Phil Mathews

Sketching Feedback.
The role of sketching and mark making as a tool within screenplay development

Bournemouth University, UK

This Paper will look beyond conventional forms of written script feedback and consider how sketches and drawing can facilitate feedback and work effectively as a means to communicate ideas of time, pacing and structure within screenplay development. Screenwriters work with words however their primary focus is not with language but with images and sounds as Mckee (1998) suggests:
Pity the poor screenwriter, for he cannot be a poet. He cannot use metaphor and simile, assonance and alliteration, rhythm and rhyme, synecdoche and metonymy, hyperbole and meiosis, the grand tropes. Instead, his work must contain all the substance of literature but not literary.
(Mckee R. 1998, P.394)

Screenwriting as a temporal form with a format codified to frame time visually with a page of screenplay is equivalent to a minute of screen time. This subtextual and implied sweep and movement through time as a reader considers the text is ever present and understood by both writer and reader in the process. This research is interested in exploring screenplays on a textural level as well as the textual level in the development stages. Script drafts are often printed hard copy and read similarly to other texts except for one vital distinction. They are often read by industrial readers and people in development within the exact timeframe they are meant to play out if translated to the screen.
As a researcher and script editor, I read screenplays with pen or pencil in hand and sketch and doodle throughout the screenplay as well as offering written notes in an attempt to capture wider considerations and responses. The sketches are not always formed or recognisably symbolic, nor are they illustrative in a representational sense of imagery or characters although they sometimes can be. These sketched notes, observations and feedback are often made on a secondary reading when there is time to revisit and address ideas and thoughts in greater depth. Visual representations of story forms are nothing new with Frytag’s (2004) pyramid as just one example widely recognisable to screenwriters. Also given the high proportion of screenwriters who are dyslexic or kinaesthetic in their approach to learning, visual frames of reference and sketching can form integral parts of how a screenplay is shaped, discussed, developed, and conceived. This paper will consider whether wider approaches to script development beyond written feedback can offer further scope and connect with screenwriters beyond conventions using examples of sketched feedback and student accounts of how it is received.

Dr. Phil Mathews Principal Academic in Screenwriting at Bournemouth University, UK. and Deputy Head of department for media Production. Mathews gained his practice-based doctorate in 2018 focused on the area of romance genre and character arcs. Prior to this Mathews wrote for television including the series Doctors for BBC1, and co-wrote the BAFTA nominated short Soft, 2006. Prior to this Mathews directed pop promos for MTV and worked in special effects make-up. Mathews’ research interests cover screenwriting practices, the romance genre, the pedagogy of screenwriting and filmmaking practices. Recent conference papers include: Decolonising Curriculums, BAFTSS conference 2023, Facilitating Transnational approaches across the postgraduate provision, Advance HE Conference 2023, Motivation and the character Arc, SRN conference 2022 and What is Love SRN conference 2021.