Screenwriting Commons^™

Meno And Euphrates Elementary: Episodes 1 & 2, Thad F. Lee

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Horse's Ass: A Survey Of Comediology, William M. Fisk

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

What is comedy? Can someone learn to be funny? Are there rules or guidelines for the production of laughter, the universal language? This paper, which outlines an investigation of successful comedians and the production of a short film, determines to aggregate as many of the relevant prerequisites of inducing giggles as possible, especially as they relate to the audiovisual medium of cinema.

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

The Mountains Are Calling, Alexis Brianne Collins

Honors College Theses

Mark Knapp’s Relationship Model in Communication Studies attempts to limit human relationships to a specific, linear array of stages and categories. This research project attempts to critique the rigidity of Knapp’s model, while simultaneously attempting to posit film as an incredibly influential tool (if not an alternative model entirely) for communication both diegetically – within the realm of the film – and in conversation with an audience. The silent nature of the creative filmed portion of this project is in direct opposition to Knapp’s model, which inadvertently roots human relationships in language.

An Unfinished Conversation: An Interview With Yiyun Li, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

An interview of fiction writer and memoirist Yiyun LI.

Woman Standing, Allison Adams

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

This is a feature-length screenplay following Farren Cane, a young woman living in a rural Appalachian town, as she struggles with the intersections of gender, class, and the tension between her own ambition and her familial obligation.

End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The Blanket Of The Dark, Tracy L. Norwood

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Blanket of the Dark is a psychological thriller that explores the horrors of postpartum psychosis, a rare but serious illness a new mother can experience in the days and weeks following the birth of her child. The film is an intimate portrayal of the psychology of a new mother suffering from the hallucinations and delusions that are symptoms of this horrific and oftentimes undiagnosed illness. In the end, motherhood for women with undiagnosed postpartum psychosis is anything but joyful, and can lead to suicide and murder.

This paper is a candid analysis, a production report as it were, of …

My Name Is Jing, Jing Wang

Theses and Dissertations

My Name is Jing is an essay film about my family and a commentary on the rapid changes that have taken place in Chinese society over the past five decades. The film explores personal and national memories. It shows the impact of large-scale economic and social changes on an ordinary Chinese family.

Trepidation: A Film Project On Cultural Trauma, Courtney A. Duchene

Media and Communication Studies Summer Fellows

A trailer and a screenplay for a docudrama film that examines cultural trauma in relation to police shootings and the 2016 election.

New Design Principles For Mobile History Games, Owen Gottlieb

Presentations and other scholarship

This study draws on design-based research on an ARIS–based mobile augmented reality game for teaching early 20th century history. New design principles derived from the study include the use of supra-reveals, and bias mirroring. Supra-reveals are a kind of foreshadowing event in order to ground historical happenings in the wider enduring historical understanding. Bias mirroring refers to a nonplayer character echoing back a player’s biased behavior, in order to open the player to listening to alternative perspectives. Supra-reveals engendered discussion of historical themes early in the game experience. The results showed that use of a cluster of NPC bias mirroring …

Desecrate: An Original Feature-Length Screenplay, Justin Zorn

Honors Theses

The basis of this creative project was to construct a feature-length, three-act screenplay in the mold of both the American Western genre and the modern road epic. The “road” genre, a staple of American cinema, is form of story in which one or two characters are confronted by situations that put them on journeys of Odysseus-like proportions during which they must overcome some fundamental issues in their respective lives. Following the examples of mainstream road epics such as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan (1998) and the Cohen brothers O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), my screenplay incorporates the same three-act …

Navigating The Moral Pitfalls Of The Service Industry "The Book Of Snake", Paul S. Punzo

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis paper examines how I turned real life experiences and observations into a fictionalized screenplay that explores the potential for vice inherent in tip-based service industry jobs. After that, I move on to the preproduction process and touch on casting, location scouting, visualization, production design, budgeting and crewing. Next I discuss how the preproduction and on-set efforts of individuals were all critical to our production. Then I chronicle the ups and downs of postproduction. Finally, I conclude with an admittedly subjective analysis of the effectiveness of the movie itself.

Into The Green, Mary M. Casteel

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The contents of this paper will detail the making of my film Into the Green, a University of New Orleans thesis film. I will examine the processes used to create my film in five parts. Part One will cover the various inspirations and influences that I pulled from to create the story. Part Two will cover the entirety of pre-production and will begin to detail the various collaborators who worked along with me. In Part Three I will discuss the shooting process in Arkansas and in Part Four I will cover the film’s journey through post-production. Finally, in Part Five, …

Mom's Photoshoot, Eric G. Hollerbach

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This is a semi-autobiographical script about the author, Eric Hollerbach. It analyzes how problems with his mother manifest into problems with his romantic relationships.

Everyone Dies When They Come To My House, David Techman

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Beacon, Samantha Eroche

Senior Honors Theses

Beacon is a short, relatively low production value screenplay about two people coming to know each other better, about them coming to know themselves better and to grow as human beings. When Kate Clarence realizes she’s discovered the journal of her favorite pen-named author from childhood—“C. Rimes”—she embarks on a journey to return it to him, whoever he is. She’s delinquent on her rent, her bookshop’s failing, she’s far from her landlocked Midwest home and family, and she’s single; the obligation to return the journal is a welcomed adventure and reprieve. However, when she comes to the conclusion that C. …

Re::Humanity, Paisley Summer Ford

Senior Honors Theses

No abstract provided.

“The Imaginary Dragons” A Short Film., Christina Mcdonagh

Honors Capstone Projects - All

It’s mid September of 2001 and Fawn, a sheltered yet curious girl living in Manhattan, begins to feel as if everyone is keeping a secret from her…

– A Short Film Based on a True Story –

My Story.

Think back to the day of September 11^th, 2001. Do you remember where you were and what you were doing when the tragic news broke? Most Americans do, but what if it was kept from you? What if your world was so sheltered you didn’t realize the city you lived in was falling apart around you? That was the …

Reality Meets Fiction, Nicholas M. Balcells

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The development of a film rooted in family conflicts and an exploration of the nature of authorship.

Social Justice Through Storytelling: Sugar Land, Alexa Garster

Honors Thesis

This thesis project (i.e. feature screenplay) was inspired first and foremost by an interest in the function of capital punishment in today’s society; and secondly, by the significant absence of female protagonists across the majority of contemporary film narratives. As such, this script focuses on a female anesthesiologist who, through a series of unanticipated events, comes to accept the job of executioner at a Texas state prison.

This narrative thus addresses the role of the executioner—as well as the political, social, cultural, and psychological consequences that come from such a position—against the larger backdrop of capital punishment. It is a …

Story Problem Solving, Brian D. Kalina

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This project paper will explore and define the relationship between the Creative Problem Solving (CPS) and the timeless concept of storytelling. Since the beginning of time, people have been sharing stories to relate their experiences and their solutions to overcome challenges and obstacles. CPS is a more modern methodology that aids people in their approach and their ability to generate plans and solutions to overcome challenges and obstacles. Therefore, the premise of this project is to seek answers to the questions; (1) How might we look to stories as frameworks for solving our problems? and (2) How might we marry …

A Theoretical Application Of Metaphor Research To The Film Industry, Michael J. Stanton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper explores the value of using metaphor based marketing research methods (most notably Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) in the development and green-lighting processes of filmmaking. A review of literature reveals that even large blockbuster films lack any marketing research employed in the developmental stage. Audiences are extremely difficult to analyze when considering something as abstract and subjective as what makes a “good” film. Metaphor based marketing research methods (e.g. ZMET) offer a solution by examining the minds of consumers through language markers called metaphors. Using a metaphor based marketing technique early in a film’s development process may help to …

Pathos, Spring 2017, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Jessica Moore

Volume 11 No. 3

Sonoran, Brandon Valencia

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Hollywood, The Media, And The Alteration Of Image In The 1940s, Sean M. Conrad

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

I am currently writing a feature-length screenplay entitled Klara based on true events and people surrounding the rise of Nazi Germany and the exile of Jewish-German intellectuals to America during 1933-1945. The narrative is grounded in the work of the European Film Fund (1938-1948), the Paul Kohner Talent Agency, and the various agents of propaganda at work both in Nazi Germany and America during this time period. Through my research I hope to explicate how Jewish-German exile in America influenced not only those exiled, but also the burgeoning American film industry and how the cross-cultural intersection of media propaganda, both …

"Fragmegration" Of Identity In Laurent Cantet's Ressources Humaines And L'Emploi Du Temps, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

As James Rosenau has written, localization and globalization came crashing together at the turn of the 20^th century in a type of oxymoronic chaos he labels "fragmegration" that characterizes the confusion people have as to their role in society. It is this identity confusion that Laurent Cantet portrays in his landmark films Ressources humaines (1999) and L'emploi du temps (2001). Cantet's protagonists seek their place in society as they cope with the sudden destabilization of their local, national, and globalized identities.

Fantissity, Alexandra N. Dean

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Pathos, Winter 2017, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

Pathos

Editor: Jessica Moore

Volume 11 No. 2

"If You Want To Be The Man, You've Got To Beat The Man": Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990'S, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE’s on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism …