Screenwriting in a Digital Era

Screenwriting in a Digital Era

Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting is the first book series to focus on the academic study of screenwriting. It seeks to promote an informed and critical account of screenwriting and of the screenplay, looking at the connections between what is produced and how it is produced, with a view to understanding more about the diversity of screenwriting practice and its texts. The scope of the series encompasses a range of study from the creation and recording of the screen idea, to the processes of production, to the structures that form and inform those processes, to the agents, their beliefs and the discourses that create those texts. Kathryn Millard SCREENWRITING IN A DIGITAL ERA Ian W. Macdonald SCREENWRITING POETICS AND THE SCREEN IDEA Eva Novrup Redvall WRITING AND PRODUCING TELEVISION DRAMA IN DENMARK From The Kingdom to The Killing

Screenwriting in a Digital Era Kathryn Millard Macquarie University, Australia

Kathryn Millard 2014 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-0-230-34328-3 Corrected Printing 2013 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-34465-9 ISBN 978-1-137-31910-4 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9781137319104 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements vi vii Introduction 1 1 The Picture Storytellers: From Pad to ipad 9 2 Post Courier 12 28 3 The New Three Rs of Digital Writing: Record, Reenact and Remix 42 4 14 Lessons on Screenwriting from Errol Morris 63 5 Adaptation: Writing as Rewriting and The Lost Thing 77 6 Degrees of Improvisation 97 7 Improvising Reality 118 8 Composing the Digital Screenplay 136 9 Collaboration: Writing the Possible 158 Conclusion: Sustainable Screenwriting 178 Notes 186 Select Bibliography 212 Index 224 v

Figures 0.1 Parklands, 1996, Toi-Toi Pictures 2 1.1 The Boot Cake, 2008, Charlie Productions 10 2.1 Travelling Light, 2003, Toi-Toi Pictures 30 2.2 District 9, 2009, Tri-Star Pictures 39 3.1 Patience (After Sebald), 2012, Illumination Films 54 3.2 Keyhole collage, Guy Maddin 59 5.1 Parklands, 1996, Toi-Toi pictures 78 5.2 The Lost Thing (storyboard sketch), Passion Pictures 86 6.1 Putty Hill, 2010, Hamilton Film Group 112 6.2 Push Man Cart, 2005, Noruz Films 114 7.1 Ajami, 2009, Inosan Productions 119 8.1 The Gleaners and I, 2000, Cine Tamaris 139 8.2 Journey to the End of Coal, 2008, Samuel Bollendorff 152 8.3 Journey to the End of Coal, 2008, Samuel Bollendorff 153 8.4 Journey to the End of Coal, 2008, Samuel Bollendorff 153 8.5 Journey to the End of Coal, 2008, Samuel Bollendorff 155 9.1 Beasts of the Southern Wild, 2012, Court 13 Pictures 164 9.2 Mad Detective, 2009, Milky Way Image Company 169 vi

Acknowledgements I am grateful to many for support, encouragement and advice over the last three years. To my colleagues Iqbal Barkat, Maree Delofski, Peter Doyle, Marcus Eckermann, Gill Ellis, Mark Evans, Pat Grant, Bridget Griffith-Foley, Julian Knowles, Tom Murray, John Potts and Kate Rossmanith in the Department of Media, Music, Communications and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University; to Alex Munt at the University of Technology, Sydney; to Paul Wells at Loughborough University; to Adam Ganz at Royal Holloway, University of London and to David Carlin and Leo Berkeley at RMIT, Melbourne. Special thanks to Adrian Martin whose presentation at the Cinematic Scriptwriting Symposium we organised at the Museum of Sydney proved inspirational and to screenwriter Keith Thompson from whom I have learnt much over the years in his role as script editor on some of my projects. Thanks to research assistant Mikael Peck for all his patient work in helping to prepare the manuscript and to Tom Roberts who also contributed to this stage. Thanks to the Faculty of the Arts at Macquarie University for funding for support for manuscript preparation. Many thanks to my fellow Series Editors Steven Maras and Ian Macdonald for their support and advice. My sincere thanks to Commissioning Editor Felicity Plester for all her support and advice and to Chris Penfold from Palgrave for his work in helping bring this book to print. I am especially grateful to Samuel Bollendorff, Guy Maddin, Yaron Shani, Shaun Tan and Au Kin Ye for providing insights into their respective work via email and Skype interviews. Special thanks to J.J. Murphy, who not only provided excellent advice as editor of this book, but with whom I have maintained a dialogue on all things independent screenwriting since we first encountered each other s work via the Screenwriting Research Network in 2007. Lastly, special thanks to my partner and fellow writer, Noëlle Janaczewska, for her insightful comments and suggestions on drafts throughout the project. vii

viii Acknowledgements An earlier version of Chapter 2 Post Courier 12 was published as After the Typewriter: Screenwriting in a Digital Era, Journal of Screenwriting, Volume 1, Number 1, 1 January 2010, pp. 11 25. Permissions 3.2 Collage by Guy Maddin for his film Keyhole (2012) reproduced with kind permission of Guy Maddin. 5.2 Shaun Tan s storyboard sketch for The Lost Thing (2010) reproduced by kind permission of Sophie Byrne and Passion Pictures. 6.1 Sophie Toporkoff s production still of the cast of Putty Hill (2010) reproduced by kind permission of Matthew Porterfield and the Hamilton Film Group. 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4 Photographs from Journey to the End of Coal (2008) photographed by Samuel Bollendorff and reproduced by kind permission of Samuel Bollendorff.