Assessing graduate screen production outputs in nineteen ...

4.5.2 Role of Conventional Scholarship in Pre-ProductionConventional scholarship is very much in evidence during the pre-production stageof screen production development when much thinking, writing and research takesplace. Much of this work involves conventional type of scholarship that identifies thekey questions, methodology, forward projections and conceptual abstractions. Forexample, the scripting process must arrange all the textual information in a way thatwill be easily accessible to the audience. The narrative needs to be simple and clearas we cannot stop a production mid-stream and think about things in a way that wecan do when we read a book; the relentless unfolding of the production is quiteunforgiving to mudded logic. All of this needs to be abstracted and projected forwardin time before the production starts.4.5.3 Production as an ExperimentThe production itself can be considered as an empirical experiment in which modelsof social situations (conceived during the pre-production process) are used to testsomething about ourselves and the culture we live in. In the production processthese models are no longer abstract possibilities but involve real human beingsinteracting according to some prescribed intention. Multiple takes are recorded ofeach such experiment from which an appropriate selection is subsequently madeduring the post-production process.4.5.4 Verification by PeersThe production does not exist until it is sighted and confirmed as being of worth byan audience. The number of viewers that choose to see the production is a measureof it impact and its validity.This regime of scholarship for the production process is not all that different from theconventional scholarship scheme outlined in Figure 4.13. The equivalent productionscholarship scheme is depicted in Figure 4.14 below:1. PRODUCTION SCHOLARSHIP2. HYPOTHESIS/CONCEPT 3. PROJECTED 4. PEER REVIEWEDKEY RESEARCH SCRIPT EXPERIMENTS EXHIBITEDQUESTION/THEME REPEATED TAKES ADDITIVECONFLICT/SCRIP NARRATIVE COHERENCE GENREFigure 4.14 Schematic depiction of practice-based scholarship triangleAssessing graduate screen production outputs in nineteen Australian film schools49