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Based on a series of conversations with Colin Young that have taken place over more than thirty years, this article explores how a certain set of practical and institutional circumstances, in combination with a series of philosophical and aesthetic ideas about the nature of cinema, first led to the emergence over the late 1960s and early 1970s of the approach to ethnographic filmmaking that would become known as “Observational Cinema.” Although it was those whom Colin Young trained, inspired or simply influenced who worked out the practical filmmaking applications of his ideas, it was he who initially formulated the foundational concepts underpinning this approach to ethnographic filmmaking. As such, although he has been a “filmmaker-maker” rather than a filmmaker himself, Colin Young has a rightful claim to be considered, in the sense defined by Roland Barthes, as the original “author” of Observational Cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the analysis of the television series narrative in Spain, this article looks into the nature of scripts. Even though screenwriting is just a link in the chain of tasks and processes resulting in a TV show as a final product, the text proposes to understand the TV series script as a product in itself. From this perspective, TV fiction screenwriting appears as an activity resulting in an autonomous product that works as a commodity in itself regardless of its translation to the screen. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qualitative psychology researchers of today face numerous practical, ethical, political, and theoretical challenges. We have often asked ourselves how we might respond to these multiple and complex challenges. On our evolving research journeys, we have found that arts-based methodologies offer one effective response. In this article, we explore our experiences of doing arts-based research in psychological contexts, by sharing and reflecting on three short stories. The stories illustrate how each arts-based project has required of us three distinct waves of engagement: interdependent engagement with people and place, aesthetic engagement with sense making processes, and emotional engagement with and of audiences. We use the story form to evoke each wave of engagement because it allows us to communicate the qualities of that engagement without finalising, foreclosing, or restricting the variety of ways arts-based research might be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his memoirs, screenwriter Charles Bennett reflects upon writing the British horror filmNight of the Demon(1957, Jacques Tourneur). He reveals his lack of fondness for the film’s executive producer, commenting ‘Hal Chester, if he walked up my driveway right now, I’d shoot him dead’. Chester rewrote elements of Bennett’s script to focus attention on the fire demon, and arranged additional filming after Tourneur had completed directing duties. This much ofNight of the Demon’s production history is well documented. However, drawing upon extensive research at BFI Special Collections and the BBFC, this article offers an alternative reading of the film. Focusing on creative process, I utilize draft screenplays, reader reports and letters to piece together how the original writer envisagedNight of the Demonand how various institutional pressures impacted upon the final script. Crucially, by examining the séance – the act two midpoint – I provide a revisionist account of the film, one that draws away from the now-standard discussion of whether Bennett and Tourneur knew the fire demon would be shown at the film’s beginning and end. Instead, this article is a consideration of the power of storytelling to generate fear. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Playbuilding is one response to the search for creative ways to approach leadership and learning. Drawing upon their practical experiences within community-based, secondary school, and university settings, the authors share stories and strategies for fostering collaborative leadership through playbuilding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article takes a close look at an element that permeates the screenwriting process from initial idea to finished film, and suggests that at the beginning of the creative process there is a core or budding idea that takes gradual shape as the screenplay develops into the screen version. This element is neither detectable nor does it give the work unity at the beginning of the writing process, but results from such process. As the story develops, the authors (screenwriter, director, producer) negotiate about that intangible "something" they do not wish to lose. Alter a theoretical overview of Arislollc's notion of the poetic myth understood as the soul of the story and mimesis of action (,Poetics, 1450a 9,16-18,22,32-35, et. al.) and Ian W. Macdonald's notion of screen idea (2013) seen as the goal at which a screen project aims, this essay presents a case study of the Latin-American film No (Chile, 2012), written by Pedro Peirano, produced by Juan de Dios Larrain and directed by Pablo Larrain. The methodology combines narratological and thematic tools. As a result, the study shows how the screen idea can be tracked down by observing the transformation arc of some of the characters in the plot, and explains why the plot undergoes modifications throughout the different stages in the development of the film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticism on two recent films by director Paolo Sorrentino (La grande bellezza, 2013; Youth, 2015) has tended to identify them with a formalistic retreat from the afflicted state of the Italian nation. Instead of analysing these films according to their relation to historical reality, this article examines Sorrentino’s use of special effects and how form, reflexivity, and motion achieve new levels of cinematic expressivity in the digital format. It argues that the new techniques and technology utilized in these films represent a potentially positive creative direction, away from transparent, photographic realism and towards arrangements of visual illusion that are typical of global digital media in the age of media convergence. In order to substantiate this thesis, the essay traces material and theoretical connections between Italian filmmaking, its links with the stationary art of painting, and video games. [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]

An interview with French filmmaker, actor, and screenwriter Jacques Tati is presented. Tati shares how he came up with a film like "Play Time?" and explains why he believes dramatic composition is important when writing a script. He also offers his understanding of the evolution of film comedy. Tati offers his views on critics' reactions to the film "Play Time?" and reveals how he gets his ideas for gags. He also shares where a part of sadness in the film came from.

In this article, the author talks about the process of storytelling and screenwriting and discusses the psychology behind it. Topics discussed include the concept of active imagination by C. G. Jung, the symbolic thinking of patients in stories and their conflicts, and the narrative models representing adult psychology.

This article presents a study of the animated short films that won the Academy Award from 2011 to 2015, specifically focusing on how their protagonists move the story forward. The main characters in these five case studies are presented in a monotonous routine. This analysis has found that their lonely life is disrupted by an event out of the ordinary, which sets the story in motion. Along with this, the article illustrates that short films tend to develop a single plot and a single action with a single climax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including a history of Latin American screenwriting, a theory of the screenplay in Southern media industries and the publication of annotated screenplays by screenwriters.

According to the company website, Tinder is a mobile phone application for “friends, dates, relationships, and everything in between”. Cody Clarke, a writer and filmmaker, documents screenshots of photographs from the closed network of Tinder to publicly “out” users of the site who post photographs showing themselves in some “do-gooding” relationship that appears to take place in the South. Through the posting of a new photograph every day, the “Humanitarians of Tinder” Tumblr blog and Facebook page have generated a public discussion on the politics of representing suffering strangers in attempts to enhance the appeal of western image producers. This article will investigate the phenomenon of the Humanitarians of Tinder in order to understand its representations of North–South relations from the photographs themselves and from the debates held around them in new media and old. Critical development studies, media studies and sociology will provide an interdisciplinary theoretical framework to understand the moral panic that these Tinder humanitarians have created through posting private photographs of humanitarian performances to increase their personal desirability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the career and accomplishments of American screenwriter and filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. Topics covered include Reichardt's admiration towards filmmaker Robert Bresson, Reichardt's first film in 1994 titled "River of Grass," and brief information about her 2013 film "Night Moves."

This article discusses the films of Jacques Audiard from the perspective of the screenwriting process. It evaluates his work as a screenwriter, and the ways in which the development process of his screenplays can inform his cinema and distinctive style. Audiard always writes with collaborators and views the filmmaking process as a team effort. Beyond establishing his own personal signature renewal of the European thriller through complex narratives, Audiard has developed a filmmaking method in which the so-called writing stage seems to extend far beyond pre-production, to influence the shooting, and finally shape the editing process completed in post-production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents two monologues from the motion pictures "La Chambre 2" and "Le Déménagement (Moving Out)" directed by the late Chantal Akerman, and it mentions how the monologues highlight Akerman's writing and aesthetic strategies. American avant-garde cinema and Akerman's film production and direction techniques are examined, along with motion picture voice-overs and Akerman's narratives. Screenplays and the television series "Monologues" are also assessed.

The Nigerian film industry, otherwise known as Nollywood, has been acknowledged to be the second-largest in the world in terms of volume of production. This fact presents an interesting vista worthy of investigation, especially with regard to the quality of the films produced. It is in respect of this premise that this article examines the plot of the Nigerian film--a feature capable of affecting the popularity of the film. The essay, having dwelt on what plot is, critically examines the Nigerian film plot and finds that Nollywood films mostly adopt an episodic structure, thereby making them unnecessarily long. Besides (and this is systemically related to episodic structure and to a natural tendency in Nigerian rhetoric), many of the films tend to be too wordy, too chatty, over-padded, thus often earning them scathing criticism. The challenges of scriptwriting in this regard are examined, culminating in recommendations for how to improve the quality of scripts through plot construction in this vibrant film culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early internet and fan studies theorists believed the New Media context and work of the active fan would bring theories like the Death of the Author to fruition. Contemporary fan studies scholars are more reserved, acknowledging diversity in fan attitudes. Through analysis of a LiveJournal article with comments on authors’ views concerning fanfiction, this article demonstrates the paradoxical investment in various forms of authorial authority espoused across fan communities, as well as defiance and repudiation of them. I argue that while the authors quoted are denied legitimate authority through various tactics, the concept of an originating, proprietary authorship, with attendant capitalist powers and rights, retains much influence. The concept of the author holds more power than the individual figures attempting to wield it, and fans attribute or deny the power of authorship to particular figures according to their public personas and cultural politics. In this sense, fans may withhold or bestow legitimation through the operation of Foucault’s author-function, interpreting text and statements of authority through the public persona of the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers commentary related to film studies. Topics include the notion of individual as opposed to collective authorship in the production of films, the notion of human beings as thinking subjects in relation to film criticism, and the use of academic jargon in the writing of film criticism. The role of genres in film criticism is addressed.

The article presents a memoir of the author's experience of the challenging journey of writing a feature film sports drama, "Only Girl," delving into the hurdles faced, including difficulties in securing interviews with elite athletes, periods of homelessness, and the impact of life events on the writing process. It also highlights his perseverance and eventual success in completing the script with insights from an interview with Olympic athlete Carol Lewis.

This article opposes the notions of adaptation and adaptability, the latter understood here as a complex commercial, screenwriting and critical process. Following the sociological methods endorsed by Simone Murray inThe Adaptation Industry, the author studies the concrete aspects of this process of evaluation, development and use of the adaptability of literary works through an examination of the case of a French company: Best Seller to Box Office, a company created to identify the ‘adaptability quotient’ of contemporary fiction and non-fiction works. The composition of adaptation spec sheets, with the purpose of measuring and highlighting adaptability potential, makes up one of the essential elements of this business, which is relatively new to France. This article examines the particular nature of the business, especially the interface between different facets of the adaptation process. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The funds allocated to developing screenplays currently constitute on average 2 to 3% of the overall budget of a film in France. Producers are more than ever dependent on presenting attractive draft screenplays to find their financial partners. As a result, screenwriters undoubtedly are active economic partners of production planning, but they do not seem to receive much professional recognition for this vital role. Moreover, their earnings often fail to reflect the amount of work produced and do not reward adequately the risks taken, including the possibility that production could stop after the screenplay is written. This article investigates the place of screenplay development within the economics of French cinema. Using recently published official reports and interviews, the author identifies different types of screenwriters – freestanding screenwriters, writing teams and screenwriters co-writing with the director – and addresses their working conditions. She surveys some of the contract modalities for the remuneration of professional screenwriters. Finally, she reviews the proposals made by different professional bodies to improve the remuneration of screenwriters and reform the financing of screenwriting. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

‘There are no new stories … We see them on the screen or on the stage reflected through the personalities of men and women whom we have learned to love and respect.’ So wrote Lillian Gish in an unpublished work on the role of stars in early cinema. While most know Gish as a silent film star, and some know her as an autobiographer and lecturer on the history of early cinema, very few regard her as a film theorist. In this paper, I analyze the theoretical dimension of Gish’s manuscripts, essays, and lecture notes, many of which are unpublished and held in the New York Public Library’s Lillian Gish Papers. In asserting the role of the actor or star as filmic author, Gish speaks directly to abstract questions of art, authorship, and cinema as a ‘universal language.’ Gish’s work engages with the work of such early film theorists Vachel Lindsay, Hugo Munsterberg, and Rudolf Arnheim, as well as that of contemporary scholars of stardom and performance studies. I will conclude my argument by reading the 1927 filmThe Windas the culmination of Gish’s philosophies of acting on screen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

So many film critics, film scholars and film historians have taken the concept of author to built some of their proposals, like an interpretative politics or sophisticated textual approaches. The matter which underlies is the next one: the author in cinema, thought as a person or as a textual strategy, makes a film, and that film is finished work. This idea has become the touchstone for any approach to this topic: someone is a film author depending on the films that he makes. The goal is discover another way to review the concept of author in cinema: the filmmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This revisionist account of the production history of How Green Was My Valley(1941) challenges the standard account that John Ford shot the film as written by screenwriter Philip Dunne. A close examination of the complete run of script variants, as well as memos in the Twentieth Century-Fox collection at the University of Southern California, the Wyler papers at the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and the Ford papers at the Lilly Library at Indiana University, provides a comprehensive account of the process of script development and details Ford's contributions to the narrative structure of the completed film. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the concept of “meaning” developed by Juan José García- Noblejas in 1982, which is presented as an enlightening and useful tool for the screenwriting and film reception process. The essay explores the concepts of “theme” (Flinn, 1999:167-168); “dramatic question” (Selbo, 2007: 201-209); and “meaning” (Russin, 2012: 38-42) as they appear in screenwriting manuals from an academic point of view. Considering the perspectives of narratology, semiotics and Aristotelic Poetics the article relates the concept of “meaning” with the unifying principle of the story and the aspects of the human experience the story shows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]