The First Provocation (2015) and the shooting script 02: BRIDGET combine to demonstrate practice- led research into how to expand on the process of crafting and capturing performance on film. The enquiry was framed by the question: How might it be possible to mediate a live performance work into a narrative fiction film to engage an audience beyond the intended performance audience of the original? What approaches can a director adopt to elicit spontaneous and intimate emotional responses that are captured for the screen? A close examination of the filmmaking processes used by Miranda July (live performance) and Mike Leigh (character-based improvisation) informed the production process undertaken for the creative practice.

This is an original biopic screenplay titled Hometowns, written by Indranil Chakravarty (Indian), submitted in March 2020 as part of a Creative Practice PhD thesis in Film (Screenplay) at Victoria University of Wellington (NZ). The thesis is titled: “Constructing a Biopic Screenplay: Fictional Invention in the Biopic with Scant Historical Evidence”. The degree was awarded in August 2020.

Dancyger & Rush term the typical, conventional three-act narrative film model “restorative three-act structure” (2002, 22), because it restores parity to a disordered world.  The protagonist’s life, disrupted by an inciting incident, sent into the woods (Yorke 2014) by the first act turning point, brought face-to-face with death or some form of it in the midpoint (Vogler 2007), sent plummeting to a crisis (Yorke 2014) at the second act turning point, brought to confrontation with a powerful antagonist and the source of all the narrative conflict at the dramatic climax, is restored to some form of balance by the point of resolution.  Redemption has been offered, tragedy has been shown to be rooted within their own character, and all significant questions have been answered.  Order and knowledge have been restored.  Whether or not we feel surprise, or shock, or sadness, or elation at the narrative-specific turn of events and the ultimate revelation of the protagonist’s fate, any shock or surprise is limited, short-lived, revealed ultimately to be in perfect keeping with the narrative’s previous events, symbols, dialogue exchanges.

This collection of five films was produced as an exploration of filmmaking as research for my PhD thesis entitled, Practicing Adaptation: One Screenplay, Five Films. My intention with this thesis was to examine the relationship between a screenplay and the films made from it. This project tested the hypothesis that a film based on an original (not adapted from an existing text) screenplay is an adaptation of this screenplay. In order to investigate the potential range of adaptations that occur during the process of film production, I commissioned a short screenplay which was made into a film five times, by five different production teams, each entirely independent of one another. Utilising these films as my primary set of data, I engaged in comparative analysis of the screenplay to the five films and of each of the five films to one another. My framework for analysis is grounded in adaptation studies, which has engaged in close comparative analysis of novel to film, but has not made significant inquiry into the discrete phase of adaptation between screenplay and film. Additionally, I argue that an investigation into the relationship between written and filmed creative work is ideally conducted by engaging with practice and practitioners. My thesis is therefore comprised of duel written and filmed components. As such, the screenplay may be of interest in this case, despite this being a ‘film’ submission and therefore also provided.

How classic literary methods and psychology have an impact on character motivation in non-a priori creation of complex dramatic characters for modern television screenwriting. This practice-based artistic research explores complex character creation through psychologically charged scene writing for television. It features an intersection of Humanistic Psychology, Literary Studies and Screenwriting Theory

The Trouble is an 8-minute film resulting from my queer practice-led research through screen production. This methodology (Baker 2011) embraces notions of performativity (Haseman 2007; Butler 1990) and self-bricolage (Rabinow 1997) in its application. Drawing on Foucault (1978) and Rabinow (1997), Baker positions creative practice, research and subjectivity as “intertwined and mutually informing each other” (2011, 34). As such, my film (and this statement) aims to intertwine my own creative practice, research and subjectivity, whilst exploring the notions of failure, camp and normality.

The film Machine Space is the outcome of a practice-as-research project; a spatial exploration, on film, of the city of Detroit. The film animated the space of part of the metropolis by vehicular movement. Its journey drew on the historical palimpsest of maps, charts and aerial images that trace the spaces of the city, a reading of social relationships as material form. On the soundtrack, Detroiters narrate how they negotiate their cityscape as contested urban terrain. Entitled Machine Space, the film registers the experience of this city as in motion yet freighted with jeopardy; and reads the city as an urban assemblage of people, material and space. It was shown at Sightlines 2019, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.

In the world of academia, knowledge has traditionally been reduced to text – but with the rise of creative practice research in recent years, there has been a growing movement pushing the boundaries of what knowledge looks like and how it is consumed. This short film represents an early stage in my screenwriting/screen production PhD in progress, exploring a form of knowledge production and dissemination that I entitle the kino paper – a medium to push through traditional boundaries of research, in a form that evolves from the video essay to encompass an intersection of artful intentionality of imagery whilst simultaneously exploring my research.

Fabric of War: Why Wool? is an intrinsically multi-disciplinary work, incorporating documentary filmmaking – including archiveology (Russell 2018) and digital media; museology; social history, political economy and fibre science. It is the product of collaboration between the then textile curator of the National Museum of American History (Madelyn Shaw); an Australian screen academic (Trish FitzSimons) and Australian Wool Innovation (AWI) – the representative body for wool growers. It was commissioned by AWI, drawing on both their research and marketing budgets, after a direct approach from the filmmaker. AWI’s particular request was that the film have a strong digital media aesthetic and that it address an American as well as an Australian audience.

Jean Epstein’s seminal film La Chute de la mais on Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher; 1928; France), is an adaptation that combines two of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories; The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), and The Oval Portrait (1842). This project is a reappraisal of both Jean Epstein’s cinematic method and philosophy, articulated best under the term Photogénie (Epstein 1923), the legacy of this film, and the adaptability of Poe’s literary output to the cinema more generally. The study of this intersection of Epstein and Poe has led to the production of my film I Work for the Devil. The film I have produced is not a direct remake, nor a treatment of the original source material. Instead, it is crafted from a series of sketches produced as a response to the various themes, ideas, tangents, and revelations discovered during the research process. This sketching process is reflective of what Robert B. Ray describes as a ‘heuretic’ theory of film (2001, 4)

This research project is a collaboration between composers of music and vision for 360 cinematic VR. Colour or Visual Music boasts a strong tradition in the field of abstract animation including luminaries such as Oskar Fischinger, Jordan Belson, Norman McLaren, Mary Ellen Bute, John and James Whitney, etc. Often these practitioners worked on pre-recorded music in applying form, colour and movement to an interpretation of sonic scores. Sometimes the audio-visual synergy was the result of genuine collaboration between animator and musician. The uniqueness of the Ascendance project lies in the challenges the VR canvas presented in its seemingly limitless spatial affordances, and in the genuine cross-disciplinary collaboration required to effectively meet these demands. An original musical score was revisited for re-composing in VR space in anticipation of its animated visual expression, and in consideration of the viewer’s experience. The musical composer and animator worked together to consider how musical aspects such as pitch, volume and tempo might inform both audio and visual staging, and the visual aspects of colour, form and movement.

Nonhuman Flow emerged from a wider AHRC-funded research in Affective Cinema, which seeks to experiment with and explore the unique expressive potential of film linked to its direct capturing of the real (light); as Shaviro puts it, “the automatism and non-selectivity of mechanical reproduction make it possible for cinema to break with traditional hierarchies of representation and enter directly into a realm of matter, life, and movement” (1993, 31). Narrative and representation can be loosened by the process of defamiliarisation: capturing things “as they are perceived and not as they are known” (Shklovsky 1997, 4). This can give rise to affects: impersonal, undifferentiated-yet-singular, nonhuman sensations and feelings contained in the work, as opposed to the human world of meaning and language (Deleuze and Guattari 1994). The research synthesises various sources in film theory and philosophy, making them the guiding principle of the practice; this results in original works of film art, expands the understanding of the theory and leads to the development of innovatory film production techniques, such as the complex lighting experiments demonstrated in the visuals of Nonhuman Flow.

The Visit is an interactive real-time video installation and Virtual Reality experience, developed from a ground-breaking interdisciplinary research project conducted by artists and psychologists working with women living with dementia. Visitors are invited to sit with Viv, a life-sized, realistic animated character, drawing us into a world of perceptual uncertainty, while at the same time confounding stereotypes and confronting fears about dementia. The characterisation has scientific validity but also the qualities of a rich, emotion-driven film narrative. The point of the work is to draw the viewer into the emotional/perceptual world of Viv.