Cecilie Levy

Spatializing the Screenplay: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love VR

The Norwegian Film School/University of Amsterdam

This paper will focus on the production of the virtual reality (VR) experience Finding Frida, created for my PhD in artistic research at the Norwegian Film School. As a screenwriter accustomed to traditional film and television, I encountered the challenges of ‘writing into a space’ (Røed et al., 2023) and dramatic compression when crafting a ‘spatialized screenplay’ (Ross & Munt, 2018). The dialogic and collaborative nature of the process also highlighted the importance of a common language within the project’s multidisciplinary team.

Finding Frida, centered around a virtual encounter with a forgotten artist, presents key-moments from Norwegian textile artist Frida Hansen’s life, woven with motifs from her art that represent themes about life. The project’s aim is to create emotional landscapes that ‘hold’ the story and immerse the spectator in a mood or a movement. A seven-minute VR sequence demonstrates the project’s creative direction regarding materiality, transitions and visual style. Through practice-led research, this ongoing project investigates how to adapt storytelling to compact ‘representational spaces, embodying complex symbolisms’ (Burman, 2020).

In this presentation, I will give an overview of Finding Frida’s development. My aim is to show how, as a screenwriter, I addressed questions of dramaturgy, dialogue and narration when moving from temporal to spatial storytelling. I will explore the issue of the first-person perspective in VR and how that impacts narrative devices like dramatic irony (Gulino, 2024) and subtext. I will also discuss how to establish rapport with a virtual character without a string of expositional scenes that all require expensive world building. Finally, I will reflect on the interplay between research and writing, detailing how theories on film and interactive media opened an internal dialogue: I conclude by showing how this enriched my creative process and added layers of understanding to my practice as a screenwriter.

Cecilie Levy is an independent screenwriter and part-time lecturer in dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam in the Department of Media Studies. In 2023 she completed her PhD in Artistic Research at the Norwegian Film School (part of Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences) with her project Light From Aside: A Screenwriter’s Perspective in Virtual Reality. Her work as a screenwriter includes shorts, children’s series, films for television and feature film. Cecilie’s work has been screened internationally, on television and festivals, and has won several awards, including the Prix Jeunesse (Prix Europa), the Lucas Award and a nomination for an International Emmy® Kids Awards. In addition to her other roles, she is currently engaged at the Norwegian Film School as a part-time researcher in screenwriting.