Screenwriting Commons^™

Little Trees, Maxwell Kane

Honors Theses

I believe in the power of film as a medium of storytelling. My desire to head a year-long production as well as create a moving story that underlined my interest in sibling relationships motivated me to create a short film as my honors thesis. My film, Little Trees, emphasizes themes such as alienation and growth within a broken household. My ultimate goal is to become an artist who creates meaningful cinema by telling deeply personal stories, and creating Little Trees was a successful first step in that process.

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

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

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

LSU 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.

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.

The Blanket Of The Dark, Tracy L. Norwood

LSU 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 …

Detroitus, Evan Romansky

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Bloody Sunday, Cheri Monique Shannon

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Into The Green, Mary M. Casteel

LSU 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, …

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

LSU 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.

Mom's Photoshoot, Eric G. Hollerbach

LSU 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.

Sonoran, Brandon Valencia

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Everyone Dies When They Come To My House, David Techman

LMU Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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.

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 …