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The article focuses on the screenplay's 'afterlife', as a (re-)creative product of captioners and a text for reading by the d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) audience. In particular, it explores captioning practices that textualize aspects of the soundtrack crucial to screenplay meanings. Close study of horror series Stranger Things (ST, Netflix) and The Last of Us (TLoU, HBO) reveals how their closed captions represent the end in a unique chain of mediated translations between the script's written word, the media form's soundtrack and the captions' screen text. Comparing ST Season 4, Episode 9 with TLoU Season 1, Episodes 3 and 6 uncovers the different approaches to captioning music and sound effects adopted by captioners. Moreover, juxtaposing the ST Episode 9 music and sound captions with its screenplay by the Duffer Brothers discloses the considerable gap between screenplay and captioned text, which argues for the significant contributions of captioners to media meanings initially created by screenwriters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the rich literature on both film sound and screenwriting, there is a paucity of practical advice in current Hollywood screenwriting guides on how to write sound into scripts. This essay encourages the work of screenwriters, screenwriting teachers, students and cinema scholars in two ways. It both reviews the traditions for integrating sound into screenplays and introduces innovations in the classical script format for writing sound. A sequence of off-screen sounds can convey a whole series of actions, while sounds in an outline or synopsis can structure an entire film narrative. As in past screenplays, sounds can again be written side by side in tandem with yet independently from images. Finally, the article makes original emendations to the classical master scene format for writing dominant sounds that fill a scene as well as indications for movie music. At a time when both film production and the screenplay itself are being transformed, this essay rejuvenates both film scholarship and practice by bridging historical traditions with practical innovations for screenwriting sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extensive research in film and media studies on film music and sound has delved into various aspects of their role in cinema, recognizing their significance. However, a crucial element in film production – the screenplay – has often been overlooked in the exploration of sound and music integration. Concurrently, studies on screenwriting have displayed limited interest in the acoustic dimensions of film, creating a research gap where film music studies intersect with screenwriting studies. This Special Issue aims to address this gap by emphasizing the screenplay's importance in comprehending the role of sound and music in film. This introduction showcases the diverse ways in which music and sound are integrated into screenplays. The ongoing exploration of screenplays for the analysis of sound and music sets the stage for future research endeavours. The editors and authors of this Special Issue advocate for the screenplay as a valuable resource in film music studies, providing innovative insights into the film production process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyse sound and music in two unfilmed screenplays written by filmmakers Sergio Person and Jean-Claude Bernardet: SSS against Jovem Guarda (1966) and The Plague of the Ruminants (1967). Why would two leading figures of the politically engaged Cinema Novo jump into a commercial project with the 'alienating' leader of the Americanized Jovem Guarda? Their next project, The Plague of the Ruminants, contested the dictatorship. Inspired by magical realism, it would use Hollywoodesque fantastic spectacle. Through interesting interventions on the soundtrack, Person and Bernardet subtly denounced Jovem Guarda's support for the military regime. This ironically contrasts with the soundtrack to SSS against Jovem Guarda. The article contributes to studies of sound and music in screenplays. I analyse different aspects pertaining to sound and music, compare these screenplays to other completed film projects by Person and Bernardet and place them in the context of Brazilian culture and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to this interview presents Chloé Aïcha Boro, a Burkinabé journalist, writer, filmmaker and screenwriter. Although she started her career as a journalist for La voix du Sahel and Le Marabout in her native Burkina Faso, her love of literature inspired her to write novels and move on to screen writing and directing films. The introduction explores Le Loup d'or de Balolé. The interview focuses on her personal life and the making of her films, notably Farafin Ko and Le Loup d'or de Balolé. She explains the opportunities and challenges she faced during the production of her films, sharing her vision on documentary filmmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has shown how the practice of screenwriting has always been affected by technological shifts. These moments in history both mirror the current state of digital screen production and provide a rationale for debating the twenty-first-century changes in screenwriting practices. The origin of the screenplay form is linked to the evolution of the cinema apparatus and though many sectors of cinema have benefited from a migration into the digital realm, the field of screenwriting practice has been slow to follow. In Screenwriting in a Digital Era (2014), Kathryn Millard draws parallels between the screenplay and other forms of visual storytelling and describes screenwriting as a multimodal craft. Changing production practices combined with recent shifts in independent film production demonstrated how screenwriters incorporate new and unconventional methods of communicating what Ian W. MacDonald refers to as the 'screen idea' into their work. Kickstarter fundraising campaigns, as one example, is one such method of communicating the screen idea through multi modal methods. An analysis of these campaigns reveals a surprising lack of attention given to the screenplay, instead relying on social media blurbs, visual pitch trailers, conceptual artwork and a multitude of other media. This paper will present a case study based on a short film, Still Life (Mac Coille, 2014), that used a crowdfunding campaign in its production, which included a combination of the screenplay and visual aids, such as conceptual artwork and a pitch trailer. The thesis of this article will be further bolstered by other examples that support the hypothesis that future screenwriting practices will include these new technologies and methods as a mainstay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a career spanning four decades, screenwriter and film-maker David Mamet moved from experimental theatre stages to mainstream popular culture. Another two decades later, he is still around, vacillating between the margins and the centre. More than ever, his works adopt a recognizable format that gradually makes way for a more ambiguous perspective. This essay therefore proposes by means of a concise overview of this American artist's various ventures into ever-more popular media and genres to draw critical attention to the principle of inter-semiotic transfers. After all, very few concepts in contemporary cultural studies are more problematic than 'genre' and 'medium' since the terms at once connote conventionality and functionality, seemingly denying originality whereas in fact they function as what David Duff calls 'vehicles for the acquisition of competence'. Accordingly, in order to highlight said mechanism, the essay introduces the concept of 'disciplined perversity' as a supplementary means of depicting the artist's systematic subversion of generic rules, an artistic disposition which allowed him to reach wider audiences while repurposing every experience in new, hybrid formats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a showing of the video Some Everybodies, which observes tourist behaviour at a 'non-tourist' site in Bath, the work will be discussed as evolving through non-dualist processes of film-making (enabled through new technology), whilst also attempting to create a non-dualist filmic experience for the spectator. Shot with a fixed-frame camera at a corner scene (which is the site of a minor accident), the film does not possess a traditional narrative structure or design, and has been described as a 'moving painting'. There is no central character (people are viewed more as moving bodies), and the momentum (rather than linear progression of scenes) has been made entirely in the editing suite, rather than on-site through a directorial eye. Dialogue from the site has been included as a multivalent 'communal poem' that scrolls as 'subtitles' beneath the images. Here the traditional understanding of subtitles is, once again, questioned, and they no longer exist as semiotic colonizers of 'othered' national experiences, but evolve as asides from the passers-by themselves. Time-as-intervention will be discussed through the 'bleached' colouration of the pictorial image, reminiscent of old postcards. This visual sense of well-worn familiarity is juxtaposed against a soundtrack that has been slowed down, creating primal groans and utterances. The significance of still-images within film-making will be explored, as the narrative freezes whilst the tourists themselves freeze, or 'snap', their own narratives. These 'mementos' are also included on postcards and posters as part of a larger installation. The walk-through, yet high-walled 'cross' design of the installation creates corners (said to be the places where people meet), and 'optimal viewing points' - a tourist leit-motif. The site is designed to illustrate the dislocation of time and place, where images of the video 'site' (as posters and postcards) are seen before the video itself. Reference will be made to film-maker Joseph Robakowski, artist Barbara Kruger, the scientist Dirk Helbing (with particular reference to 'dynamical flow' and pilgrim crowd behaviour at Mecca) and film theorist and film-maker Professor Laura Mulvey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]