School of Film and TV - Theses
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ItemReincarnation, rebirth, transmigration( 2016)This thesis sought to examine the common elements in reincarnation beliefs, as encountered in stories from world religions and cultures, in scholarly literature and studies, in films made from 1990 to 2010, and in the lived experiences of thirty yoga practitioners over the past fifty years. It then sought to incorporate these recurring themes into the screenplay and the final production of an engaging, hand drawn, narrative, animated film.
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ItemDissenting fiction re-righting law: practice-led research into biopolitics, women’s rights and reproductive justice in Ecuador( 2017)Through a feature-length screenplay and accompanying dissertation this creative practice as research project addresses questions of biopolitics, women’s rights and reproductive justice. The research focuses on my own country, Ecuador, but alludes to a broader Latin American context. In this research, the practice of fiction screenplay writing configured my own understanding of the addressed issues. Based on this understanding, in the dissertation, reflecting upon “The Ladies Room” screenplay, I formulate an explanation around these issues. The first chapter of the dissertation focuses on the legislative context of “The Ladies Room” story. The second, third, fourth and fifth chapters articulate the possible world the screenplay proposes, relative to our four protagonists, respectively. The first chapter juxtaposes Ecuadorian Constitutional and Criminal Law, and public policy, against international human rights instruments with regard to women’s rights. Through the screenplay’s character of Isabel, the second chapter interrogates reproductive coercion and access to safe abortion, the notion of potentiality (not) to, the institution of motherhood and the practice of mothering. The third chapter revolves around Marcia, and how this female character embodies forms of biopolitical power that discipline the body and regulate the population; this chapter also reflects upon the family as an institution and the differential valuation between productive and reproductive work. In the fourth chapter, I understand Alice as a gendered configuration of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, and it is through her that the screenplay investigates the possibilities of speaking and been heard, the historically conflicting appearance of women before law, and contemporary forms of thanatopolitics. The fifth chapter interrogates the notion of “unwanted” children, articulated by the character of a little girl, Karlita. This proposes a reflection about a child, any child, as a being-after-birth, the pure possibility of a life, that is a life-to-be-mothered, characterized by a constitutive relationality. The dissertation’s final chapter argues for the necessity of beings-after-birth to create another form of biopolitics, one that is no longer a technology of power over life, but of power of life.
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ItemWhat makes a filmmaker make films? A theoretical model & analytical method for the interrogation of filmmaking practice( 2014)Scholarly research on filmmaking practice from a filmmaker’s point of view is rare, with existing studies mostly focusing on the making of feature films. The research presented in this thesis demonstrates that it is both possible and useful to systematically describe, structure, and assess the significance of some of the more notable factors that affect and shape a much broader range of filmmaking practices, the impulses that motivate them, and the films they generate. Part I of this thesis addresses the theoretically-based Research Question 1: "What is a theoretical model for the analysis of filmmaking practice that is: 1) from a filmmaker’s point of view; 2) comprehensive; and 3) structured and systematic?" After establishing that there are no existing models of filmmaking or any other creative practice that meet these three criteria, a new theoretical model called the Practice-Space Model of Filmmaking is proposed and described. This model is sited within a cross-disciplinary theoretical framework that draws on elements of existential phenomenology psychology, Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the “sociology of power”, Storper and Salais’ economic theory of “worlds of production”, and the Hindu notion of purushartha or “goals of life”, as modernised by Mohandas Gandhi. Part II of this thesis addresses the empirically-based Research Question 2: "Can the Practice-Space Model of Filmmaking: 1) be operationalised; and 2) be useful in the analysis of Chris Warner’s filmmaking practice between January 1978 and December 1991?" Utilising an analytic autoethnographic case study method and cross-modal data collection, the operationalisation of the analytical method associated with the Practice-Space Model introduced in Part I is demonstrated by applying it to a 14-year period in the author’s own filmmaking practice in Australia, during which he was the sole or joint filmmaker of nine completed films and two uncompleted film projects. The results of this analysis of a limited section of Australian filmmaking practice demonstrate that the Practice-Space Model of Filmmaking is both practicable and useful, and suggest the basis for more broadly-applicable further iterations of the Model.
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ItemTime sense: cultural difference and the creation, construction and reception of animated film( 2012)This dissertation explores cultural differences in animated film production, investigating the influence of the filmmaker and viewer in the creation, the construction and the sensibility of film. A notion of inter-subjective time is applied to the discussion of microscopic and macroscopic perception of animation movement via 20th century philosophers, such as Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Henri Bergson (1859-1941), J.M.E. McTaggart (1866-1925), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) and Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). This is an exploration of scientific perspectives of time as well as an investigation of cultural differences in the intentionality and the direction of time to the discussion of international animation phenomena. Understanding animation as an intersection of human perception, cultural and social movement, the author introduces his theoretical notion, time-sense, which is a combination of subjective and inter-subjective time, giving rise to archetype and our awareness of the quality of slowness and fastness of movement and its tracked shape, this dissertation reconsiders the influence of complex phenomenon of hybridized time-sense, and its close relationship to the microscopic movement of Japanese animation film. Focusing on the temporal space or ma used in anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica (2011), the animated film Spirited Away (2001) and The Sky Crawlers (2008) as well as the movement of Hatsune Miku and Japanese video sharing website Nico Nico Dôga, this thesis identifies a cross-cultural/ intercultural time theory in search of more specific understanding of differences and similarities between cultures particularly as it relates to animation.
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ItemInspired by a true story: an assessment of how the dramatic elements of pity and fear can be applied by a producer seeking to transform historical events into narrative drama for television: based on a case study of the production of the telemovie, Sisters of War (2010)( 2011)This thesis argues that, as one of a team of authorial agents, the producer of a television historical drama should understand the challenges, limits and benefits of shaping the dramatic elements of pity and fear in order to sustain historical veracity within the work whilst meeting the narrative requirements of mass-broadcast media. Accordingly, this research assesses how Aristotelian descriptions of particular emotive indicators in drama, specifically pity and fear and pitiable and fearful incidents, may be considered and applied by a television producer seeking to adapt oral histories to the specific needs of a telemovie inspired by historical events. Using Aristotle’s treatise, the Poetics (and to a lesser extent, The Art of Rhetoric) as a framework, an assessment is made of the dramatic properties of pity and fear with a focus on the cognitive base of these emotional indicators and their role in linking the rational and the figurative. The research then examines key creative and financial decisions in the development and production phases for the Australian telemovie, Sisters of War (2010). Through this process the research assesses the producer’s authorial role and manipulation of emotional elements as he attempts to reconcile the application of dramatic and emotive effect – the imaginative and figurative requirements of story – with the empirical matters and eyewitness accounts associated with the historical referent that inspired the story. The two women who provided the oral histories that inspired the telemovie are Sister Berenice Twohill and Mrs Lorna Johnston (nee Whyte). Sections of transcript from their primary research interview (March 27th and 28th, 2008) are mapped as they are developed in the written documents and subsequently filmed and edited. The dramatic elements of pity and fear in the completed telemovie are then identified and tested for their ability to implement the producer’s stated objectives. This thesis asserts that, with critical qualifications, far from being antithetical to the goals of conventional historical practice, television drama can utilise the key emotive elements of pity and fear to create an intense and meaningful correspondence between our understanding of past events and our desire and need for an imaginative representation of those events.