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Journal of Media Practice
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Disentangling the screen idea
Ian W. MacDonald
To cite this article: Ian W. MacDonald (2004) Disentangling the screen idea, Journal of Media
Practice, 5:2, 89-99, DOI: 10.1386/jmpr.5.2.89/0
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Journal of Media Practice Volume 5 Number 2 © 2004 Intellect Ltd
Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/jmpr.5.2.89/0
Disentangling the screen idea
Ian W. MacDonald Leeds Metropolitan University
Abstract
This paper takes the concept of the screen idea (as outlined by Philip Parker
1998) and uses it to mean ‘any notion of a potential screenwork held by one or
more people, whether or not it is possible to describe it on paper or by other
means’, and whether or not that notion has a conventional shape. This concept
leads towards a clearer understanding of the process of screenwriting, which in
turn helps consideration of what is being evaluated when looking at the products
of that practice. The screen idea is the essence of the future screenwork that is discussed
and negotiated by those involved in reading and developing the screenplay
and associated documents; it is shared, clarified and changed through a collective
process. This concept of the screen idea is developed with reference to the work of
Roland Barthes in order to clarify the influence of norms and assumptions used
during that process that may otherwise be hidden or unacknowledged. The
process of script development has been explored in the CILECT conference
‘Triangle 2’ (Ross 2001), and this article takes two of these projects to examine
how the screen idea is ‘rewritten’ by the collective process. In these examples it is
not possible to attribute single authorship in the face of this dynamic and complex
process of creating meaning. The underlying normative drive for a readerly text is
made according to assumed, though often unacknowledged and unquestioned cri-
teria.
In the multiplicity of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deci-
phered....
Roland Barthes (1977: 147, original emphases)
The screenplay and the screen idea
The screen idea is a term that has been used to describe the start of a
screenplay’s development (Parker 1998: 57).1
I use it here to refer to the
core idea of anything intended to become a screenwork.2
It should therefore
be the essence of the screenplay. Can we accurately define the screenplay?
There are some things it clearly is; it is the record of an idea for a
screenwork, written in a highly stylized form. It is constrained by the rules
of its form on the page, and it is the subject of industrial norms and conventions.
In what it can show and do in relation to the screenwork, it is
partial; for example, with dialogue it is quite clear to the untrained eye,
but with other aural components (such as music) there are injunctions
against specification. The visual is only approximated, not completely
specified. The architecture of the page is important in identifying key
visual elements, and how the visual interacts with time. Clearly this is a
form that requires training (and/or experience) to use it. It has been
1 See also Lucy Scher
on ‘shaping ideas and
a story for the screen’
in ‘Finding the story
in your idea’,
ScriptWriter, 13
November 2003, pp.
6-10.
2 ‘screenwork’,
meaning the
completed film, TV
drama, etc. A term
also from Parker
(1998: 10).
89JMP 5 (2) 89–99 © Intellect Ltd 2004
Keywords
screenwriting
film theory
Barthes
script development
screen idea
JMP 5-2 Layout 5/11/04 10:39 am Page 89
described as a ‘blueprint’;3
as ‘less than a blueprint and more than a
libretto’ (Corliss 1975: xv); (in a phrase attributed to Eisenstein) a ‘hint
fixed on paper’ (S.M. Eisenstein, in Mehring 1990: 7); and ‘a reverse
pyramid ... a platform you wear on your shoulders that a talented director
can stand on and perform’ (S. Stern in Mehring 1990: 7). However, the
screenplay is not the whole story:
Bergman finds that the screenplay is an inadequate medium for clearly indicating
the visual qualities of his films, especially the way in which they are to
be edited and the relationship between shots; in short it is impossible for
Bergman to indicate in the screenplay how a film will breathe and pulsate.
(Winston 1973: 115)
It is its general nature, in outlining dramatic structure, which makes the
screenplay an approximation. It may be that this generality is its strength,
and is the reason for its centrality in the process of production.
There are some things the screenplay is not: it is not a finished piece of
work (in relation to the screenwork - the finished film). It is not normally,
by the start of shooting, the work of only one person, despite what it says
on the cover. It is not (ever) complete, as a description of all the aspects of
the screenwork. It is not image-based (surprisingly), and despite being
text-based it does not appear literary in a traditional sense, except possibly
in parts. There is never a definitive version of the screenplay of a film; by
definition it must relate to the screenwork, but also by definition it cannot,
as more work must precede the final outcome. At no point in its development
can the screenplay be said to truly reflect the final screenwork. As a
discarded piece of work, can it be considered except in relation to what it
might have become? Given that the screenwork does not exist during preproduction,
can we say that the potential screenwork exists? And does it
exist in the text of the screenplay, or in the minds of those involved in production,
or both?
Within the mind of a screenwriter there surely is, possibly only halfformed
or ill defined, a potential screenwork which he or she has to
attempt to convey to those that will produce it. Before pen is set to paper,
this idea has some form or basis. A professional screenwriter will identify
its suitability and give it shape, based on the norms of the screen industries,
and it becomes a ‘screen idea’. Parker describes this as adding ‘genre
... style and ... dramatic structure’ to a basic dramatic idea (Parker 1998:
57-58). I propose to use the term ‘screen idea’ to mean ‘any notion of a
potential screenwork held by one or more people, whether or not it is possible
to describe it on paper or by other means’. I use it therefore as a theoretical
term, meaning a singular concept (however complex), which may
have conventional shape or not, intended to become a screenwork. The
value of this term is that it allows us to refer to an essence, the idea that
(in all probability) the writer has had from the start and which is discussed
within, and then outside, the screenplay document.4
The screenplay is
intended to convey (or at least record) the screen idea, but the idea itself is
formed in the minds of all those involved in its production. Therefore, this
essence is an idea shared with others, the readers of the screenplay (script
3 A common term, for
example used by
Professor Henry
Breitrose, as quoted
by Professor Dick Ross
(notes to the author,
2000).
4 During the
production process
the screen idea will
change but there will
be a limit, a point
where someone (perhaps
the writer) may
identify (a) change(s)
that signifies the limit
of that screen idea
and the start of a new
one. What that limit
is may not be important,
only that the
change is regarded as
profound enough to
refer to it as a new
‘screen idea’.
90 Ian W. MacDonald
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editor, producer, director, and others) particularly during development,
where the shared idea is discussed, made clear and changed. The screenplay
is a record of the shared screen idea, redrafted in stages as the collaboration
proceeds. But it is still a partial description of that shared idea, a
framework within which others will work. The screen idea remains both
within and around the screenplay.
To focus on the screenplay alone as the source for the screenwork
therefore seems unsatisfactory. A clearer focus might be on the shared
screen idea itself, if we could see it. This might be difficult, but we can
observe the process of development of the screen idea. Collaboration
involves reading and rereading, notes, discussion and redrafting, creating
and recreating something that represents a common understanding. The
reader(s) of the screenplay and other documents inevitably construct a
version of the screen idea in their heads which (unlike readers of novels)
they then have to contribute to. There is an imperative towards consensus,
otherwise the screenwork will not get made. It also helps if everyone has a
similar conception of what they are working towards.5
Theory, Barthes and the process of development
Literary and screen theory have for several decades debated the place of
author and reader and the production of meaning. However, the location
within one person of a particular way of presenting a story is clearly still
important. ‘Authorship is the principle of specificity in the world of texts’
(Burke 1998: 202); retracing the work back to the author equates to
working back to its historical, cultural and political embeddedness. In literary
theory, Roland Barthes’s ‘The Death of the Author’ (1968)6
had
attempted to remove the idea of the author from textual production, on
the basis of a wider view that language creates the work, and the writer
writes it rather than ‘authors’ it. ‘Nothing comes out of nothing’, as true
for literary creation as for organic nature, said Barthes (in Burke 1998:
23); and the source is not the power of a single transcendental imagination
to generate ideas from nowhere, but the coming together in the writer
of the discourses that arise from language. Despite Burke’s view, the convenience
of ‘one author/one text’ does not address the complexity of how
meaning is generated in a work of art (Thompson and Burns, 1990,
referred to by Kohn 2000: 494), particularly in relation to the development
of the screen idea into a screenwork. As Kohn points out,
... in Barthes’s (1974) terms, screenplays are model ‘writerly texts’ - open to
being rewritten - as opposed to closed ‘readerly texts’ which ‘can be read but
not written ... classic text[s]’
(p. 4). (Kohn 2000: 495)
I suggest that while this is true, it is not just the screenplay that represents
the ‘text’ here, but all the forms in which the screen idea is expressed; from
chance remark through logline and treatment to screenplay and cutting
continuity and the final screenwork.
Barthes’s work (in particular ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘S/Z’)
includes a number of points that might be useful to the analysis of screen-
5 This is most clearly
seen when people
vary in their
understanding of the
goals. For example, at
the ‘Triangle 2’
conference on the creative
relationship
between writer, director
and producer, it
was noted that US
professionals showed
greater concern for
the role of the
audience in relation
to the impact of the
narrative than did
European professionals
(Ross 2001: 5).
They were also
quicker in their
responses to development
problems,
suggesting a clearer
idea of a basic general
film narrative framework
in the US
context (Ross
2001:76, 77).
6 Burke (1998: 211)
notes that this essay
was first written in
1967 for an
American magazine
Aspen Nos. 5 and 6,
and then republished
in 1968 as ‘Le mort
d’auteur’ (a title
which in French
echoes more clearly,
and wittily, that of the
legendary tale ‘Mort
d’Arthur’) in Manteia
V. The version quoted
here is reprinted in
Burke (1995).
91Disentangling the screen idea
JMP 5-2 Layout 5/11/04 10:39 am Page 91
writing and the screen idea. Firstly, the notion that the text is a ‘tissue of
quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture’ (Barthes 1977:
146), that is, that there is no single theological meaning (the message
from an ‘Author-God’). If meaning is cultural, and plural, then it resides (in
the first instance) in the reader, not the writer, because it is the reader that
creates the meaning of the text from what is written. The surface meaning
of a text may be suffused with resonances or nuance (normally described
in terms of the author’s power of evocation); but it is the reader that finds
that resonance from his own cultural experience, from comprehending
(even unconsciously) the extent of that resonance from his own point of
view. The writer does not figure here, as he/she is not creating or describing
a universal essential truth (says Barthes); ‘his only power is to mix
writings, to counter the ones with the others’ (1977: 146). The shock of
Barthes’s denial of the writer as creator is great, and difficult to accept, but
it does place the writer firmly in a context that connects with others.
Barthes is referring to the individual writer (although he also referred
with approval to the surrealist practice of collective writing),7
but in
screenwriting the process is multiplied by the collective involvement of
many in the process of development, despite screenwriters and others
emphasizing authorial possession of aspects of ‘their’ work. Barthes’s
assertion that the author of a book is plural is demonstrated more clearly
with a screenwork, as an overtly collaborative process. This brings us back
to the part played by the screen reader (that is, anyone who reads and contributes)
in the construction of the screen idea.
Secondly, Barthes goes on to say that ‘once the Author is removed the
claim to decipher a text [that is, to find its true meaning] becomes quite
futile’ (1977: 147). Barthes talks of ‘disentangling’ rather than deciphering
the text, where (in a famous metaphor) the text is like an onion whose
layers are peeled away to reveal yet more layers until finally nothing is
revealed (Barthes 1977: 147). The idea that the locus of meaning is the
text alone (as in the screenplay, for example) becomes problematic if the
only place where the multiplicity of meanings is focused is the reader. This
would also be true of screenwriting, made more complex because there is
no definitive written text, and more than one reader involved. Deciphering
the screenplay would therefore mean both establishing a coherent set of
meanings by (and for) the individual reader, and agreeing a coherent set of
meanings for the group of readers. Rereading a text is a process Barthes
referred to in ‘S/Z’ (1974: 15-16) as important in the disentanglement of
the structure, the way of deconstructing the text’s unity and ‘naturalness’,
making possible the discovery of the text’s plurality (Olsen 1990: 186).
However, what Barthes refers to in ‘S/Z’ is the rereading of a fixed text,
Sarrasine; how much more complex, then, is the process in screenplay
development, where readers are also de facto writers, expected to contribute
further text for other readers, in a dynamic process of continual
‘refinement’? Development of the screen idea is a process of reconstruction
that along the way creates several new ‘writers’ and readers in a collaboration.
It is not a process of analysis alone, in an attempt to construct
meaning from a (series of) fixed text(s); it is a process where the screen
idea is disentangled and collectively reconstructed according to normative
7 In ‘The Death of the
Author’ (in Burke
1995: 127).
92 Ian W. MacDonald
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practices of screenwork production, within constraints and conventions.
The screen idea - the essence of the screenwork - therefore exists properly
in the consciousness of the writers and readers who produce the screenwork;
the written text is only a (partial) record of it.
Thirdly, Barthes’s work in rethinking the place of the reader as a
passive consumer has strong parallels in the actual industrial requirements
placed on the professional reader of screen ideas. In trying to bring
together the notions of reading and writing in ‘S/Z’, Barthes is describing
a silent and unobservable process that occurs (he asserts) between a single
writer and a single reader, but in doing so he has also described the same
(and more overt) process that occurs between writer(s) and readers who
collaborate over the screen idea. Could the screen idea readers be seen collectively,
as a ‘self’ made up of multiples? It is possible, if one were to reseparate
the notions of writer and reader, to describe the process of screen
idea development and production as a writer and a reader interacting on
many different occasions, in different roles. In that way, there could be
said to be a collective character to this ‘reader’ who is constructing the
text. It may be clearer to conceive of this as a second level of readership, a
multiple ‘collective reader’ at a level above the individual one (which is
itself composed of multiple and constantly developing elements). This
second level of complexity has one main difference from the primary individual
level - that its operation is overt. It may be observed in action, even
as it contributes the development of the written text. Unlike Barthes’s
work on Sarrasine, where the fixed nature of the word on the published
page allowed Barthes to identify codes at work, the second level of readership
in screen idea development (the ‘collective reader’) can be observed at
work, in the process of de- and reconstructing that screen idea. However,
three significant problems remain; that the primary (individual) level is
still also operating and is less (or in-)visible, that the observer is also
reading and constructing the screen idea, and that when production is
complete, the viewer will also construct the text.
Fourthly, according to Sheila Johnston, in ‘S/Z’ Barthes developed his
arguments away from his previous attempts to present a single hypothetical
model that could be applied to any narrative, towards the idea that
each narrative is itself unique, its own model. As Johnston points out,
citing Derrida, ‘each work of literature differs, obviously, from other works;
equally, however, it defers to them, i.e. relies on them for its distinctive
meaning’ (Johnston 1985: 240, original emphases). This notion therefore
locates a text (and its structure) within and against other social and cultural
discourses. ‘A work of art, then, should be seen not mechanistically,
as a closed system, a completed, inert object which will always remain the
same, but dynamically, as an endless process of rereading and rewriting.’
(Johnston 1985: 240). Johnston is referring, of course, to the completed
work, of which the physical presence is virtually unchanging,8
and not to
the uncompleted work which is the screenplay. How much more complex
does this render the development of the screen idea? The awareness of the
reader as a focal point in creating meaning within a given context, and the
collaborative attempt at a shared system of meanings that operates in
development, also creates a dynamic process which functions in a complex
8 Of course, a
completed film may
actually change
(through
deterioration of film
stock or videotape for
example) and it may
take different forms
(such as 35mm, VHS
or DVD) that could
affect meaning.
93Disentangling the screen idea
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way. There is an oscillation between people and between meanings that
appears to resemble the endless process of rereading and rewriting a work
of art, with the difference that there is also at play a group dynamic (even
a power struggle) within norms of professional behaviour which involves
roles, ‘ownership’ and leadership.9
The intertextuality that is fundamental
to Barthes’s concept of literary meaning is, in this process, influenced
(perhaps driven) by cultural concepts of film, TV, genre, the audio-visual
industry and the audience. The process of script development of the realist
text (the screenwork) is ostensibly to ensure, to confirm, the internal logic
or intratextual economy (as Johnston puts it) of that text, but the external
relationships that apply to this process (power, status, norms, negotiations
and so on) are perhaps less well acknowledged.
Fifthly, Barthes’s distinctions (1974: 3-6) between readerly (lisible) and
writerly (scriptible) texts appear to be usefully applicable to screenworks,
particularly when considered as ‘notional extremes of a spectrum’ rather
than as global categories (Johnston 1985: 239). ‘The readerly is what we
know how to read and thus has a certain transparency; the writerly is selfconscious
and resistant to reading’ (Culler 2002: 22). This was a distinction
that Barthes applied between classic realism and modernist reflexive
literature, but can be considered as a distinction between works that claim
to depict things as they are, ‘naturally’, and those that point up or create
their own narrative construction, such as hypertexts.10
In screenwriting
the conventional approach outlined by screenwriting manuals appears
typically realist, in that it
... pretends to be an innocent representation, a mimesis, a reality ... controlled
by the principle of non-contradiction ... with a narrative structure
which makes us read horizontally from start to finish, revealing a single
unified meaning. It employs rhetorical devices which tie together the writer
and reader in the production of meaning.
(Olsen 1990: 184)
That this approach appears often to be taken as ‘natural’ is something that
Barthes fought against, and indeed this surface ‘unity’ is still held up by
manual writers as a goal to be aimed at by screenwriters.11
‘But ... it
makes the reader an inert consumer of the author’s production, [and] is
always assigned an origin (an author, a character, a culture)...’ (Olsen
1990: 184).
This might seem to apply to a viewer and a mainstream screenwork,
but the professional reader is not an inert consumer; s/he is producing
meaning from both the written text and other references. The writerly text
requires the reader to produce meaning from a ‘galaxy of signifiers, not a
structure of signifieds’ (Barthes 1974: 5). This is a more ‘difficult’ process
for the reader, one in which plurality is clearer.12
The process is more
writerly (Kohn 2000: 495 passim), even if the screenwork itself is (or is
intended to be) readerly. For example, a writerly text
...is not a finished product ready for consumption. Such [writerly] texts
invite the reader to ‘join in’, and offer us some kind of ‘co-authorship’...
9 Even where the work
is genuinely
collaborative, roles
and responsibilities
are qualified in practice.
Producer Mark
Shivas says that a film
‘starts off as the producer’s
film ...[when
s/he] has to have a
certain amount of
arrogance...(Ross
1997: 36). Then it
becomes the director’s
film, when the
producer ‘needs to
have a certain
amount of humility’
(Ross 1997: 37), and
‘if the director is able
to take everyone else
along with him or
her, then it will be
everybody’s film’
(Ross 1997: 35).
10 George Landow’s
work on hypertext,
Hypertext 2.0 (1997)
is referred to by
Elsaesser and
Buckland (2002);
Landow is described
as the first person
who realized that
Barthes’ work in S/Z
could be applied to
hypertexts: ‘...Barthes
describes an ideal textuality
that precisely
matches ...hypertext text
composed of
blocks of words (or
images) linked
electronically by multiple
paths, chains or
trails in an openended
perpetually
unfinished textuality
described by the terms
link, node, network, web
and path’ (Landow
1997: 3 in Elsaesser
2002: 161-62).
11 For example, Field
1994: 8-9.
12 The difficulty for the
reader is not necessarily
a guide to
‘writerliness’, as some
screenplays could
demonstrate an unfamiliar
structure based
nevertheless on a
94 Ian W. MacDonald
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Barthes writes ‘the networks are many and interact, without any of them
being able to surpass the rest ... it has no beginning, it is reversible, we gain
access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authoritatively
claimed to be the main one
(S/Z, p. 5). (Olsen 1990: 185)
While many conventional screenplay texts clearly have beginnings, and
follow a realist ‘readerly’ approach, the process of development of that text
is indeed reversible, and readers gain access to the text through whatever
‘entrance’ seems appropriate - as director, producer, actor and so on. It is
as if development and production, as a writerly process, has been grafted
on to a readerly (or proto-readerly) text. If one accepts that there is no
definitive written text for the screenwork, and that construction of
meaning comes from the readers of the screenplay rather than from the
screenplay itself, then what is signified becomes more obscure and more
vague than the signifiers. The writerly text is not representational - it is
intended to show its plurality rather than be mimetic (‘advance pointing
to your mask ...this is all Barthes finally asks of any system, any work of
art or literature...’ (Burke 1998: 52)). However, the basic intention of the
process of development - to produce a screenwork - appears conventionally
to move a screen idea towards a screenwork that can be consumed and
accessed easily. It is an industrial process of shaping a writerly text into a
readerly one, a screenwork that presents in some way a (fairly) seamless
view of a world, if not the real world. Elsaesser and Buckland’s comparison
(2002: 146-67) of the readerly film with video-game logic concludes that
‘the pre-determined structure of narratives excludes the possibility of interactivity
- that is, that interactivity is incompatible with narrative structure.
Narratives are inherently readerly - it is narrative that makes a text
readerly’ (2002: 167). This view therefore supports the notion that the
interactive writerly process of development, the results of which are
recorded in successive drafts of a screenplay, is necessarily directed towards
the creation of the readerly.
Sixthly, Barthes’ later ideas about pleasure and jouissance in the
reading of the text - a development of his earlier distinctions of writerly
and readerly (Culler 2002: 82) - and his concept of the influence of the
body (replacing the mind), helps to understand how those involved in
reading and judging the screen idea might react. Plaisir is a general pleasure
that accompanies the readerly text, ‘one we know how to read’
(Culler 2002: 83) of euphoria, fulfilment and comfort; opposite this is
jouissance, the pleasure that ‘discomforts ... unsettles the reader’s historical,
cultural, psychological assumptions, the consistency of his tastes,
values, memories, brings to a crisis his relation with language’ (Barthes
1975: 14). If one accepts that the purpose of the writer is to create an
emotion in the reader, and conversely that the purpose of the reader is to
create an emotion from (or with) the text, then one might propose that the
reader’s search for ‘originality’ (Macdonald 2003: 32 passim) is just that
search for jouissance. What might explain the difficulties that readers
express in their search for an original screen idea or an original ‘voice’
could be the problem that readers are seeking plaisir strongly at the same
complication of classic
realism (for example
Pulp Fiction, Magnolia,
or Memento).
However, we are not
concerned here with
the final screenwork,
but with the
screenplay - whether
the screenwork
constitutes a
‘readerly’ or a
‘writerly’ text, does
the same apply to the
screenplay?
95Disentangling the screen idea
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time as wanting to see jouissance - something that is clearly problematic if
(as Johnston (1985) suggests) readerly and writerly are to be viewed as
opposite extremes of a spectrum. However, rather than pleasure being
obtained from direct or clear meaning, jouissance comes from a lack of
clarity, from an estrangement or shock value; the ‘corporeal “grain of the
voice”’ (Culler 2002: 79). Given the drive towards the readerly in screenwork
development, this suggests why it is sometimes difficult to find the
writerly, and jouissance, in conventional screenworks; and possibly also
why the complaint is still heard that there are no good screenplays
around.13
The process of development and the screen idea
Can any of this be seen at work during the process of developing the
screenplay? The CILECT conference ‘Triangle 2’, held at Terni, Italy in
1998, had as its purpose the demonstration, analysis and strengthening of
the creative relationship between writer, director and producer (Ross
2001). Although the participants for each project comprise students and
experienced professionals, and the tone is therefore instructional (in places
at least), the transnational nature of the project groups and the serious
intention to develop a professional proposal for each film provides an
insight into the normative processes of screenplay development.14
I took two of the projects described in the report15
and analysed the
transcripts for common signs of method and progression. The process
firstly took the form of question and answer, of establishing understanding
of the proposal and of the ‘world’ it presented. Secondly (and shortly after
the start of the process), the questioning referred to dramatic conventions
and genre, so clearly placing the proposal into a framework that was taken
as a given. Knowledge of this framework was assumed or explained (but
not questioned) during the session. The process here was one of probing
and testing, similar to defending a thesis, which then opened out into a
shared discussion involving raising problems and solutions to those problems.
The assessment criteria became overt during the conversation; the
internal structure and argument (story) were being tested for consistency
and internal logic, as well as against other criteria (dramatic, logistic, aesthetic,
genre, market, examples of successful films). Discussion left the
written text (shared before the session) behind, so that the only location
for the screen idea was within the discussion, or (with subsequent sessions)
in the initial introduction at the start of discussion. The general discourse
was (in both cases) around the creation of a classic text, and on
occasion it became clear what the professionals felt were the conventions:
In movies, why do heroes find love and why do they end up doing the
job? It’s always because they don’t want to do it. Sometimes a man’s gotta
do what a man’s gotta do! ... [in movies] people are made to do things
because that’s drama! (screenwriter Neville Smith in Ross 2001: 36)
All participants made suggestions, with the professionals affirming or
rejecting. The process, described by a student as ‘being forced to constantly
talk about the ideas, having to explain precisely what had actually
changed in the last 24 hours’ (Ross 2001: 76), was one which encouraged
verbal encapsulation (such as a high-concept description), and using other
13 For example, Julian
Friedmann in
ScriptWriter, 11 July
2003, p. 5.
14 Each project involved
a student producer,
director and writer,
talking with their
‘tutors’, a professional
producer, director and
writer. The imbalance
in status between
tutor and student was
noticeable but not
always so, and the
workshops were
intended to
‘concentrate on the
script/narrative development
process’ (Ross
2001: 7), as ‘an
opportunity to study
the methodology of
top [tutors/professionals]
working in the
field of story and
script development’
(Ross 2001: 5).
15 The Italian project
and the British project
(Ross 2001: 17-50,
51-78 respectively).
96 Ian W. MacDonald
JMP 5-2 Layout 5/11/04 10:39 am Page 96
films as shorthand for ideas (such as ‘going down the Marnie route’). The
students’ reaction to this process was initially shock at the ‘violence’
shown to their ideas (Ross 2001: 37), then appreciation (that they were
being given suggestions) and wistfulness, when they realized that they
were being led away from their original ideas - ‘the most difficult thing to
understand was when our tutors’ tips were taking us further away from
the idea we had of our own film’ (Ross 2001: 37); ‘this is not the film I
wanted to make’ (Ross 2001: 73). The process was one in which the
screen idea was being shaped, altered and drawn towards what the professionals
thought of as right, based on internalized experience and expressed
as craft or lore.
Despite different roles, all participants contributed. The screen idea was
‘rewritten’, overtly and sometimes in the face of resistance from some, by
the participants. Readers here were active participants, making meaning
not just from a written text but from verbal discussion, sometimes in
complex and even confusing ways as understanding and contribution
oscillates between the participants. It is not possible to decide who was the
‘author’ of this screen idea, other than the collective character of the
group and the norms and conventions that inform it. The underlying drive
is towards making the shared idea ‘readerly’; what was unacknowledged
were the underlying criteria for this. The process, which appears to be
writerly (in that it is essentially one in which writer and readers deconstruct
and reconstruct the screen idea together), has a purpose that aims
towards the readerly.
Conclusions
The conclusions I draw here are firstly that the screen idea (as a notion of
a potential screenwork, held by one or more people, whether or not it is
possible to describe it on paper or by other means) is a useful concept in
understanding the process of development of the screenplay, and of the
screenwork itself. Secondly, analysis of the development process using the
concept of the screen idea makes more clear the influence of industrial and
cultural norms and assumptions used within that process, that might otherwise
be hidden or remain unacknowledged. In this sense I disagree with
Kohn’s quote from Deleuze and Guttari (1987) that the screen idea as a
text has ‘nothing to do with ideology’ (2000: 504), as it seems clear that
development is designed to shape or confirm a screen idea in a particular
relationship to the field. Thirdly, that Barthes’s emphasis on the reader in
the analysis of literature is helpful in understanding the process of screenplay
development, in several ways: in understanding the collaborative
process that creates and shapes the screen idea; in locating the screen idea
as a shared concept within that process (and regarding the screenplay as a
partial record of that); in observing and considering the elements that
make up that process of collaborative development; and in understanding
that process as dynamic and complex during which meaning is explored,
shared and created. The process of screenplay development is overt and
thus observable, unlike the production of a novel, for example. Fourthly,
Barthes’s distinction between ‘readerly’ and ‘writerly’ texts is helpful in
understanding the process of screenplay development as one in which
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writerly activity is directed towards the production of a readerly text.
Fifthly, Barthes’s later distinctions between plaisir and jouissance seem also
to be helpful in considering the screen reader’s search for ‘originality’, but
it is less clear how this fits with the reader’s simultaneous desire for a readerly
screen idea.
References
Barthes, R. (1968), ‘The Death of the Author’, in Barthes (1977) pp. 142-48.
—- (1970), ‘The third meaning. Research notes on some Eisenstein stills’, in
Barthes (1977) pp.52-68.
—- (1974), ‘S/Z’, Oxford: Blackwell.
—- (1977) ‘Image, Music, Text’, London: Fontana.
Burke, S. (ed.) (1995), ‘Authorship: From Plato to Postmodern’, Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Burke, S. (1998), ‘The Death and Return of the Author’, 2nd edn., Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Cook, P. (ed.) (1985), ‘The Cinema Book’, London: British Film Institute.
Corliss, R. (1975), ‘Talking Pictures. Screenwriters of Hollywood’, Newton Abbot:
David and Charles.
Culler, J. (2002), ‘Barthes: A Very Short Introduction’, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987) ‘A thousand plateaus’, Minneapolis, University of
Minnesota Press.
Elsaesser, T. & Buckland, W. (2002), ‘Studying Contemporary American Film: A
Guide to Movie Analysis’, London: Arnold.
Johnston, S. (1985), ‘Barthes’, in Cook (1985) pp. 238-41.
Kohn, N. (2000), ‘The screenplay as postmodern literary exemplar: authorial distraction,
disappearance, dissolution’, Qualitative Inquiry 6: 4, pp. 489-510.
MacDonald, I.W. (2003), ‘Finding the needle: how readers see screen ideas’, Journal
of Media Practice, 4: 1 pp.27-39.
Mehring, M. (1990), ‘The Screenplay: A Blend of Film Form and Content’, London:
Focal Press.
Olsen, B. (1990), ‘Roland Barthes: from sign to text’, in Tilley (1990) pp.163-205.
Parker, P. (1998), ‘The Art and Science of Screenwriting’, Exeter: Intellect Books.
Ross, D. (ed), (1997(?)), ‘Triangle. Rome - December 1996. A Conference
Examining Professional Models and Teaching Practice in Relation to Concepts
of Collaboration Between Writer, Producer and Director Students in Film and
Television Education’, Rome, Italy: CILECT/GEECT/Ente Cinema Roma/MEDIA
II.
Ross, D., (ed), (2001), ‘Triangle 2: Terni, Italy. October 1998: A Conference for
Teachers and Students Demonstrating the Principles of Collaboration Between
Writers, Directors and Producers in the Development of Feature Screenplays’,
Terni, Italy: CILECT/GEECT/Centro Multimediale di Terni/Provincia di
Terni/MEDIA II.
Russell, D. (2003), ‘Narrative structure: can media studies deliver?’, ScriptWriter,
11 July, pp. 36-40.
Thompson, R.J. & Burns, G. (1990) ‘Introduction’, in Thompson, R.J. & Burns, G.
eds. (1990) pp.2-22.
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Thompson, R.J. & Burns, G. eds. (1990) ‘Making television: Authorship and the
production process’, New York: Praeger.
Tilley, C. (ed.) (1990), ‘Reading Material Culture’, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Winston, D.G. (1973), ‘The Screenplay as Literature’, Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press.
Suggested Citation
MacDonald, I. (2004), ‘Disentangling the screen idea’, Journal of Media Practice
5: 2, pp. 89–99, doi: 10.1386/jmpr.5.2.89/0
Contributor Details
Ian MacDonald, formerly Head of the Northern Film School, is Principal Lecturer,
Media Practice and Research at Leeds Metropolitan University Contact: School of
Film, TV and Performing Arts, Leeds Metropolitan University, Calverley Street,
Leeds LS1 3HE. E-mail: iw.macdonald@virgin.net
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