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The following is an original screenplay about Maturity set in the mode of a Summer Romance. It is structured like the classic Joseph Campbell Monomyth. However, it offers a commentary on the unchanging nature of people by utilizing non-linear storytelling and inverting the typical hero’s journey narrative by having the protagonist end up, more or less, where he began. Key moments and story beats are taken from classic hero’s journeys and refashioned to fit the scale and time periods. Collin Williams does not cross the threshold into a magical new land but instead into the fantastical realm of Rock and Roll, he does not vanquish his foe by the sword, and he does not save a beautiful maiden, but the story is structured so that these events are adapted into their more logical real world parallels. All the while he is tempted by his love interest Liz and belittled by the “too cool for school” Billy James. Characters are molded from universal archetypes including the sage, jester, warrior, and king. Each has an arc that illuminates how these one dimensional approaches to life come into conflict with maturity. The screenplay takes advantage of the multi-tiered method of storytelling unique to cinema through heavy and deliberate inclusion of specific sounds and music. Repeated visual motifs and symbols also feature prominently with references to other revered journeys of self discovery and lifestyle philosophies.

Parade's End, a screenplay accompanied by an exegesis exploring institutional and ideological violence within the war film genre. The problem to solve with my exegesis and subsequent screenplay was how to create a unique visual form for the treatment of violence. This was done by examining screenwriting techniques that have been used to explore the psychology of violence and aggression within the war film genre. I identified and examined those techniques used to depict vioence within the war film genre, specifically those discussed by film theorist Stephen Prince. Stephen Prince in Savage cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the rise of ultraviolent movies in America examines the cultural and subsequent technical shifts that occurred in the late sixties towards the treatment of violence in contemporary cinema. He focuses on specific techniques that he believes radicalised the depiction of vioence and its aftermath in the cinematic form. In Visions of empire: political image ry in contemporary American film, Prince examines those techniques that he believed explored the political dimensions of violence. A primary consideration of my research then was how to integrate the techniques under discussion in ways that will help create a convincing form the for depiction of violence for a contemporary screen audience. A major outcome of my investigation and exploration of Prince's techniques, was to sustain within my screenplay the audience's gaze at a disturbing mirror, and probe an audience's ambivalent response to contemporary social currents. Through the demystification of the Special Forces soldier, it was my intention to depict vioence and aggression in striking and original ways.

This report chronicles the creative inspiration, writing, and rewriting processes that went into the development of Jennifer Rounseville Cote’s screenplay “Finishing School.” The following pages additionally examine issues in the horror movie genre and screenwriting practices in general. / text

Oleander is a screenplay and exegesis that explores how the supernatural drama contributes to a deeper understanding of contemporary feature writing. The central theorists of the feature film, represented here by McKee, Seger, Vogler and Hauge, have created a robust model built around a three act structure, an inciting incident and clear challenge pursued and resolved by a protagonist. The thesis argues that the supernatural drama also calls for the logical treatment of the supernatural element, its managed concealment and its step by step revelation as part of the story development. The thesis tests this idea through the writing of a supernatural feature Oleander, and an analysis of Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Sixth Sense. These latter two films manage suspense in profoundly different ways to produce profoundly different effects.

While the feature film has been the flagship of the Australian film revival and the short film has always played an important role in practitioner development; the role and effectiveness of the short feature is less clear. The short feature has emerged intermittently since the late 1980s and has been vulnerable to the conditions of the Australian film industry in general. Government renewed its support for the short feature in the 1990s viewing it as a development model for writers, directors and producers making the transition from short form drama to feature length production. While there is no doubt that the short feature model provides invaluable 'experience through practice' for writers, directors and producers, a lack of market demand, its continued dependence on government funding and the mixed development outcomes of those it supports suggests that the future of the short feature remains unclear. This thesis also includes School Friends, a 50-minute screenplay designed specifically to suit the parameters of short feature production. It is a redemption story about a man who attempts to get his life back on track after being released from prison.

Karmic Buyback: A Pilot Program, a screenplay, is the story of Oliver Harker, a water resources engineer in his early thirties, adrift in a world of lost social connections. Aside from this work, which he describes as "just a lot of redundant paperwork," his only connection to the outside world is his exuberant younger brother Van. With no father to speak of, and harboring long term resentment against his mother who ran away to Africa the day after Van's high school graduation, Oliver's defining tragic moment came three years earlier. It was then he discovered Eva, the woman he planned to marry, cheating with an old flame. Isolating himself from his few remaining friends, Oliver has become a short-tempered, unbearable grump. Meanwhile Eva, unbeknownst to Oliver, has recently died. She wakes to find herself in a strange, antiseptic afterlife where she is given the opportunity to repair some of the bad karma she accumulated in her short life, specifically in regard to Oliver. As Van begins to help him reestablish social ties, an accident which lands Oliver in the hospital finally draws their mother back across the Atlantic. Oliver must decide between Eva, in her foolish attempts to win him back as a result of the ultimately misguided Karmic Buyback Pilot Program, and the real people who love him.

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The screenplay for a narrative film is the key starting point in the development process, and writing a feature length screenplay is a particularly grueling process. This thesis traces my efforts to write a full, strong draft of a feature length screenplay, from conception to the current draft. The essay catalogs the notes I received on the screenplay, as well as my own ideas for changes and developments as I wrote the screenplay. After the essay, the current (as of this date, May of 2012) draft of the screenplay is attached as a presentation of my work reflected in the essay.

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