Screenwriting Commons^™

Self-Listening & Envisioning Audience Exercise & Assignment, Jacob Kose

Open Educational Resources

This assignment and exercise encourages students to pick a formative story, artifact, individual, or moment in their acquisition of language and/or literacy. Students record themselves telling this story, then type that recording, and make choices about how to edit that text.Instructors may invite students to read these aloud, and/or peer edit. Students may also submit reflections and comment on each others' reflection.

"Real Women Have Bodies": A Study In Adaptation, Madison Ephlin

Honors Projects

The art of adaptation is a difficult process, and is often hard to please general audiences that have a connection to the source material. As a student who studies both English Literature and Film Production, the question asked through this study is what does it take to write a “successful” adaptation? What qualifies as “successful”? How does an adaptation balance the themes, characterization, and plot of a piece of literature with the continuous momentum and visual complexity that the medium of film requires, all in 120 pages or less? This study engages with these questions by actively practicing adaptation, adapting …

Women Writers Of Film & Television, Haley Hunt

Symposium of Student Scholars

After spending the summer immersed in archival, literary, and online research, I am proud to report my findings on the history of women in screenwriting. With the help of Anna Weinstein, I have compiled original statistics, overviews, and biographies that will be published with the launch of our website, Women Writers of Film & Television (WWFTV). At its core, this site aims to empower young girls with the knowledge and resources they need to get started in the screenwriting field. However, the site is intentionally layered by reading level; it is accessible to all ages on the surface, while also …

Sandstorm Spring 2022, Leslie Malland

Sandstorm: A Journal of Arts and Letters

Full Manuscript

The Screen And Development: Creative Writing And Liminality In Children’S Literature, Rebecca E. Glenn

All Theses

This creative thesis strives to research and implement the overlap of liminality found within Children’s Literature, especially those works that exist through the screen. The critical component of this thesis explores the ways in which childhood development and maturity, a theme commonly found within Children’s Literature, embodies its own “right of passage” associated with the liminal. The journey of the Children’s Literature protagonist is often wrought with this movement from familiar boundaries to a sense of new development. The critical analysis emphasizes the methods Children’s Literature genre uses emotion, familial connections, symbology, space, and even elements of the monstrous to …

Out Of A Darkness: A Collection Of Ramblings, Short Stories, And Poetry, Valerie Anthony

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

A Collection of Poetry, Short Stories and Ramblings

Super Heroes V Scorsese: A Marxist Reading Of Alienation And The Political Unconscious In Blockbuster Superhero Film, David Eltz

Kutztown University Masters Theses

As superhero blockbusters continue to dominate the theatrical landscape, critical detractors of the genre have grown in number and authority. The most influential among them, Martin Scorsese, has been quoted as referring to Marvel films as “theme parks” rather than “cinema” (his own term for auteur film). Despite this, these films often possess considerably challenging views in regards to social justice, and continue to interface with the pervading theme of alienation in increasingly abstract and progressive ways.

This thesis considers four films (1978’s Superman, 2000’s X-Men, 2013’s Captain America: Winter Soldier, and 2018’s Black Panther) from a Marxist perspective, viewing …

The Yellow Belly Anthology: Micro-Films About Humans At Their Least Impressive, Tommy Armstrong

English Honors Papers

In the fall semester of 2019, I worked with my adviser Dr. Jon Volkmer on writing sixty sixty-second shorts on the theme of human insecurity, based off of real-life experiences and stories. I wrote a series of micro-scripts satirizing human self-consciousness and anxiety — moments that are rushed over or lost in longer-form mass media and film. The scripts show humans at their most indecisive, insecure, and vulnerable. Each of these scripts give glimpses into one or two people’s interior lives as they find themselves in a particular nerve-provoking situation. In all of the shorts, a person must overcome, submit …

The Art Of The Game: Issues In Adapting Video Games, Sydney Baty

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On the face of things, movies and video games are similar mediums. Both engage extensively in visuals and audio, both can indulge in speculative fiction, and there is a healthy amount of sharing of inspiration and content. However, this does not guarantee successful adaptations from one form to another. Movies adapted from video games are notorious for being simply terrible, but little academic attention has been paid as to why these adaptations in particular seem so unsuccessful in every way, from audience reception, critical response, and monetary returns. This issue is based on fundamental differences in the medium. Games are, …

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …

Crafting Fear: The Horror Film Trailer, Courtney Dreyer

Honors Theses

My research project investigates horror film trailers in an effort to define the characteristics of this genre and discuss its ideological implications. Focusing on theatrical trailers for American wide-release horror films between 2013 and 2017, I closely viewed a sample of forty trailers to inform my investigation. Horror trailers create an intense emotional experience of both dread and fear, tending to follow a similar narrative structure and employ a common set of stylistic techniques to achieve this emotional intensity. The shared stylistic techniques include elements such as tight framing, innocent imagery, and genre misdirection. The repetition of these elements promotes …

End Of Paragraph, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Stealing Revelation: A Screenplay Of The Thief Accompanied By A Religious Analysis, Jean E. Sleight

Honors Projects

Megan Whalen Turner’s The Thief follows the story of a thief who seeks to steal an item for fame and glory and to save his country. Though he initially does not believe in the gods, he finds that they exist and are more involved in his life than he would want them to be. The screenplay is a loyal adaptation of the book. The analysis follows the thief’s journey from skepticism to faith and draws a comparison between the gods in the novel and the Christian God.

Hansel And Gretel: A Feature And Study On How Fairy Tales Have Changed, Nazeli Ekimyan

Honors Thesis

Once upon a time, the Little Mermaid watched her Prince marry another woman, the Sleeping Beauty was raped by a Prince and woke up from her deep slumber to find out she was the mother of twins, the Little Red Riding Hood never made it out alive, and Goldilocks broke her neck jumping out of a window. This project examines original fairy tales and how they have changed over the years through various adaptations in media and film. The purpose is to find an answer to the question of why these sugarcoated changes have been made over time. In order …

A Miniseries Of Unfortunate Events: Realizing The Full Potential Of Lemony Snicket's Book Series Through Television Adaptation, Ryan T. Pait

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, a series of 13 children’s books, seemed like it had the potential to become a massive franchise in a similar vein to the Harry Potter film series. Snicket’s books feature three plucky protagonists, a sinister villain, and constantly-shifting settings—all elements that could make a successful movie series. A film adaptation, titled Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events was made in 2004. It adapted the first three books in the series, and became a moderate financial and critical success. Despite the success, no further films were made.

As a fan of Snicket’s …

“The Bedroom And The Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, And Shelter In ‘The Miller’S Tale’” & Haunchebones, Danielle N. Byington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

“The Bedroom and the Barnyard: Zoomorphic Lust Through Territory, Procedure, and Shelter in ‘The Miller’s Tale’” is an academic endeavor that takes Chaucer’s zoomorphic metaphors and similes and analyzes them in a sense that reveals the chaos of what is human and what is animal tendency. The academic work is expressed in the adjunct creative project, Haunchebones, a 10-minute drama that echoes the tale and its zoomorphic influences, while presenting the content in a stylized play influenced by Theatre of the Absurd and artwork from the medieval and early renaissance period.

“Shining” With The Marginalized: Self-Reflection And Empathy In Stanley Kubrick’S The Shining, Bethany Miller

English Seminar Capstone Research Papers

This paper examines Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror masterpiece The Shining and how it references the history of violence against the marginalized in America.