So it's not surprising I'm neurotic The Screenwriter and the Screen Idea Work Group

Abstract

The Screen Idea Work Group (SIWG) is a flexibly constructed group organized around the development and production of a screen idea; a hypothetical grouping of those professional workers involved in conceptualizing and developing fictional narrative work for any particular moving image screen idea. In this article, I use the notion of the SIWG to draw together the views of key workers about how the process of screen idea development works or doesn't. My findings are based on a small ethnographic study I undertook in 2004, in which, through in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven SIWG workers, I attempted to understand how they came to occupy their role, how they felt their judgements were made and received, and how far the SIWG's view of the screen idea accorded with the screenwriting doxa (characterized as how to do a good piece of work). As detailed below, their answers were concerned with status, a sense of self-worth and respect, points of tension, power, control, collaboration and trust, and the nature of the doxa itself.

‘A story is not a story but a conference’: Story conferences and the classical studio system

“…This was the drawback of the system: it was certainly not innovation-friendly. In the history of Hollywood film production, all aesthetic innovations were essentially the results of a shift of power within the screen idea work group (Macdonald 2010); but this is another story. On the other hand, the system guaranteed a certain level of quality -not in aesthetic terms, but in terms of craft and skill.…”

“…The screenwriting process from the first 'screen idea' (Macdonald 2010) to the final draft became institutionalized and structured within the classical studio system. From the late 1920s until the 1960s story conferences were established to develop and control the script.…”

The screenplay as boundary object

“…The blueprint analogy can thus alternatively underplay the role of the writer, suggesting 'that the screenplay is of value only as a set of practical guidelines' (Price 2010: 46), or overstate the writer's creative input, since it can also be used to suggest that, while the writer conceives of an original idea, the rest of the creative team merely executes it, an interpretation that minimises the role played by many another contributors in the creation of the screen work. (Maras 2009) One of the useful aspects of the notion of the 'boundary object' is that rather than an analogy for the screenplay, it provides a framework for its analysis, situating it within a wider context of action, beyond its relationship with the writer or writers, to also include the relationship that it facilitates between the wide range of people who make up the 'screen idea work group' (Macdonald 2010). As a concept, it provides a starting point both for thinking about how the particular form taken by the text relates to its function as a site of cooperation between 8 these various actors, and also how this range of different participants in a screen production actually use the screenplay in practice to facilitate discussion and collective action, without them all needing to meet, or indeed to reach a consensus.…”

The Creative System in Action

“…In the field of screenwriting research, the idea of understanding the process of screenwriting as structured around a screen idea comes out of the work of Ian Macdonald (2003Macdonald ( , 2004Macdonald ( , 2010Macdonald ( , 2012. Building on a term used by Philip Parker to describe the start of a script's development (1998, p. 57), Macdonald has outlined how to think of a screen idea as 'the core idea of anything intended to become a screenwork, that is "any notion of a potential screenwork held by one or more people.…”