News

SRN Book/Publication Awards 2025

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The SRN AWARDS will celebrate the 6th edition at the 2025 Conference in Adelaide, Australia this September 2025.

We invite all members and colleagues to submit Nominations for the best publications of 2024/2025 by the deadline of 15 June 2025 for articles published between 1 June 2024 & 31 May 2025.Both nominations and self-nominations are welcome. Winners will be announced at the 2025 SRN Conference in Adelaide, Australia.

The Awards this year will be again in two categories:

Best Monograph – for single-authored or co-authored volumes (any format)

Best Journal Article/Book Chapter – Both articles and chapters normally range around 6-8,000 words but the format may vary.

While no ratings of journals/publishers will be a factor in the evaluation of submissions, all publications should be scholarly, fully peer-reviewed work underpinned by substantial research specifically in the area of Screenwriting Studies.

Guidelines for the submission of nominations:

All submissions in both categories should be made directly to all the members of the Jury (see contact details below) by 15 June 2025. However, early submissions are most welcome and encouraged.

MONOGRAPHS – Nominees and self-nominees should send hard copies of their monographs directly to each Juror via regular mail/courier. Publishers are usually happy to supply complimentary evaluation/inspection copies: only where this is really not possible (including, for instance, volumes due out very close to the deadline), authors can send a PDF copy of the approved preprint manuscript (in this case via email) as a backup option.

ARTICLES/CHAPTERS – Individual journal articles (i.e. not the whole journal) or chapters (i.e. not the whole book) should be sent as PDF (as per preprint approved draft) directly to each of the Jurors via email.

All submissions will be evaluated independently by our Jury of distinguished academics:

Professor Carmen Sofia Brenes csbrenes@gmail.com

Leslie Kreiner Wilson leslie.kreiner@pepperdine.edu

Garrabost Jayalakshmi g.jayalakshmi@napier.ac.uk

If you have any enquiries, please contact Rosanne Welch Rwelch@stephens.edu

SRN Screenwriting Teaching Innovation Award

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The Screenwriting Research Network (SRN) Teaching Innovation Award recognizes the achievements of an outstanding faculty scholar whose work demonstrates original approaches to supporting the teaching and learning development of screenwriters and scholars of screenwriting. The committee is particularly interested in reviewing materials from applicants who look critically at their research agenda and teaching practice and consider how in addition to being innovative in their classrooms they are intentionally integrating their screenwriting research into their pedagogy.

Additionally, the committee would like to encourage applicants to:

  • Demonstrate the significance and value of their
  • Address how their research and teaching practice is new to the
  • Consider the exportability of their teaching innovation (how the practice can be adapted by other educators).
  • Demonstrate an overall awareness of their research and teaching innovations and what they are trying to achieve. In other words, clearly articulate pedagogical objectives and the broader significance of their

As a member of SRN, you may self-nominate for the Screenwriting Teaching Innovation Award, or you may nominate a colleague. Each nominee is responsible for collecting, collating, and preparing the application materials. Please submit a nomination packet of no more than 20 pages, including the following materials:

  • Two-page summary statement describing an innovative assignment or teaching method including goals for the assignment or instructional technique, implementation in the classroom, student feedback and interaction with the assignment or teaching method, student success, and an explanation of reflective teaching and adjustments in response to student work and
  • Three-page (max) CV highlighting accomplishments in teaching including screenwriting courses developed and taught, student mentoring, student successes, teaching workshops, institutional teaching awards, or published scholarship on the teaching and learning development of screenwriters and screenwriting scholars.

•       Sample assignment or syllabus.

  • Two letters of support from colleagues, department chair, dean, or former
  • Other supporting documentation such as anonymous student evaluations; course reviews from colleagues; press releases about teaching-related achievements; evidence of previous teaching awards; or video recordings of lectures or

Nomination packets are due July 15. The SRN Teaching Innovation Award Committee will select two awardees for 2025. Awardees will be notified August 15, and awards will be presented at the 2025 SRN conference. Please direct questions to Anna Weinstein and send application packet materials to the Teaching Innovation Award three judges:

Armando Fumagalli – armando.fumagalli@unicatt.it
Dee Hughes – dhughes@bournemouth.ac.uk
Anna Weinstein – aweinst6@kennesaw.edu

Work has begun on recovering abstracts presented by keynote speakers at SRN conferences

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The SRN Executive Board is currently conducting research and recovering the lists of keynote speakers from past annual conferences and their abstracts or full presentations (when available). This valuable material has been recovered and can help many of our members in their research. The recovery work was carried out by Prof. Jan Cernik. Here you can see the results obtained so far.

History of SRN Conferences recovered

Through meticulous research by SRN executive board members, led by Professor Jan Cernik, the history of keynote speakers at SRN conferences has been recovered. Below, you can read this precious and important work. Also, below find the main list where you can read the complete list of keynote speeches from all conferences.

List of keynote speeches from Screenwriting Research Network conferences

Keynote speakers at SRN conferences traditionally set topics for discussion, suggest research opportunities or bring inspiring insights from the audiovisual industry. They also often represent the region in which the conference is held. These are the main reasons why we have decided to compile a list of keynote speakers as part of our organisation’s history mapping activity.

This list was created thanks to the SRN community in January 2025. Following the call, many of our members responded and each contributed a piece to the puzzle.

But the list is not complete. If you have information about missing speakers, titles of their presentations, abstracts, full texts or follow-up publications, please send it to this e-mail.

Leeds (2008, UK)

Helsinki (2009, Finland)

  • Torben Grodal: Biology and Culture in Storytelling
  • Ian Macdonald: Thin air and solid ground: rethinking screenwriting research
  • David Howard: Beginning, Middle and End – Not Necessarily in that Order

Copenhagen (2010, Denmark)

  • Janet Steiger: Considering the Script as Blueprint in 2010
  • Steven Maras: On Disciplinarity, Practice, and Approach: Overcoming the ‘Object Problem’ in Screenwriting Research
  • Jill Nelmes: Analysing the Screenplay

Brussels (2011, Belgium)

  • David Bordwell: I Love a Mystery: Screenwriting and Storytelling in 1940s Hollywood
  • Jean-Claude Carrière: L’enseignement du scénario
  • Steven Price: The Screenplay: An Accelerated Critical History
  • Marida di Crosta: From Scriptwriting to Community Story-Telling

See abstracts of all papers

Sydney (2012, Australia)

  • Adrian Martin: Where Do Cinematic Ideas Come From?
  • Helen Grace: Moving Image on the Other Side of History
  • JJ Murphy: Where are you from? Place as an Alternative Form of Scripting
    • Keynote on the importance and value of treating location as another `character’ in independent cinema.

Madison, Wisconsin (2013, USA)

  • Larry Gross
  • Jon Raymond
  • Kristin Thompson

Potsdam-Babelsberg (2014, Germany)

  • Milcho Manchevski: Why I Like Writing and Hate Directing: Notes of a Recovering Writer-Director
  • Jutta Brückner: (Auto)biographic Storytelling
  • Brian Winston: Screenwriting in Documentary Filmmaking

London (2015, UK)

  • Hossein Amini
  • Kathryn Millard
    • In her keynote address she explored the relationship between improvisation and composition in creative practice and its particular relevance to the role of the writer in contemporary screen media and digital ecologies.
  • Jonathan Powell: Sculptors and plumbers: The writer and television
    • In his Keynote Address ‘Sculptors and Plumbers’ (from Billy Wilder’s famous comment that asking Scott Fitzgerald to write a screenplay was like hiring a great sculptor to do a plumbing job), Jonathan Powell looked at the intersection between inspiration and industry as it affects the writer’s place in the world of television fiction. He used his experience gained as a producer, commissioner and executive working with some of the leading British TV writers of the 20th Century and reflected on the position of the writer as the primary forcebehind the creation of drama for the smaller screen.
    • Full text: https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/27787478/1_Powell_AAM.pdf
    • Keynote was subsequently published in the Journal of Screenwriting: https://doi.org/10.1386/josc.7.3.255_3
  • Ronald Harwood (interviewed by Christine Geraghty)
  • Anamaria Marinca

Leeds (2016, UK)

  • Soni Jorgensen
    • In her keynote address she talked about developing unique screenplays by exploring the relationship between Character, Plot and the Human Experience.
  • Peter Bowker
  • Kristyn Gorton
    • Her talk will consider the role of emotion and affect within television. Drawing on examples from contemporary television and her work from Media Audiences, she will consider the ways in which emotion is constructed and valued in television.
  • Tony Garnett: What exactly is a screenplay? What is the place of a screenwriter? Individualism in a collaborative creative act
  • Liz Rosenthal
    • Liz will talk about taking a new approach to concept and story development, helping creatives and producers develop cross-platform, and interactive formats. At PttP’s Labs they have been creating methods to incubate projects in a new way where they get storytellers to approach development in a platform agnostic way, going back to core story concepts, thinking carefully about how to engage users on appropriate platforms and organically growing projects.

Dunedin (2017, New Zealand)

  • Ian W. Macdonald
  • Dave Gibson
  • Gaylene Preston
  • Fiona Samuel, Kathryn Burnett
  • Rachel Lang

Milan (2018, Italy)

  • Eleonora Andreatta: Public broadcasting in the global market era
    • Rai is a public service broadcaster whose identity is connected to the relationship it has with Italy, Italian values, history and culture. For this reason, Rai Fiction can’t be just a financier, but it is also a commissioning editor, with a complete vision of the product, and the clear challenge to deal with national and International audiences. Hence the need for an industrial studio-like structure, suitable for the production of Tv series, in order to get top ratings in Italy and to compete on a global level, leveraging on Italian history, art and creativity. Rai’s breakthrough: not only being a leader in Italian television but also partnering with global TV players, -from cable TV to on demand platforms-, to produce great International content.
  • Paolo Braga: Different Industries, Different Screenwriting Schools. The Italian storytelling approach to TV seriality compared to the US method
    • Each industry has its own way of crafting stories for TV. Different organizational models in the task of breaking down stories; the influence of titles which have been successful in a particular market; the peculiar viewing attitudes of a domestic audience… all these factors make screenwriters adopt a combination of writing techniques peculiar to each country. Even if the US writing school has imposed itself as a universal standard — the “orthodoxy” (I.W. Macdonald, 2013) — deviations from its lessons — slight or significant, depending on the case — define the originality of an industry’s storytelling. In this perspective, I am going to consider the Italian school of screenwriting for TV, in order to highlight what is unique to it in comparison to the North American narrative method. For this purpose, I will focus on two cases of international remakes. I will compare a) Red Band Society (Fox, 2014), the unsuccessful US version of the Catalan series Polseres Vermelles, to Braccialetti Rossi (Rai 1, 2014-2017), the successful Italian version of the same medical teen-drama, and b) Parenthood (NBC, 2010-2015), the original US version of a network family drama, to its Italian remake Tutto può succedere (Rai 1, 2015-present). My analyses will show that differences in the degree of thematization and the level of drama characters have to face within each episode are key elements to define the Italian school of writing for TV.
  • Warren Buckland: “Mind our mouths and beware our talk”: Stylometric analysis of character dialogue in The Darjeeling Limited
    • Film dialogue has recently received detailed scholarly attention (“Realism in Screenplay Dialogue,” Jill Nelmes 2013; Film Dialogue, edited by Jeff Jaeckle, 2013, etc.). In this paper I build upon this scholarship via current developments in Humanities Computing – specifically, stylometric studies that employ statistics to quantify the language of texts. I aim to study the distinctive linguistic traits of the dialogue in Wes Anderson’s films, and attempt to identify and quantify the stylistic habits (the distinctive voice) of individual characters. Analysis of the dialogue of the three Whitman brothers in The Darjeeling Limited (screenplay by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Jason Schwartzman, 2007) will serve as a case study.

This paper takes as its starting point J.F. Burrows’s seminal stylometric study of dialogue in Jane Austen’s novels (Burrows, Computation into Criticism, 1987), although it also draws upon more recent developments in computer-based stylometric studies (including Digital Literary Studies, by Hoover, Culpeper, and O’Halloran, 2014), plus the Voyant Tools software package. This paper forms part of a larger project that employs stylometric methods of authorship attribution to study the authorship of co-written screenplays.

  • Keynote speech was published by Journal of Screenwriting: https://intellectdiscover.com/content/journals/10.1386/josc.10.2.131_1
  • Daniele Cesarano: The Pleasure of Storytelling. From Cinema to Television
    • I wrote my first script at 24, the last one at 54. The first was a film, which I also directed, full of unrealistic ambitions and quotes from other films. The last was the final episode of the first season of Suburra – The Series, full of unrealistic ambitions and self-citations. That’s why I decided to stop. I can not stay away from the ambitions. As a writer I went through the audiovisual revolution, the transition from cinema to television, which for me, but not only for me, was the transition from the duty of a story to the pleasure of the story-telling. It was the transition from having to mean something to the pleasure of entertaining. It was breathing. It was fun. It was the television series. At least as long as it lasted…
  • Luisa Cotta Ramosino: Medici. Masters of Florence. Challenges and compromises of an International coproduction: characters, storytelling and production issues.
    • Creating, writing and producing a period drama poses a series of challenges connected with the approach not only to the original historical materials, but also to the different traditions and practice of storytelling of the partners involved.

Deciding how far to go with creativity in interpreting the facts and how much faithful you want to be to the historical background is just the beginning of a process where finding a common language is the key.

Medici. Masters of Florence, a successful Tv series (Rai, Netflix, 2016- ; starring Dustin Hoffman and Richard Madden in its first season and Sean Bean and Daniel Sharman in the second one) created by two American screenwriters, produced by an Italian production company and an Italian public broadcaster with a London based writers room (where British and Italian authors shared their talent and practice) is an interesting case study of how and how much production preconditions can influence the storytelling both virtuously and negatively.

The evolution in the writing process along the now three seasons of the show (the third will be shot in the last months of 2018, when the second will be broadcasted) is the key to offer an insight on the difficult adventure of creating an International series starting from a country with a relatively small market and trying to get the best from different traditions both in terms of creativity and actual organization of work.

  • Neil Landau: Global TV On Demand: Authenticity and Empathy Across the Cultural Divide
    • How our need for human connection has expanded the global television marketplace from conventional, formulaic program genres into more localized, specific, authentic “native content”. This talk will explore the digital television revolution that’s disrupted the once dominant linear, broadcast network business models that once cast the broadest net in order to generate the highest possible overnight ratings into diverse, niche content with an emphasis on authenticity. Niche is the new mainstream, and the mandates at streaming (SVOD) behemoths like Netflix are variety and exclusivity. With Amazon, Hulu, Apple, Facebook, and YouTube all producing their own programs, there has never been a higher demand for fresh, non formulaic content, or a better time to showcase your unique, original voice as writer, producer, director and/or showrunner. The more specific you make a story, the more universal it becomes.

 

Porto (2019, Portugese)

  • Thomas Elsaesser – The (Re-)Turn to Non-Linear Storytelling: Time Travel and Looped Narratives
    • Why has there been such a comeback of looped narratives and time travel films since the 1990s? Answers to this question should take us beyond seeing films such as Groundhog Day, Deja Vu, Donnie Darko, Inception or Source Code as the implementation of the new possibilities of story-telling opened up by digital media, with non-linear editing and random access as the ‘new normal’. The reasons we can give should also take us beyond the evident analogies with interactive video games: In the age of ‘post truth’, when perception of reality itself has become malleable, the term ‘non-linear’ has taken on political, philosophical as well as narratological meaning. My talk will argue that there are also specifically historical circumstances that favour time travel as a mode that highlights not – as one might expect – new forms of agency and empowerment, but instead epistemological deadlocks, traumatic events as well as ethical dilemmas.
  • Christoph Bode – Opening Up Spaces of Possibility: How Future Narratives Impact Story-telling in the Movies
    • Future Narratives, unlike Past Narratives, are not about events(that have already occurred or can be imagined to have occurred). Rather, their smallest narrative unit is not an event, but a node. A node is a situation that can be continued in more than just one way, possibly in a multiplicity of ways. If a narrative contains at least one node, it qualifies as a Future Narrative, though many Future Narratives contain many more than just one node. If you don’t like the terminology, you could also call Future Narratives ‘Nodal Narratives’ instead. The most basic difference between Past Narratives and Future Narratives is that Past Narratives are uni-linear, whereas Future Narratives are by definition multi-linear. Past Narratives give you a uni-linear trajectory, but multi-linear Future Narratives open up spaces of possibility instead.

The exciting thing about Future Narratives is that they can be found in print, in film, in video games, in scenarios of world climate change, and in other simulations of future trends – they are all over the place. Cutting across all media and genre classifications and even straddling the fiction-non-fiction divide, the multifarious corpus of Future Narratives lacked a theory and a poetics until the publication of the 5-volume set of ERC-funded research in 2013, Narrating Futures(published with Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, all in the same year).

In my talk, I will try and explain how narrative in general negotiates the poles of order and chaos, or of meaning and contingency, and produces such a thing as the semblance of narrative necessity, before I zoom in on how Future Narratives prove a game-changer to this existential play and how, in particular, movies that operate according to the Future Narrative paradigm open up new spaces of possibility for the viewer as well: although not all relevant movies (e.g., Run Lola Run, Sliding Doors) invite active intervention from the spectators, others certainly do: they not only invite, they necessitate agency. Evidently, the move from relatively inflexible media like the book, the movie etc. to more inter-active media (DVD, online gaming …) is a decisive one. The advent of more and more Future Narrative-based offers in the second half of the twentieth century is therefore read as a shift of media-historical importance that is bound to radically re-define our ideas about what story-telling is for and who it is that ultimately produces the meaning we live by.

  • Maria Poulaki – Reflections on narrative complexity
    • This talk will reflect on the interplay between chaos and order as characteristic of the complexity of narrative. It will do so by adopting a complex systems perspective, which allows to approach at once complex textual structures and the complexity of our cognitive encounter with them. Concepts already established in narratology and traditionally associated with anti-narrative devices, such as self-reflexivity, loose causality, and description, can be linked to equivalent dynamic or ‘chaotic’ processes of systems’ emergence, such as self-reference, nonlinearity, and emergence. These can in turn be highlighted as properties of the cognitive dynamics of narrative, driven by ambiguity and uncertainty. Thus narrative complexity lies ‘before’ narrative (the latter traditionally conceived as a set ordered schema or structure), and in the chaotic process of its formation.

 

Oxford (2021, online)

  • Elizabeth Kilgarriff: Pushing the boundaries between industry and academia (in conversation with Paolo Russo)
  • Murray Smith: The portability of character

 

Vienna (2022, Austria)

  • Eleftheria Thanouli: Complexity and/ or agency? character, agency and plot structures in post-classical narration
  • Dina Iordinova: Bridging platforms and continents: the normative narrator

 

Columbia, Missouri (2023, USA)

 

Olomouc (2024, Czech Republic)

  • Peter Krämer: Auteurism, Adaptations and Beyond: Reflections on 40 Years of Studying Production Histories and Story Development
  • Kamila Zlatušková: Education as a way to dialogue between new creators and major broadcasters
  • Donat F. Keutsch, Gabriele C. Sindler: PROCLAMATION ON BREAKING THE RULES! Insights into the skills and the practical art of story & script development.

Minutes SRN Executive Council Meeting (February 2025)

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SRN Executive Council Meeting

(via Zoom)

February 17, 2025

7am Los Angeles

Circulation list: Rosanne Welch (RW), Jan Cernik (JC), Isadora Garcia Avis (IGA), Lucian Georgescu (LG).  Clarissa Miranda (CM), Romana Turina (RT), Juan Carlos Carrillo (JC).

ECR Hugo Armando Arcinega (HA)

 

  1. Apologies for any absences

Isadora, Romana

 

  1. Approval of Minutes of previous meeting.

Point 4 – JC will email adjustment to Secretary. With that donem JC approves and Hugo seconds.

 

  1. IG/JCC – Update on Membership email transfer and numbers of new members since SRN2024.

Tabled for March meeting

 

  1. Take group zoom photo

 

  1. JC: Newsletter Update –JC Thanked for all the time put on this project. ALSO, for collecting list of previous Keynote Speakers for placement on the website. JC reports that all info minus a few abstracts is in for placement on new section of website.

 

LG – can use the information gathered on previous conferences to add into edits for future Conversations.

 

  1. RT: Working Groups Update – Organizing Script Reading Working Group Zoom for Feb 28 to see how many SRN members are interested.

 

  1. GROUP decides to choose a month to invite Working Group Members to attend an EC meeting in the next couple of months. Maybe March or April. Also to invite Craig Batty to an EC meeting for update on SRN2025?

–Will he be free to visit?  RW will email.

 

  1. JC –”Sustainable Screenwriting Working Group” within SRN

2 people answered with interest – JC will continue – not tied to current research.

 

LG – still has monies for another small conference

 

  1. IGA – Update on when to post about Annual Award Nominations (Teaching, Books and Articles)

 

  1. LG: SRN2024 Video production update.

 

LG – conversation with Steven Maras, keynote speaker at Copenhagen in 2010, available for uploading. Other interviews are nearly an hour long. Plans are to release Conversations with previous Chairs, EC members, then move on to full coverage of Vienna conference, then the Oxford online conference Conversation by summertime.

 

RW- Has idea about naming a Historian as new position in EC? – Group agrees it’s worth putting up for vote to add to Constitution during next AGM

 

  1. CM: Conference in Brazil in the city of Florianópolis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Fall Semester 2026?

Meeting is set up with 3 screenwriting teachers at the uni – ideas: all students could join the conference at no cost; numbers who may attend/add it as a hybrid so those who can’t pay to attend can still attend.  Will have meeting in March with uni. Cinema born 15 years ago.  For hybrid they are used to it. All agree hybrid option helps academics whose unis don’t offer travel funding and exposure to new perspectives help us all.

 

  1. Formally accepted bids for sites for:

 

Oxford 2026 (in hand) / (AND Florianopolis in April – forthcoming)

Mexico City 2027

Milan 2028 (in hand along with email from Armando Fumagilli moving from 2027 to 2028)

Navarre 2029 (forthcoming)

 

  1. HA: Presentation of the report of monthly results of social media –

HA – Lots of good material to post.

 

 

Date of next meeting(s):  March 17.

Future Meetings: Apr 21(Easter Monday), May 19, June 16, July 21, Aug. 18, Sept. 19 (in person at SRN2025).

 

SRN Executive Minutes – October 2024

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EC MONTHLY MEETING MINUTES

 

Date: Monday 21st October 2024

 

 

In attendance:  Rosanne Welch (RW), Jan Cernik (JC), Isadora Garcia Avis (IGA), Juan Carlos Carillo (JCC), Lucien Georgescu (LG), Clarissa Miranda (CM), Romana Turina (RT), Hugo Armando Arciniegas, ERC (HA). Also in attendance, non-EC member Marius (DP responsible for recording SRN 2024).

 

  1. Apologies (N/A)

 

  1. Approval of Minutes of previous meeting (September, in person at SRN 2024).

(September AGM to post to YouTube Channel). Also attached History of SRN for EC members to read.

RW approves/ LG seconds.

 

Also as Election update – Fully Welcome Clarissa, Romana, and Juan Carlos. Discuss changeover of responsibilities:  Decisions during SRN2024 = Rosanne/Vice Chair,  Isadora/Secretary, Juan Carlos/Membership, Jan/Newsletter, Clarissa/Website Coordinator. Per Constitution shall we name a Treasurer?

 

  1. Update on documentary about SRN2024.

 

LG – The first version of the video will be ready very soon, along with a teaser/trailer. Paolo Russo and Armando Fumagalli provided lots of pictures and materials from their respective conferences, which will be integrated into the video. LG and Marius conducted 8 interviews with previous conference organisers, and 6 of them were very long, so they have a lot of material to work with. More material than LC and Marius expected, so they need more time to edit everything.

 

RW – No need to apologize! This is volunteer work, and editing takes a lot of time.

 

LG – Hopefully by next meeting they will have a more complete version. For now, they will show the EC a brief teaser.

[Marius shares his screen and plays a draft version of the teaser.] In spite of some technical problems with the Internet connection, the teaser looks really good!

 

LG – Will send a low-resolution version of the teaser to all members of the EC via e-mail, so that we can see it better. For next meeting, LG plans to have a list of deliverables and schedule regarding the documentary.

 

  1. Future SRN Conferences

 

RW – In the next few months we need to decide the upcoming conferences, from 2028 onwards. For now, the ones that have been fully confirmed are:

  • 2025 – University of South Australia (org. Craig Batty)
  • 2026 – Oxford Brookes University (org. Paolo Russo)

 

RW – Potential upcoming bids: Milan, Mexico City, Bucharest.

 

JCC – It would be Mexico City, at Universidad Panamericana. We also need to consider if conferences should alternate between Europe and North America every other year.

 

LG – Rector of LG’s institution in Bucharest (Universitatea Nationala de Arta Teatrala si Cinematografica “Ion Luca Caragiale” din București) is very enthusiastic about hosting an SRN conference. However, he is in his second mandate, and while he supports the project, by 2028 there might be a different rector, which might make it more difficult.

 

RW – We need to check with Armando Fumagalli, to see if he is tied to 2027. Maybe he can do it later, since Milan has hosted before?

 

LG – Maybe we can consider two universities as organisers. Bucharest + Milan. Not two venues. Just one venue, but two universities organising the conference. We would have to talk to Armando and see if this is possible.

 

IGA –  We also have a bid from the University of Navarre in Spain. They might be able to host the   between 2028 and 2030. We would have to check with them.

 

JCC – Mexico can adapt to whatever dates are more suitable for everyone.

 

RW – By the end of the year we should have 2027 and 2028 figured out.

 

CM is waiting for a final answer from her university regarding a potential conference in Brazil, in the city of Florianópolis, at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Hopefully we will have an answer by next month.

 

JC has realised, after hosting SRN 2024, that money is not a problem to organise a conference. Even with a limited budget, it can be done just with conference fees. If you have extra funding, you can get more prestigious keynotes etc, but the basics can be covered by conference fees. Also, post-SRN2024 Update –150 participants/30 countries/31 panels/budget in the green/Erasmus participation helped.

 

RW agrees. It’s not about money, it’s about having lots of volunteers, students helping out.

 

JC – Because of inflation, in future years we might consider higher conference fees.

 

  1. Dates for upcoming meetings

 

RW – We will keep meeting on the third Monday of each month, at the same time (7:00 am in LA). Each person will have to consider DayLight Time Savings.

 

IGA – To confirm for the minutes: Next meeting will be on Monday, Nov. 18th. We are skipping the one in December, because of the holidays.

 

  1. New roles within the EC

 

JCC and IG – Re: Membership and Inclusion Officer, the transfer of duties has been made. We are waiting on the e-mail change so that JCC can become the JISCMAIL admin.

 

CM had two long meetings with Rose Ferrell (previous webmaster) to learn everything about the website.

 

RW – Romana (RT) is a member-at-large, but since we need a treasurer, maybe she can become the treasurer, even though we don’t collect any fees. It’s a required role.

 

RT- I will help in any way that I can.

 

RW – We also need a member to liaison with working groups via the working groups leaders. Maybe this can be Romana as well?

 

RT accepts this role.

 

RW – Therefore, Romana will be both Treasurer and Working Group Liaison.

 

JC – We need a native speaker to review and proofread the newsletter, now that Rose is no longer a member of the EC.

 

RW – I have realized that we now have more people in the EC with Spanish as a first language instead of English… The SRN is truly international!

 

RW – We also need to consider who will be the next Chair. I will be staying for a year as ViceChair, but next year someone else should step up. I will be staying for an additional year to help them out, then I will leave the EC.

 

LG – I can also liaise with the working groups. And I can assist as ViceChair if necessary.

 

RW – Great. Next role would be Social Media. Where are we on Social media, Hugo?

 

LG – Excellent, he is doing excellent!

HA – Clarissa and her friend Bianca gave me great info on how to plan and programme posts on social media. I have been learning how to programme 3 posts a week across all social media, mainly on Instagram and LinkedIn. I’m now learning how to better use Instagram stories. Everything is going well.

 

 

RW – We always try to keep meetings to one hour. Any other topics?

 

JC – As per the agenda, we also needed to discuss the possibility of posting keynote speeches from conferences on the website.

 

RW – Yeah, not to give Clarissa extra work, but that is a wonderful idea.

 

JC – It could be an expandable option on the website menu, where we could upload the speeches and papers (if they have been published).

 

IGA –  Just to confirm this for the minutes, EC members will hold the following roles this year:

 

Vice Chair – RW (until new Chair next September)

Vice Chair – LG

Membership & Inclusion – JCC

Treasurer & Working Group Liaison – RT

Secretary – IGA

Website Coordinator – CM

Newsletter Editor – JC

ECR (Social Media) – HA

 

RW – See you all next month, on November 18th. And remember to read Ian McDonald’s wonderful article on the history of the SRN!

 

 

Executive Council Meeting – August 2024

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Here’s the screenshot from our last EC Meeting held on 22nd August:

L to R: Rosanne Welch (Chair), Clarissa Miranda (to be new Web Coordinator), Anna Weinstein (Secretary), Bottom L to R: Rose Ferrell (Web Coordinator), Lucian Georgescu (Conversations Coordinator), Hugo Arciniegas (Early Career Representative).

SRN Executive Minutes – July 2024

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MINUTES

Monday, July 22, 2024

Circulation list: Rosanne Welch (RW), Rose Ferrell (RF), Jan Cernik (JC), Isadora Garcia Avis (IGA), Anna Weinstein (AW), Lucien Georgescu (LG).  ECR Clarissa Miranda (CM), Hugo Armando Arcinega (HA)

  1. Apologies

 

  1. Approval of Minutes of previous meeting (April)

    –LG approves, JC seconds.

 

  1. JC: Update on SRN2024. Plus discuss things related to public transport in the Czech Republic? As well as the best ways to get from Prague to Olomouc, and other practical questions for travellers.

    –JC says it’s 2 ½ hour bus from the Prague airport to conference. Airport Express: https://www.cd.cz/dalsi-sluzby/navazna-doprava/-26856/ Three train co: RegioJet, Leo Express, České dráhy. JC recommends trains rather than buses.

 

  1. JC: Newsletter Update – – Newsletter – went out in June. Compliments on completing in in the midst of conference planning. Suggestions for future issues (Announce new Working Groups and leaders)

    –JC updates that the deadline will be the first week of Sept.

 

  1. AW: – Election update – applicants/deadline/will we need Scrutineers? “From then on, all proceedings (including ballots, management of the election if held, and appointment of new members of the EC) will be impartially overseen by two Scrutineers, independent from the Executive Council.” RW reminds us that someone has to be chair, and it should be someone already on the EC. She will run for this year just to support the new chair

 

  1. LG/RF: SRN Conversation #4 progress: London (& Leeds?) Need one done in the next month/6 weeks. Potsdam will be in next set.

    –LG updates that he secured funds to bring a DOP with him with two cameras, working on flights tomorrow, hoping to be in on the 10th or 11th and staying until Sunday. They are looking to have as much material as possible from the conference so they can make a commercial for the conference as well as getting interviews with the EC. He wants to get a list of attendees from Jan. Clarissa has offered to help. He will have a small list of questions for the EC and they will do it documentary style.

 

  1. RW – Book awards Update – From Carmen Sofia Brenes: “7 articles, 4 book chapters, 7 books”. A question came up about submitting a PhD monograph – the awards require the piece to have been published – but that raised the idea:  “We could have an award for PhD Monographs in the future! It is a way to incentivate the research on the field!”  Other question:  “I wonder if, in future years, we might consider a category for history and a separate one for craft. They’re such different forms…”  Could we do that this year (since there is no monetary award)?.  ALSO, “I like the idea of dividing books into craft and history.  Does this include articles and book chapters please?” BUT also “In my opinion, it is better to remain with two awards. One for books and the other for chapters/articles (without the distinction between craft and history).  At least this year. Otherwise it can be confusing. If the Council decides to give more awards, that can be included in the next call for awards.  I have a slight doubt about the distinction between craft and history: the awards were there to celebrate an outstanding piece of screenwriting research, in any field. Maybe the jurors can decide each year where to put more emphasis.

    –RW updates that they should know by the first week of September. RF recommends that the third judge decides. IGA suggests that one award is enough. Perhaps an honorable mention for the second. AW thinks there is a difference between craft and history books. LC agrees. IGA thinks it would be a good idea to give an award for a dissertation, but the problem is language. RW says that we made the decision in Vienna that the book review has to be in English. JC suggests that

 

  1. AW – Teaching Awards Update.

 

  1. RW: Reminds the EC to prepare individual reports for the first week of Aug so she can add to the PowerPoint for the AGM. Planning to have the AGM on the Thursday during conference week, but we can decide at our Aug EC meeting.

    –RW reminds everyone to get their updates by mid-August.

 

  1. IG: Update on publishing Top 5-10 suggestions/how they are being addressed from Membership Survey to listserve and also AGM. ALSO, Discuss Responses to Call for Volunteers:

 

A.) Craig Batty’s new Working Group for PhD candidates Description:

– Working group name:

Screenwriting PhD Candidate Community

 

Working group lead and contact details:

Craig Batty, University of South Australia

craig.batty@unisa.edu.au

 

Working group outline:

This group provides a collegial, creative-critical community for currently enrolled (or about to be enrolled) PhD candidates. Whether you are working on a screenwriting thesis by creative practice, or a more traditional, theoretical thesis, this group provides a safe space for sharing ideas and work in progress, and for seeking and giving advice about the PhD journey. International in nature, the group also builds a cross-cultural, multi-perspective community of emerging scholars and leaders, helping to promote the next generation of screenwriting researchers around the world.

 

The group is informed by deep expertise in PhD supervision and examination, and a commitment to excellence in research training and researcher development. Group members are invited to come with questions about the PhD, concerns about their candidature, ideas that they want to test out, or simply to listen to where others are at on the journey. As the group establishes itself, guest speakers may be brought in to help members expand their knowledge, experience, and research horizons.

 

–IGA thinks it’s a great idea. All agree. RW will let Craig know.

B.) AW: meeting with Alessandra Bautze, Georgia State University. (See Addendum with all letters received)

–AW is meeting with her August 6 and will update the EC at the next meeting.

C.) See Addendum with all other volunteer offers – Decide on follow up emails

 

  1. RF – First – thanks for posting Hugo’s bio to the website. Second, can we consider creating a FAQ on the website that includes these new strains of listserve emails (like the one on books but now there is one on writing on one-act and two-act feature films)? Better than a link to the Google drive???

 

  1. CM/HA: Presentation of the report of monthly results of social media, and conference in Brazil in five years in the city of Florianópolis, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina.

    –CM shares that she is thankful to Hugo for making a lot of posts. She has spoken with the professor and team at Florianópolis, and they are interested in being a part of it. She will have more updates soon. HA offers that he is available for other tasks because the social media posts don’t take a lot of time. RW wonders if he might be able to help with the website. RF says that could be very helpful, even smaller jobs like posting minutes on the website or materials from the working groups.

 

  1. Take group photo

 

  1. RF – Brainstorming more uses for SRN YouTube Channel…

    –JC suggests Romana’s videos could be posted on the YouTube. AW suggests that we could have interviews with the book awards winners and the teaching awards winners. LC says we can get the interviews at the Sept conference. RF thinks it’s a great idea and much more engaging.

 

  1. RF – on GoogleDrive of past conferences /Create Page of Emeritus EC members????

    –All agree this is an excellent idea.

 

  1. JC: Heide Philipsen project – refection letter not funded – keep on agenda for resubmission next year.

 

Date of next meeting(s):  Monday same time –Aug. 19, Sept. 12 (in person at SRN2024).

 

ADDENDUM A

 

Response from Alessandra Bautze to call for Volunteers:

Alessandra Victoria Bautze abautze@gsu.edu

 

“I’m writing to express my interest in getting involved in a service opportunity with the Screenwriting Research Network. I joined Georgia State as Assistant Professor of Screenwriting in August 2022. I’d like to get involved with SRN and am eager to meet new colleagues in our field.

 

I am particularly interested in serving as a “representative or liaison with local writers’ guilds, associations and practitioners”, as coordinator of social/networking events, or as a coordinator of an Online Script Club. I enjoyed meeting representatives of organizations such as the Authors Guild when I was living in New York and now I enjoy maintaining connections with writers residency coordinators. I’m a very social person and have experience planning meetings and meetups. I also think that a monthly script reading event would be a great way to network with colleagues and share ideas.

 

But of course I am open to serving wherever the need is greatest.

 

I’d love to speak further at your convenience. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Sincerely,

 

 

Response from Eugene Doyen to call for Volunteers:

e.doyen@qmul.ac.uk

Coordinator – Online Script Club (like a book club, but with scripts!)  Monthly (or bi-monthly) discussion of screenplays.

Queen Mary, University of London

 

I was fine to attend the Vienna based conference, the US and Olomouc was and is right up against the start of the academic year. I’d be absent for all the final preparations and have three production modules running in the first semester.

I will see if I can summon up the courage to take the risk to attend this fiall. Attending and meeting online to set up teaching would be bad experience. I am going to conference in Gorizia. (I know its not SRN, but I can see some overlap of people.)

In case its helpful I’m fine to convene a group, take turns.

 

 

Response from Joachim Strand to call for Volunteers

Joachim Strand <joachim.strand@uwa.edu.au>

I would like to be considered for the Online Script Club Coordinator, because reading scripts is key to becoming a better script writer.

My initial reaction is for a bi-monthly discussion, to allow enough time for people to read, and that the discussion takes the form of a chat forum. While a Zoom discussion would be better, the different time zones we are all in presents a hurdle.

Further to that, I would also like to actively engage in the syllabus development.

Let me know what you think.

Since the responses will be discussed, I thought I’d flesh it out a bit:

Reading and analysing scripts is key to becoming a better script writer, and it is something we are all already doing. But, the option of discussing and sharing our findings, questions, and reflections on the scripts we read is not something that is necessarily available to all of us. Certainly not with a world wide range of skilled professionals.

Therefore I believe that script reading club will be a great opportunity to not only actuate a habit of regular script reading but also advancing an active critical bearing on the script reading process and the on the scripts we read. Not to mention, it is a great way to network and build relationships.

To allow enough time for people to read I feel that a bi-monthly discussion is good, and that the discussion takes the form of a chat forum. While a Zoom discussion would be better, the different time zones we are all in presents a hurdle.

As a first read I would suggest ‘The Man Who Would Be King’ (1974) by John Huston and Gladys Knight. Great link here with lots of info on the film, as well as a link to the script.

Possible discussion points:

– Adaptation

– The literary ‘qualities’ of the often long and winding Action sections, often containing ‘un-filmables’

– Utilisation of sound-symbolism

– Colonial representation

– The use of Voice-Over for narrative and structural purposes (this one is particularly interesting as the VO allows the film to move across time and space, and enables the somewhat circular structure)

And, as mentioned, I would also like to actively engage in the syllabus development.

 

 

 

Response from Paolo Russo to call for Volunteers:

Paolo Russo <paolo.russo@brookes.ac.uk>

Such wonderful ideas, these are!

Given the current and future focus of my research, I will definitely join the working group on AI and screenwriting, albeit just as a member, not as a coordinator (although, once a coordinator is in place, I’d be happy to help in any way). I am presenting on AI in Olomouc and I have quite a few ambitious projects in store on this.

Moreover, I’d be happy to be the SRN liaison with the Writers Guild of Great Britain, of which I am a member. I’ll do my best in trying to get them on board with something, although in these past few years I’ve found that they are not particularly receptive. That said, I know that recently they have launched a survey to map how screenwriting is taught in UK’s higher education establishment, therefore I wanted to push for this anyway, so why not on behalf of the SRN too.

 

 

Response from Harvest Bellante to call for Volunteers:

Harvest Bellante hbellante@yahoo.com

(Will not be in Olomouc)

I received this email about service opportunities and I wanted to apply to help.  I would probably be best suited for an online role at this point simply because I just began teaching at a new university in North Carolina and am moving the full time this coming year so it will be a lot of transition.  Any of the coordinator roles that you need filled would be just fine with me. I’m always happy to jump in and help build community.

I have taught screenwriting courses as an adjunct in Norfolk, Virginia since 2013, and as I mentioned, I’ve now been full-time for the past year. Personally, I am thrilled to finally be able to devote myself full-time to the craft and as such, I’d love to connect with more of us out there.

Please let me know if there’s anything you think would be a good fit.

Thank you!

Harvest Bellante

 

Response from Krystian Ramlogan <krystian.ramlogan@gmail.com>

I would be interested in any of the following roles:

 

Coordinator – Online Script Club (like a book club, but with scripts!) Monthly (or bi-monthly) discussion of screenplays.

  • I curate as many screenplays as I can yearly and read through as many as I can. I also mentor a few of my former students and we already have monthly meetups (virtually) where we discuss screenplays we’ve read (I chose the screenplay). At this point I have several 100s of screenplays in my google drive, so I could kick things off fairly easily

Coordinator – Create and coordinate a new working group on under-represented voices in Film & TV screenwriting.

  • I’m a minority so I would be interested in working with others on this.

Coordinator – Developing a syllabus for schools / educational programmes on screenwriting and the role of the screenwriter.

  • I do this at Dillard University, and while creating the perfect syllabus may be more aspirational than practical, I’m always seeking out new syllabi and textbooks to learn from and integrate into my practice.
  • I would also love to create some OER “books” moreso handouts that can work with various syllabii – like an intro/level 1 with handouts, intermediate/level 2 with handouts, etc. so basically a comprehensive set of instructional materials that any faculty could use

I am of course interested in working with others/collaborating on any of these or anything else that may come up from the group.

 

Thank you!

 

Krystian

 

 

Response from John Weston:

John Weston <john.weston.writing@gmail.com>

I am interested in coordinating either:

— a monthly online script club, or

— underrepresented voices in film & TV screenwriting group

(or sharing both roles with other people)

I am currently working as a freelance writer, communication coach and developmental editor. I have a PhD in sociolinguistics, I’m a qualified high school science teacher, and I now also have a postgraduate diploma in comedy screenwriting with a few BBC radio sketch and joke credits.

I’m interested in reading more scripts, talking to other writers and readers and editors of screenplays, and networking at the interfaces of academia and industry.

I come from a southeast London white working class family, and I am interested in identifying and challenging barriers to diversity and inclusion in film and TV writing and research.

Thanks very much!

Best wishes,

John Weston

 

 

Alexis K’s recommendation for a group gathering female professors of screenwriting….