Intellect

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Authors:  Ian W. Macdonald 
DOI: 10.1386/josc.1.1.45/1

Keywords
Screen Idea Work Group (SIWG) screenwriter interviews doxa best practice craft skills production analysis

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.