress - the Writing of Short Changed is the account of the script writing process I developed and followed in the writing of the first draft of the Low Budget feature film, Short Changed. It is a process that was developed by a combination of guidance, mentorship, research, experiment and talking with and listening to other writers during the 1998 Pacific Film and Television Commission's New Writer's Workshop. Short Changed was written over a six month period. During the previous year I had intermittently researched and pondered on the knowledge of an event that had invaded my mind. In the process of writing Short Changed, I have learnt much about the craft of screen writing and I have developed an approach which I intend to use in the writing of future screenplays. There are many ways to write a screenplay. My goal as a writer was to find the way that worked for me; to find the process that created a screenplay that embodied the hallmarks of both creativity and craft. As an accomplished writer of expository prose, I was searching for the key that would unlock the door to the world of writing creative fiction. This document is a reflective account of my creative writing process. It includes the exploration and actualization of the complex and intricate workings of the mind