"The predominant industry mode of screenplay development involves writers sitting alone at a computer to produce numerous drafts in periodic consultation with producers, directors and script editors.  The exception to this rule is the process of devising screenplays through guided actors’ improvisations.  However, in the development of my film, Beat (2010), a dialogue between dramatic and choreographic improvisations was established and a process of “kinesthetic writing” evolved as a result. Script consultant, Joan Scheckel, employs comparable processes to develop narrative feature films collaboratively. The success of films developed by her demonstrates that, where appropriate, an economic case can be made for the higher investment required of collaborative script development.

Based on my own film practice, in-depth interviews with Joan Scheckel, and scholarship in disciplines ranging from the arts and humanities through cognitive psychology to neuroscience, this essay employs the praxical knowledge and inductive theorising germane to practice-based research to investigate how musicality, movement and dance can be utilized in the collaborative development of narrative screenplays, and proposes that the embodiedness of human understanding evident in processes of entrainment such as kinesthetic empathy and mirroring may be harnessed to enliven scriptwriting and function more generally as a modus vivendi.
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Whale Rider (2003), adapted for screen by Niki Caro from Witi Ihimaera’s novel, tells the story of a Māori girl who struggles to overturn patriarchal resistance towards her future role as a leader. Following critical acclaim and an Oscar win for Keisha Castle-Hughes, the film’s considerable commercial success sharpened local debate already sparked by the Pākehā (European New Zealand) status of its director . Dialectical conceptions of cultural difference underpin much of that commentary, as do assumptions about power relations on set and positivist dismissals of the indigenous spirituality guiding the production. This essay expands the scope of that debate by exploring the very nature of the intercultural collaborative processes established between Caro, Ihimaera, Taumaunu (Cultural Advisor), and the elders of Whangara (home of the Whale Rider myth). While New Zealand’s cinematic history proves that intercultural collaboration may replicate processes of colonial assimilation, my research reveals processes characterised by a sophisticated awareness of what distinguishes and what connects peoples from different cultures, extremely high levels of mutual respect, and the democratization of traditional screen production culture in accordance with Māori spirituality and protocols. This, in turn, triggers a higher degree of shared authorship than is the norm in mainstream cinema production. The resulting film demonstrates the potential for indigenous mythology to address contemporary concerns, and interweaves the respective naturalistic and symbolic registers of New Zealand cinema and Maori storytelling paradigms without retreating in to exoticism. I thus argue that the ‘dialogic’ mode of intercultural collaboration undertaken in the making of Whale Rider, in which differentiation is understood as ‘simultaneous resemblance and difference’ , provides an exemplar for intercultural creative practice and manifests in a specific permutation of aesthetically hybrid cinema that carves out a constitutive ‘third space’ in the New Zealand national canon.

"This article provides the first overview of contemporary low budget digital cinema in New Zealand, the first decade of which has resulted in a body of fiction films that contest the national cinematic canon in terms of thematic and representational emphases as well as narrative and aesthetic strategies. To investigate the causes and consequences of these departures, the output and methods of New Zealand’s digital feature filmmakers are explored, revealing how shifts in creative processes and increased access to the means of production enabled by low cost, lightweight digital video intersect with the proliferating cultural affiliations of emerging filmmakers to produce change.  I thus argue that the very ontology of digital video and associated medium-specific practices are increasingly integral to culturally and aesthetically pluralistic projections in New Zealand cinema. As a consequence, I also argue for public investment in the sector and the alteration of funding policies designed for large-budget productions so that a tier of filmmaking ripe for experimentation and innovation can exist in fruitful dialogue with more mainstream fare.

Keywords: 
digital filmmaking
convergence
technology and creativity
New Zealand cinema
small nation cinema
policy
filmmaking process
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