| AdminHistory | In 1989 Bill Douglas was awarded the Carnegie Fellowship at the University of Strathclyde. He delivered lectures as well as providing guidance for student hoping to one day be filmmakers themselves. His lectures included the topics of 'Scriptwriting and Adaptation', 'Stage and Screen' and 'Scotland and Film', the latter two Peter Jewell contributed to as well.
In 'Screenwriting and Adaptation' Douglas uses his transposition of Hogg's 'Justified Sinner' throughout as a template for adaptation. He takes a step-by-step approach in creating a film from a novel and how a screenwriter or director create their work. He discusses the idea that film is it's own medium and should not be beholden to fidelity or someone else's work. He also writes of Chekhov's idea of "golden nuggets" being shaken out of the text and those nuggets being the core of an adaptation.
In 'Stage and Screen' Douglas examines the historical divergence of the theatre and cinema. He focuses on both medium's roots in the pre-cinema traditions of panoramas, dioramas and other optical effects. The conclusion Douglas draws is that there is little difference between cinema and theatre, both wish to achieve a similar audience reaction, though in his opinion cinema is able to immerse the audience in a way theatre cannot.
'Scotland and Film' is a broad history on filmmaking in, or about, Scotland. Douglas finds the country woefully under-represented on screen, with most of the pictures he deems the best made before 1950. In the lecture he discusses the Hollywood treatments of Scotland, often grand period pieces or adaptations from the Kailyard school; and his hope that Scotland will be able to stake it's own claim in the cinematic canon. |