News

Minutes for SRN Executive Council meeting

Porto, 11 September 2019 at 1630 hrs

 

Attending: Paolo Russo, Anna Zaluczkowska, Margaret McVeigh, Christina Milligan

Apologies: John Finnegan, Carmen Sofia Brenes, Claus Tieber

 

Paolo Russo acting as Secretary and also Chair in the absence of Claus and Carmen.

 

1. Minutes from previous meeting:  Approved.
2. To pass on to new EC:   Nothing extraordinary to pass on.  
3. Agenda for the AGM:   Proceed with circulated agenda sent out 30 August.
4. Membership:   561 – up 68 from 2018 – mostly UK, Australia, US – also new members from e.g. Guatemala, Italy, Brazil.
   1. Suggested that new EC could work more on encouraging new members from e.g. Asian countries – ACTION POINT (New EC)
5. Executive Council:   No elections needed as nominations match number of retiring members.
   1. Three new members: Roseanne Welch, Rose Ferrell, Rafael Leal.
   2. New Early Career Researcher: Alexandra Ksenofontova – who already confirmed.
   3. Chair: Carmen Sofia Brenes to remain Chair.
   4. At next/first new EC meeting, discuss other positions – ideally Secretary from one of more experienced members
6. Conference format: numbers have increased over the years – from about 40 to start with, to about 180 people registered last year with about 120 papers delivered; this year expected to be about 110-115. 

Discussion over size of conference re number of papers in parallel and number of plenaries.

1. 1. Based on past years, about 90 papers have felt about right for three days. No wish to be prescriptive but maybe 90-100 + 3 keynotes could be suggestion for future conferences.
   2. Is it time to have a four-day conference? Would accommodate 100 papers better – to be brought up at the AGM this year and introduced formally at 2020 conference
   3. Need to have space to encourage ECRs etc.
   4. Are posters a possibility eg? Or other formats? More types of pre-constituted panels?
   5. Discussion around good points (e.g. sponsorship) and bad (focus of discussion away from actual research) of involving the industry as in NZ 2017

 

1. Confirmation of Conferences for 2020-2023
   1. Oxford 2020 – theme: pushing boundaries
      1. Paolo briefs on Oxford and conference statistics in general:
         1. Looks like the SRN Awards have prize secured for next couple of years
         2. Cost of a conference tends to be between 12-18k GBP, including prizes for awards. 
         3. Registration fees tend to be around 90-110 GBP – staying pretty constant although what is included can vary (e.g. whether lunches and/or dinners are included).
         4. Discussion re whether late fee should be double ordinary fee – feeling is that it is a little too punitive – should be less.  
         5. Should we set up a fund for some free places?  Worry about how to administer and whether it is at all fair – how does one decide who gets the places?  Maybe a bursary of some sort? – ACTION POINT (new EC)
   2. Vienna 2021 (confirmed) – theme: global
   3. Missouri 2022 (confirmed, but formal letter pending) – theme: screenwriting and women – or perhaps gender – ACTION POINT: PR to circulate the proposal for 2022 to EC – so that letter of acceptance can be sent to RW
   4. Rio, Brazil 2023 (confirmed) – theme: different take on postcolonial/decolonization

• ACTION POINT – EC could think about publicising the new cycle of CfPs earlier than  they currently have been.

 

• ACTION POINT (new EC, PR) – Should there be a template for future conference organizers?  There is a feeling that this would be helpful – Paolo suggests he could provide it.

 

1. Membership fee: discussion re whether there should be a fee for belonging to the SRN?  Could be a small amount – say 10 GBP? Reprise of past discussions re running an organisation that takes in money – brings responsibilities with it.  Reluctance around the table re this. Further discussion re other ways to handle this and suggestion new EC continue exploring this. – ACTION POINT (New EC)
2. SRN Awards: ask the organizers of this year to announce.
   1. Need to publicise the awards more but they are new, so hopefully now people are more aware of them. – ACTION POINT (New EC)
   2. Agree that rotating the jury every second year feels about right.
3. Domain for SRN webpage is renewed for another two years from July 2019 – possibly after that things will need to be reconsidered.  New EC needs to think about this sooner rather than later.  – ACTION POINT (New EC)

 

Date for next meeting – informal meeting of new EC at conference after AGM.  Next formal meeting date to be decided once new EC gathers

 

Meeting closes 18:10.

 

 

First Meeting of new EC, SRN Conference Porto, September 13th, 2019

Start: ca. 7:50 pm          End: ca. 8:10 pm

Attending: Margaret McVeigh (MM), Paolo Russo (PR), Rafael Leal (RL), Alexandra Ksenofontova (AK), Rosanne Welch (RW), Rose Ferrell (RF)

1. The AGM elected Rafael Leal, Rosanne Welch and Rose Ferrell as new members of the EC for two years.
2. The EC inducted Alexandra Ksenofontova as ECR for one year.
3. The EC unanimously confirms CFB as Chairperson and PR as Secretary. MM takes over the Newsletter, aided by RW (formally nominated as Treasurer). RL will be Website Coordinator. RF will be in charge of Membership.
   1. Reminder that the Chair normally collects suggestions and sets the agenda of the monthly meetings, and the Secretary will write the minutes. In the absence of the Chairperson, the Secretary acts as temporary Chair, and another member of the EC will have to take minutes.
   2. RL to liaise with Anna Zaluzcowska to take over Website ownership.
   3. RF to liaise with PR to take over Membership/JISCMail ownership.
   4. RW to liaise with MM to plan Newsletter.
   5. AK has already liaised with John Finnegan; will continue to coordinate ECR activities and will support the communication, especially via social media.
4. The new EC has to find a fixed monthly date for the regular meetings. Follow up emails confirmed the third Monday (Tuesday for Australia) of each month, starting in October. 
5. The new members should send their bio and a picture to RL to be post on the website.

 

 

Minutes of Annual General Meeting, SRN, Porto, 13 September 2019 at 18:30

 

Apologies: Carmen Sofia Brenes, Claus Tieber

 

Acting Chair:  Paolo Russo

 

 

Minutes from AGM 2018:  Approved

 

Annual Report 2018-19 read by Chair

• Thanks to John  Finnegan for excellent service as Early Career Representative
• Statistics: 561 (+68/ 11.5%) from 51 countries (+4)
• Latin America, Asia, Africa underrepresented as yet
• Gender-balance remarkably balanced
• Membership has been formalised a little after discussion at last AGM
• Discussion re membership fees remains ongoing – if it is introduced, it should be kept quite low – there are fishhooks attached to charging fees
• Awards established this year
• Working groups: four at present – information is on the website – suggested that groups could raise their visibility at conferences – if people wish to establish a working group, this is encouraged – details of how to do this given out
• Early Career Representative activities reported including SRN one-day conference at Falmouth – and Script Department podcast which will soon be made available

 

Action plan has been circulated and will be put up on the website – members invited to get in touch with any feedback

Action plan 2019-20: Approved 

 

Report on progress of publication of articles from Milan 2018 

• Comunicazioni Sociali special issue just out with some articles
• JoSc just out featured some articles
• Members encouraged to submit articles from this year’s conference
• JoSc Special Issues: upcoming issue dedicated to women/gender – CfP has gone out
• Media Aesthetics and Media Usage book series brought to members’ attention
• Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting series reminded to members
• New Peter Lang series brought to members’ attention

 

Conferences:

• Number of panels and papers shown in graph – real growth
• Four-day format proposed
  • Comments on timing of conferences for US members difficult (start of school year). Difficulty for US members re timing would be even harder if event were four days; but other US members see no significant impact compared to three days
  • Or start halfway through first day which Oxford 2020 may/will do
• Discussion re whether to have one day for ECRs, rather than full four-day event
• Discussion re whether abstracts should be peer-reviewed – also re need to ensure abstracts are well focused – and whether number of papers should be limited
• Upcoming conferences
  • 2020 – Oxford Brookes, UK – Weds 9th – Sat 12th September – theme: Pushing Boundaries
  • 2021 – Vienna, Austria – theme: Global – likely early October
  • 2022 – Columbia, Missouri, US – theme: Gender/Women – likely early Sept
  • 2023 – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – theme: Decolonising screenwriting

 

Elections: (Ronald Geerts election officer)

• New ECR: Alexandra Ksenofontova
• New members: Rosanne Welch, Rafael Leal, Rose Ferrell
• EC needs to ensure call for nominations well publicised and early enough each year.

 

Annual Report 2018-2019:  Approved.

 

Awards:

• Jury: Jill Nelmes, Janet Steiger, Tom Stempel
• $500 US prize for Best Monograph
• $100 US prize for Best Article (prize money donated anonymously)

Awarded to:

• Monograph:  JJ Murphy – Rewriting Indie Cinema: Improvisation, pyschodrama, and the screenplay
• Article: Rakesh Sengupta – Writing from the margins of media: Screenwriting practice and discourse during the first Indian talkies
• Eva Novrup Redvall will join Janet Steiger and Tom Stempel on next year’s jury
• Brief discussion re whether languages other than English could be submitted. ACTION POINT (New EC)

 

Meeting closes at 19:45

 

 

 

Minutes SRN EC Meeting

Wednesday 19 June 2019 at 21.30 Vienna Time

Attending: CSB (chair), CT (minutes), PR, AZ, CM, JF

 

1. Approval of the minutes 190529 (last meeting)

accepted

 

2. Next Conferences:

Discussion about news on the next SRN Conferences: Oxford Brooks (PR), themes of the approved Conferences could be a bit repetitive. Acceptance letter has been sent to Vienna, not yet to Sao Paolo.

A tendency towards more global approaches as in the proposals for Vienna and Sao Paolo and also in the planned theme for Oxford (boundaries) is seen as a move into a direction we always wanted to take and a chance to address new members.

In terms of content the only way to avoid repetitions, as well as a senseless competition for keynote speakers, is for the organizers to get in touch with each other at a very early stage and discuss their plans.

CSB will contact Sao Paolo and tell them that we have accepted their proposal, but we are not yet sure about the year (2023 or 2022). PR will contact the organizer for the proposed conference in 2022.

 

3. Awards:

The EC received an offer to financing the two awards in Porto 2019. Discussions about the pros and cons. Unanimously decision to accept the offer. Just have to make sure that we are able to give future award winners the same prize.

After the deadline for nominations on June 15^th, the jury received 6 nominations for articles and 5 for books.

Award documents will be prepared for Porto.

 

4. Payment of the Domain name renewal of SRN web-page.

20 pounds per year (1, 2, 3, 4 or 5), per account (we have two: http://screenwritingresearch.com/and http://screenwritingresearchnetwork.com/). Ian requested the School of Media and Communication of Leeds to pay this, as before. (CSB). They accepted for the next two years. The collaboration will be announced on our website.

 

5. AGM and Elections

The EC will prepare the AGM and the election and will inform members in due time.

 

6. Other business

PR is offering some interesting information about the statistics of our conferences. To be discussed in detail in Porto.

 

Next meeting: Porto, Wednesday 11 September 4.30 (Porto Time) in person.

 

End of meeting: 22:30 pm Vienna time

 

 

Dear members,

This is to call for nominations to the SRN Executive, to serve for the two years 2019-20 and 2020-21.

The AGM will be held at the SRN Conference, at the School of Arts, Catholic University of Portugal, Porto (Portugal) on Friday 13^th of September at 18:15. Exact location to be advised by the Conference organisers.

At this AGM, under Section 5 of the SRN constitution (2014) we will receive nominations for members of the Executive Council of the SRN, for which there are three vacancies. Section 5.7 of the constitution says:

“5.7. Nominations for election to the Executive Council, and supporting statements, must be made by members of the Association in writing, and must be in the hands of the Association’s Secretary at least four weeks before the date of the election. These nominations and statements must be available to the Association’s membership no later than 14 days before the date of the election. Should nominations exceed vacancies, there shall be an election by secret ballot.”

As the Secretary, I have asked Ronald Geerts, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, to act as Elections Officer, to receive nominations for the Exec Council, and to impartially oversee the appointment of new members, including management of an election if held.

If you wish to stand for election to the SRN Executive Council, you and your proposer and seconder should be ‘members in good standing’, which means you have signed up on the SRN jiscmail (www.jiscmail.ac.uk) at least a year ago.

So, if you wish to stand for election to the Exec, please send a Statement of no more than 250 words supporting your nomination, plus the names and contact details for a Proposer and Seconder, by Friday 12th July 2019 to Ronald Geerts at ronald.geerts@vub.be

Please consider standing for election! I can assure you it is a very pleasurable task, involving monthly skype chats and light duties! Let me know if you have any questions about what it involves, or about this process.

Also open for (re)election is the Early Career Representative within the EC. We’d like to call for nominations, from anyone interested in taking this on for a year. The appointment will be made by the Council, as with any co-opted member. Co-opted members contribute to all and any discussions, but do not have a vote (if it should ever come to that!). The specifics are as follows:

•          The Representative should be within 5 years of having completed their PhD, or within 5 years of their earliest work in the area of screenwriting research (if they have no PhD or equivalent).
•          ‘early’ therefore refers to duration of experience in the field, and not age.
•          Interested persons can self-nominate.
•          Names can also be put forward by others, also, but need to be accompanied by information on the nominee and confirmation that they are interested in serving.
•          Each nomination should be accompanied by a CV, and a short statement of interest in the appointment (max. 250 words).
•          The deadline for submission of nominations is Friday July 12^th. Please submit to Claus Tieber (Secretary, SRN) at claus.tieber@univie.ac.at

The Early Career Rep will ‘attend’ the monthly Skype meetings of the Exec Council (which normally last up to an hour), and will take forward any ideas and plans in relation to early researchers, with the support of the Council, of course.

If this interests you, please send in a nomination as soon as possible, and no later than the deadline.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Best wishes

Claus Tieber