srn2020oxford 26 Jul 2021 Blueprint, Development, Intermediality, Panel 15

Tremblay – The experience of reading screenplays as a scenaristic practice: pushing the boundaries of screenwriting studies

Gabrielle Tremblay (Université du Quebec, Montréal, Canada)

Panel 15 – DEVELOPMENT/CREATIVE PROCESS

Monday 13 September (Day 4), Session 2, 5 am

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Alexandra Ksenofontova on 29 Jul 2021 at 4:38 am
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Thank you for this fascinating paper, it is high time for the readership turn to spread in screenwriting studies! Could you say a bit more about the distinction you make between the literary and the cinematographic reading experience? E.g. does the literary reading experience include reading a “cinematic” novel? Thanks!

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  Gabrielle Tremblay on 13 Sep 2021 at 8:05 pm
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  Dear Alexandra, thank you for your question!
  
  Here some elements of response.
  
  In my presentation I speak of the experience of reading screenplays as a simultaneously literary and cinematographic experience, since reading a screenplay merges a literary experience of language (i.e. the reading of words on a page or on a screen) (so merges a literary experience of language and a work of cinematographic imagination which can be understood as the fact of imagining and visualizing a film in our mind, but also as the more pragmatic imagination of an actor or an artistic director, for example, who will project in their mind their respective cinematographic craft while reading a screenplay.
  
  And about the second haft of your question… I think it’s entirely possible to envision the literary experience of reading a “cinematic novel” – both in the form of a book and a movie. For a long time now, in the French-speaking world at least, it has been quite common to think of film analysis in terms of “film reading”.
  
  This kind of observation, often overlooked, allows us nonetheless, it seems to me, to better observe, through objects and practices, how the porosity between the literary and cinematographic fields is constantly (and concretely) replayed and renewed.
  
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phdvr on 8 Aug 2021 at 10:15 am
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Thank you, I loved so many turns of phrase in your paper – scenarist text, reading as visualising (and of course I suppose viewing as reading), media thickness, but most excitingly – the ‘abundant reality’ of the screenplay allowing for an ‘interpretative cascade’!! To me it dynamised reading into a kind of hermeneutic interactivity, with the film becoming a second level, non-finite threshold, opening it out for another cascade … wondered if reading theories included this idea and who I should read for this. Apologies for the long windedness of this question. Cheers!

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  Gabrielle Tremblay on 13 Sep 2021 at 8:11 pm
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  Hi there! Thank you for your remarks and question.
  
  Isabelle Raynauld, a professor at the Université de Montréal, wrote a book titled Lire et écrire un scénario (2012, 2019) (the book has been translated into English and published in 2019 under the title Reading and Writing a Screenplay) , but Isabelle’s main goal in her work is to think about how to better read in order to better write screenplays… In that sense, her work is more in line with a programmatic approach. As exposed in my paper, my work really focuses on the sole question of the act reading screenplays in a pragmatic approach.
  
  To my knowledge, and I say it very humbly, I am among the firsts, at least in the francophone world, to think of the act of reading screenplays at the crossroads of reading theories.
  
  Reading theories (Marielle Macé, Vincent Jouve, Sylvain Brehm, Bertrand Gervais, Raphaël Baroni, Stanley Fish), so far, have been focused on the reading experience in connection with traditional literary works. On the other hand, in film studies, several theorists have been and still are interested by the question of the reception (and therefore of the “reading”) of cinematographic works. Theorists who advocate a pragmatic approach in the fields of reading theories and reception theories, have in common to think dynamically about the question of reading and interpretation. In any case, more attention is paid to the experience of the reader or viewer than to the content of the art work in presence. In that sense, it ties in with your idea of “hermeneutic interactivity”. 🙂
  
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    phdvr on 17 Sep 2021 at 2:16 am
    
    Thanks a lot for the detailes reply (as usual!) Gabriele. So useful.
    
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Fanny VAN EXAERDE on 30 Aug 2021 at 10:51 am
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Thank you Gabrielle for this interesting paper! Working in genetic studies, I read plenty of screenplays in all their shapes; my question goes alongside Alexandra’s, I guess: could the genetic studies’ process in reading (and re-reading) be working in your perspective? Do Academia purposes reinforce this “simultaneously literary and cinematographic text” definition, or do they defeat them? Thanks!

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DIDIER TICKELL on 14 Sep 2021 at 7:40 pm
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I enjoyed the discourse of your focus and it’s interesting how this subject (threatens to) erupt/s at the London Screenwriters Festival (also running concurrent to this conference) every year yet is always brutally supressed by a cocophany of often wildly contradictory opinion .
Traditionally the (UK) film sector is vehmentaly against the equation with literature and this also reflects a class make up with has been predominately within the UK at least, historically formed of while working class men working their way up through technology led apprenticeship.
Both the level of pay and the idea of the sacroscant author is undermined compared with the theatre and the realm of novelist. YET – all your premise, rather observations, are in fact also true and the preoccupation with the reading and the multi – parties a script must be re-written to hook in is certainly a current preoccupation and i might suggest does in some sense advance along the lines of your premise.
I’m wondering if the question or the wider project of ‘Literature’ and the location of it’s cultural value needs more pin-pointing here. In a post decon/structuilst universe there’s no disagreement that the script is a textual artifact formed of a mutli-value and that includes evocational and incantatory textuality which can read as rich as classic forms of Literature. The recognition and constant seeking of the perfect script mirrors the shifts you report in theoretical discourse.
I guess, ….to conclude with a Q , is that,….. will such evoloution in the end elevate the wage, place, treatment and recognition of the scriptwriter along with the script, within the field of film making ? If so what textual powers would it endow in the manner both the novel and the novelist were endowed in the various epochs of Literature ? Does the direction of travel lie in the future command of the author/ship available within technology and is the current preoccupation with readership really reflect the anxiety about where increasingly power lies and how to reposition to confront it ….. thanks for yr most interesting contribution….

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  Gabrielle Tremblay on 21 Sep 2021 at 3:16 pm
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  Bonjour Didier!
  
  Thank you for your remarks and questions.
  
  My mixed conception (literary and cinematographic) of the act of reading screenplays and the scenaristic text in itself implies a form of “decentration” vis-à-vis the traditional positions (and oppositions) which cross the world of Cinema (and Literature too) with regard to dominant discourse on the recognition and legitimacy of objects and practices.
  
  This is a posture that can raise a lot of debate, I’m aware of it. The fact remains that by insisting on pointing to concrete and proven but most often overlooked evidences (for example, by speaking of the simple fact that several readers and readings of a given screenplay contribute to the fabrication of a given film), we begin to show and demonstrate to what extent the received idea that “a film = the director’s sole vision” is, at the very least, romantic. That it is a shared belief, rather then a “real reality”.
  
  In approaching the question of screenplay reading, I do not aim to inscribe the screenplay as a “legitimate” Literary Form. My mixed conception of things, it seems to me, is akin to an invitation to fully and openly consider what plural screenplay (and cinematographic) practices are made of. To get out of binarizing logics around power dynamics (i.e. “but who is the real author?!”). To question a certain status quo.
  
  Thanks again!
  
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SRN 2021

Tremblay – The experience of reading screenplays as a scenaristic practice: pushing the boundaries of screenwriting studies

READ ABSTRACT & BIOS

WATCH PRE-RECORDED PRESENTATION

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