'Party Season: A Screenplay-Based Inquiry into Filming and Judgment, with Accompanying Essay'.

Abstract

Party Season is about sex and speech and employs some of the conventions of the porn film. Apparently inconsequential 'filler' scenes and dialogue link the pay-off scenes of vividly depicted sex. Except that, in Party Season, this relationship is gradually reversed - the scenes of excessive behaviour becoming 'filler' scenes linking the pay-off moments, the latter often embedded in deliberately extended 'unrealistic' dialogue. A key component of this as a piece of inquiry-based practice is the exploration of this altering balance and of how action and dialogue can function to produce such a reversal of conventionality. The intention with the accompanying essay is to sustain a progressive interweaving of reflective commentary and analytical vignettes. There is also an intended symmetry here - an 'excessive' essay (long, without conventional subheadings, breaks, etc.) will sit alongside the 'excessive' screenplay as its twin of sorts, a different style of invention. The essay is to speech what the screenplay is to sex.