Siri Senje: Imagining for the screen, the original screenplay as poiesis
Siri Senje er stipendiat ved Den norske filmskolen, Høgskolen i Lillehammer.
The project IMAGINING FOR THE SCREEN focuses on cinematic fiction writing as an artistic genre. Can certain original works of fiction for the screen be autonomous works of poiesis – or creation – on the same level as, for example, a stage play?
The production process behind film works has been shaped by industrial perimeters for more than a hundred years. The American film industry quickly developed a model of production where the conceptual work behind the film was strictly separated from the actual making of it. Simultaneously, the desire for maximum predictability in a high risk venture promoted certain conventions as to how screenplays for films should be written. The conventions and the split between conception and execution have influenced the discourse on film and our way of thinking about both screenplays and films.
Research in the film field has, until recently, focused on the finished film, leaving the conceptual work of the film writer and the process through which screenplays come into being in the shadows.
Through the writing of two contrasting works of original fiction for the screen and the employment of two different ways of developing a screenplay, this project will seek a deeper understanding of the complex genre of screenwriting. Through reflection and analysis of the process, it will attempt to challenge some of the orthodoxies that exist around cinematic writing and the status of the screenplay.
