Kurt Lancaster's List: Intro to Audio/Visual Storytelling

9. Write the same scene a completely different way.
- Reverse a scene or character
- Increase the stakes
- Change who prevails in the scene
- Use a twist to change the end of the scene
- Put the characters in a worse position

Can writing be central to a documentary project’s creative and expressive pre-vision? And why does a frisson of anxiety and suspicion pervade some of the discussion circling the notion of the documentary screenplay?

The emergence of observational cinema around 1960 created a profound impact on notions of documentary authenticity, truth and modes of storytelling – including documentary screenwriting.

This article posits that this new direction is towards a ‘Digital-Micro-Cinema’ – defined here as micro-budget filmmaking practice allied with a digital production basis. The fact that Kiarostami opted to shoot a feature digitally and on a micro-budget, suggests that this new, or modified, brand of cinema has afforded the opportunity (for an established world cinema director) to explore new ways in which to narrate stories (Ganz and Khatib 2006: 28). This article looks at ‘new ways’ of (cinematic) scriptwriting, in a digital context, and the transformation of narrative in this arena. The focus of the article is on Kiarostami’s notion of the ‘Open Screenplay’ with emphasis on its digital re-embodiment in Ten.

"Why do so many screenwriting theorists and industry personnel insistent on the primary importance of Story in cinema? What kinds of scriptwriting processes are utilised by filmmakers wishing to place more emphasis on a greater range of storytelling strategies, and on the cinematic qualities of images, locations, gestures and sounds? In other words: what does it mean to write for the cinema?"