Narrative Focus Group 2017/2018

NARRATIVE FOCUS GROUP

The purpose of the focus group is opening up the discussion around what each of you intend with the narrative projects you’re working on.

What do you want to communicate? What context do you want to show the work in? What projects could you identify as examples / parallels / prototypes for your own project.

Over the weeks we’ll combine discussions about drafts of your own work - shared with the group - with some readings and viewings as well.

FILM VIEWINGS

'PUZZLE FILMS' Momento Stranger than fiction Mulholland Drive Synecdoche New York

'NO PLOT' FILMS Elephant Slacker Gummo

CONTINUOUS TAKE FILMS Timecode Russian Ark Victoria

DOCUMENTARY POEMS & FICTIONS Mirror The Work of Peter Watkins

A LOOK BEHIND THE PROCESS OF MAKING TRANSMEDIA PROJECTS Bodysong Temptation ofSainthood

SCREENPLAY BOOKS -- an ongoing list for discussion and review

The Uses of Enchantment: the meaning and importance of fairy tales Bruno Bettlehiem

A classic study of the psychological use of fables as ways to process fears and anxieties. Apparently a favourite of Stanley Kubrick...

The Narrative Reader Edited by: Martin McQuillan

A collection of key academic texts regarding narrative and narratology - includes obvious reference points such as Walet Benjamin and Roland Barthes.  A good overview.

The Interpretaton of Dreams
Sigmund Freud
Classic text on dreams - largely discredited as a scientific account of dream processes - but contains useful descriptions of narrative processes.  Freud is referred to by J.G. Ballard as the ‘greatest 20th century novelist’

Dialogue Robert McKee

Story Robert McKee

Robert McKee is the archetypal hollywood script guru. He made a travelling roadshow out of his story analysis lectures long before he wrote a book: the notes from these 3 day lecture sessions were passed as xeroxed notes from hand to hand. Then he wrote it all down in ‘Story.’ He is a bad, pompous writer, who naturalises a set of Hollywood story conventions. But his terms are highly influential, and his terms and structural analysis have become part of the standard language of script development. He’s even earned himself a cameo in Charlie Kaufman’s meditation on screenplay writing: Adaptation

The Tools of Screenwriting The writers craft and elements of the screenplay David Howard and Edward Mabley Perhaps the best basic book about the rules and conventions and necessities of conventional dramatic screenplays. More lucid and more balanced than McKee’

Wired for story Lisa Cron A brief and clear exposition of the basic psychological mechanisms that hook a reader into a story.

On the origin of Stories Brian Boyd A groundbreaking academic work that explores the current developments in the cross-breeding between literary criticism and evolutionary theory. Asks the basic question: why has story telling proved to be a universal human adaptive mechanism.

A Cultural History of Causality Stephen Kern Traces the history of the use of different systems of causality - why do characters do what they do - through Fate to Psychoanalysis. And he traces this by looking at the evolution of stories about murder.

AN ONGOING SCHEDULE AND SIGN UP FOR REVIEWING WORK WE'LL DISCUSS DURING THE SESSIONS