This report details the writing and revision process that went into my thesis feature screenplay, The Death of Us, a romantic comedy about a young man who fakes his mother’s death to try to keep his girlfriend from dumping him. I trace my steps from the idea’s conception to the completion of my thesis draft of the screenplay, using the outlines and beat-sheets I created at various stages along the way as examples. I explain the circumstances and inspirations behind The Death of Us, and finally, I attempt to reconcile the giant gap between my original intentions for this script and the final product. / text

God Says No is a novel purporting to be the testimonial of Gary Gray, a young black man coming of age in Charleston, South Carolina. Gary cannot reconcile his Christian faith with his homosexual desires. Eventually, before a suicide attempt, he asks God for a sign. The following day, his Amtrak train derails outside Atlanta and a vision of Christ inspires him to run away from his old life. While hiding out, he joins a dance/theater company and continues to explore and battle his sexuality. Eventually, his wife tracks him down and he agrees to attend a reparative therapy center in Memphis. While there, he rooms with Nicky, a former hustler, with whom he falls in love. Nicky dies tragically. Though the therapy center gives Gary a job setting up a new branch in Atlanta, his faith in the possibility of changing his sexual orientation is severely shaken. He tries to reconcile with his wife and family and is forced to make painful compromises and accept himself. You Must Remember This is a prequel to Casablanca (1942) that focuses on the love story between Ilsa Lund and her husband, Victor Laszlo. When the Nazis capture Victor, Ilsa must find and save him by posing as a reporter for a Nazi newspaper. Victor, in the meantime, devises a way to escape from a concentration camp. The couple cross paths at just the wrong moment, and Ilsa believes that her husband is dead. She returns to Paris and has an affair with Rick Blaine. Victor makes his way through the Sudetenland and has an affair of his own. Eventually the two find each other and make their way to Morocco, and they must untangle their pasts and find their way to America. / text

Men Who March Away is a story about men and war, an ancient narrative recipe. In particular, two men who share some traits in common with their fellows but in other respects are unique. King and country mean little or nothing to them. They don’t fight in defence of the hearth-fire as popular myth would have us believe. The First World War just coincided with the prime years of their life and appeared to them as a refuge from the torments in their personal lives. One of them, Richard Travis, is a taciturn, troubled loner, who assimilates easily into the Army and finds self-fulfilment on the battlefield. He wins New Zealand’s highest and most prestigious military medal, the Victoria Cross but is killed in action, before he knows of his achievement. The other is the socially marginalised yet quintessential rough diamond, James Douglas Stark, Starkie. He enlists to escape the police and resists assimilation into the Army. However, he does his bit on numerous battlefields, saves Travis’ life but receives scant recognition. Ending up in the same battalion, they’re forced into an uneasy alliance which makes them confront and alter their attitudes to each other and to their duty.

Screenplay: A wealthy industrialist, Victor Sanderton, has undergone a life change and set up an 'Institute of Higher Learning' in rural South East Queensland. He invites environmental and other contemporary New Age luminaries to hold workshops, while the attendees get in touch with their roots by planting trees. Victor, however, has not come to terms with his own weaknesses. Aleesha, a young runaway, distracts him from his higher purpose. Matt, one of his employees, thinks he sees in this an opportunity to enrich himself at Victor's expense. The situation is further complicated when a private detective, Helen Cox, is employed by Aleesha's mother to search for her. Logline: The ones who think they're strong are most at risk. Exegesis: While the narrative structures employed in the novel form have developed freely over the last century, in mainstream film they have remained relatively static. Even though film is predominantly a visual medium, and therefore suffers from an inherent shallowness, more complex narrative models can present opportunities for film to better mirror the human condition.

This project utilises creative practice as research, and involves writing and discussing four sample episodes of a proposed six-part dramatic, black-comedy1 television mini-series titled The New Lows. Combined, the creative project and accompanying exegesis seeks to illuminate and interrogate some of the inherent concerns, pitfalls and politics encountered in writing original Asian-Australian characters for television. Moreover, this thesis seeks to develop and deliberate on characters that would expand, shift and extend concepts of stereotyping and authenticity as they are used in creative writing for television. The protagonists of The New Lows are the contemporary and dysfunctional Asian-Australian Lo family: the Hong Kong immigrants John and Dorothy, and their Australian-born children Wendy, Simon and Tommy. Collectively, they struggle to manage the family business: a decaying suburban Chinese restaurant called Sunny Days, which is stumbling towards imminent commercial death. At the same time, each of the characters must negotiate their own personal catastrophes, which they hide from fellow family members out of shame and fear. Although there is a narrative arc to the series, I have also endeavoured to write each episode as a selfcontained story. Written alongside the creative works is an exegetical component. Through the paradigm of Asian-Australian studies, the exegesis examines the writing process and narrative content of The New Lows, alongside previous representations of Asians on Australian and international television and screen. Concepts discussed include stereotype, ethnicity, otherness, hybridity and authenticity. However, the exegesis also seeks to question the dominant cultural paradigms through which these issues are predominantly discussed. These investigations are particularly relevant, since The New Lows draws upon a suite of characters commonly considered to be stereotypical in Asian-Australian representations.

The research undertaken as the requirements of the degree is an analysis, evaluation and application of the usefulness of the substructures contained in the classic Thriller screenplay. The research identifies tools and techniques that the screenwriter can apply to the construction of a classically structured Thriller. These tools and techniques have been applied to the creation of an original feature length screenplay entitled Magnetic Fields. The substructures explored in this exegesis are those identified by screen theorist Dr Lisa Dethridge as being essential to the screenplay form, irrespective of genre. They are the premise, protagonist, dramatic problem and plot. The research identifies and defines each of these elements and examines for how they operate in the classic Thriller screenplay. Screen theorist and Thriller genre expert Neill D Hicks provides the theoretical structure for the classic Thriller. A case study, Heavenly Creatures (1994) written by Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson, illustrates the discussion of these substructures. The theories of Dethridge and Hicks are compared and evaluated for their usefulness in the construction of the original screenplay, Magnetic Fields. The story is loosely based on a true crime and the challenge in construction this screenplay was the process of identifying and employing the key conventions and techniques of the Thriller genre. Operating within the conventions of the classic Thriller enables the writer to address the requirements of both industry and audience. The film industry requires that a screenplay adhere to a number of standards relating to its format, length and the organisation of content. The audience, or the reader of the screenplay also has expectations. If a film is labelled a Thriller, the audience expects the story to provoke suspense and fear. They will expect to be thrilled. For the screenwriter to achieve this effect the research aims to prove the benefits of adhering to the structural conventions of the classic Thriller film.

Most new migrants choose New Zealand as their second home country because New Zealand provides peaceful, safe and relaxed life style and also quality education compared to their homelands. However, for most migrants, settling down in New Zealand is one of the most dynamic and complex processes in their lives. Many migrants are struggling to adjust to New Zealand because the expression of cultural values is different in New Zealand than in their cultures. As migrants adjust to the new culture, their traditional cultural values are increasingly challenged by New Zealand cultural values leading to some degree of personal change. As a result, most immigrants encounter many unfamiliar cultural values in the initial stage of immigration to a New Zealand culture. This story is about the impact of culture-shock on an ordinary Korean migrant family and their struggle adjusting in a new society.

Most new migrants choose New Zealand as their second home country because New Zealand provides peaceful, safe and relaxed life style and also quality education compared to their homelands. However, for most migrants, settling down in New Zealand is one of the most dynamic and complex processes in their lives. Many migrants are struggling to adjust to New Zealand because the expression of cultural values is different in New Zealand than in their cultures. As migrants adjust to the new culture, their traditional cultural values are increasingly challenged by New Zealand cultural values leading to some degree of personal change. As a result, most immigrants encounter many unfamiliar cultural values in the initial stage of immigration to a New Zealand culture. This story is about the impact of culture-shock on an ordinary Korean migrant family and their struggle adjusting in a new society.

Most new migrants choose New Zealand as their second home country because New Zealand provides peaceful, safe and relaxed life style and also quality education compared to their homelands. However, for most migrants, settling down in New Zealand is one of the most dynamic and complex processes in their lives. Many migrants are struggling to adjust to New Zealand because the expression of cultural values is different in New Zealand than in their cultures. As migrants adjust to the new culture, their traditional cultural values are increasingly challenged by New Zealand cultural values leading to some degree of personal change. As a result, most immigrants encounter many unfamiliar cultural values in the initial stage of immigration to a New Zealand culture. This story is about the impact of culture-shock on an ordinary Korean migrant family and their struggle adjusting in a new society.

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