An Index of Posts on this Blog (New to the site? Start Here!)

An Index to the StoryAlity Blog, by Dr. JT Velikovsky PhD: 

* …A note on the structural and functional organization of this Index is at the very end of this page.

Introduction/Background:

1. StoryAlity #1 – About my Doctoral Research – on Film / Screenwriting / Transmedia

Question: What Are The 20 `Greatest’ Feature Films?

1. StoryAlity #2 – What Are The Greatest 20 Movies (Feature Films) Ever..?
2. StoryAlity #3 – The Top 20 RoI (Return on Investment) Films of the Last 70 Years
3. StoryAlity #3B – Trailers of the Top 20 RoI Movies
4. StoryAlity #3C – Trailers of the Bottom 20 RoI Movies
5. StoryAlity #4 – Is `Casablanca’ (1942) the `greatest’ film ever made?
6. StoryAlity #4B – On `Mindbender’ Movies

On The Methodology:

1. StoryAlity #5 – Background to the Research Methodology of this study of polar extremes of movie-RoI
2. StoryAlity #5B – Almost Everything You Think You Know About Movie Screenwriting is: Possibly Wrong

On Creativity:

1. StoryAlity #6 – What is Creativity and How Does It Work?
2. StoryAlity #6A – a + e = æ
3. StoryAlity #6B – Flow Theory, Creativity and Happiness
4. StoryAlity #7 – On “the 10-Year Rule” and Creativity
5. StoryAlity #8 – More on the 10-Year Rule” and Creativity
6. StoryAlity #8B – On the 10-year-rule and creativity in Standup Comedy
7. StoryAlity #9 – How To Be More Creative
8. StoryAlity #9B – Creativity in Science (and – The Arts, and Film)
9. StoryAlity #10 – About The Creative Personality
10. StoryAlity #11 – Wallas and the Creative Process
11. StoryAlity #12 – Combining Practice Theory – and the Systems Model of Creativity
12. StoryAlity #13- Creativity and Solved Domain Problems
13. StoryAlity #13B – Creativity, Cinema, Stanley Kubrick & Genius
14. StoryAlity #14 – On some Romantic myths of Creativity
15. StoryAlity #14B – Creativity – the missing link between “The Two Cultures”
16. StoryAlity #14C – Two Crucial American Psychological Association speeches: J P Guilford (1950) and D T Campbell (1975).
17. StoryAlity #141 – The StoryAlity-Theory `Robo-Raconteur’ artificial-writer

On `The Screenwriting Convention’:

1. StoryAlity #15 – The `Screenwriting Convention’ – Defects of the present view
2. StoryAlity #16 – On Free Will in screenwriting: Can I write, whatever I like?
3. StoryAlity #17- On Movie `Blockbusters’, and RoI
4. StoryAlity #17.B – On `The Death of Cinema‘

The Research Question/Problem: What makes a `great’ film story?

1. StoryAlity #18 – The Problem: 7 in 10 Feature Films Lose Money
2. StoryAlity #19 – How Many Movies Are There?
3. StoryAlity #20 – What Exactly is, a `Successful’ Film?
4. StoryAlity #21 – What Makes A Film Succeed? – The Story.
5. StoryAlity #22 – So What Doesn’t Necessarily Make a Movie Successful?
6. StoryAlity #23 – Define “A Film Story”

On Feature Films and RoI (Return on Investment):

1. StoryAlity #24 – On Feature Films and RoI (Return on Investment)
2. StoryAlity #25 – Possibly: Why 7 in 10 Movies Lo$e Money
3. StoryAlity #26 – “3 Acts”? …Did Aristotle ever say that?

A brief Literature Review:

1. StoryAlity #27 – Narratology since Plato – A brief Literature Review
2. StoryAlity #28 – Screenwriting Manuals since 1911

Some Problems in the existing Literature on Film Screenwriting (or: `Defects of the present view’):

1. StoryAlity #29 – Why Aristotle’s ‘Poetics’ is so very wrong
2. StoryAlity #30 – Abandon Aristotle..?!
3. StoryAlity #31 – Which Screenplay `Guru’ Books To Read?
4. StoryAlity #32 – On McKee’s `methodology’ in `Story’ (1997)
5. StoryAlity #33 – McKee’s two (unfortunate) examples of “bad” film stories in `Story’ (1997)
6. StoryAlity #34 – Screenplay `paradigms’, or screenplay `syntagms’?
7. StoryAlity #35 – What do 8 screenplay `Gurus’ say about Screenplay Structure?
8. StoryAlity #36 – On Empirical vs. Non-Empirical Film Story Research

More Detail On Method – and Methodology

1. StoryAlity #37 – On Method: The StoryAlity Film Story Study – the Data Source
2. StoryAlity #38 – On The StoryAlity screenplay study Methodology
3. StoryAlity #39 – More On The StoryAlity Movie Story Study Methodology
4. StoryAlity #40 – Is Screenwriting in a `pre-Science’ state?

On Scientific Paradigms, and on Free Will, and on `Agency and Structure’.

1. StoryAlity #41 – On Scientific Paradigms – and Screenwriting `Paradigms‘
2. StoryAlity #42 – On Free Will – and Screenwriting
3. StoryAlity #43 – On `Agency and Structure’ in Screenwriting
4. StoryAlity #43B –  The `Creative Practice Theory’ online Agent-Based Model
5. StoryAlity #43C – Creative Practice Theory – The Game

On Cultural Evolution – and Memes

1. StoryAlity #44 – Biological Evolution, Cultural Evolution, and Creativity: Film
2. StoryAlity #45 – On Movie Memes and Memetics (and: How Memes Work)
3. StoryAlity #45B – On Tracking Memes in The Meme Pool
4. StoryAlity #46 – On Mayans, Memes, Creativity, Darwin and Dawkins
5. StoryAlity #47 – Why are some Screenplays/Films more `viral’ Memes?
6. StoryAlity #47B – More on Memes & Film (and: 3 solved problems in Memetics?)

On Holons and Holarchies

1. StoryAlity #48 – On Film Holon-Partons and Holarchies – and How Holarchies Work
2. StoryAlity #49 – On Movie Screenplays, Viral Memes, and Cultural Evolution

StoryAlity Theory:

1. StoryAlity #50 – The StoryAlity Screenplay Syntagm
2. StoryAlity #51 – The Universal Story Structure – and Story Memes – of the Top 20 RoI Films
3. StoryAlity #52 – The Golden Ratio / The Golden Spiral / The Fibonacci Sequence
4. StoryAlity #53 – The StoryAlity High-RoI Film Story & Screenplay Checklist
5. StoryAlity #54 – StoryAlity Screenwriting Guidelines – for any aspiring Writer of High-RoI Films
6. StoryAlity #55 – Patterns In The Top 20 RoI (Return On Investment) Films: On Frequency
7. StoryAlity #56 – Patterns in the Top 20 RoI Films: # of Scenes vs Film Duration/Screenplay Length – and: Elliot Waves
8. StoryAlity #57 – What Are The Biggest-Money-Loser Movies (based on Return-On-Investment)… Doing Wrong?
9. StoryAlity #58 – The StoryAlity Theory – applied to: some `Great Flicks‘
10. StoryAlity #59 – Examining the Loglines of the Top 20 RoI Films
11. StoryAlity #60 – On Character and Story – in the Top 20 RoI Films
12. StoryAlity #60A – Exposition scenes in the Top 20 RoI Movies
13. StoryAlity #61 – On The Storyality Probability Calculus – and the Principle of Induction
14. StoryAlity #62 – Do Film Critics Matter?
15. StoryAlity #63 – Creative Journal Video-Log
16. StoryAlity #64 – Why Transmedia Is Destiny
17. StoryAlity #64B – `Story & Transmedia’ PPT @ UNSW COFA
18. StoryAlity #65 – The StoryAlity K-Film: Ep 1 (online i-doc – interactive documentary)
19. StoryAlity #66 – Scientific & Empirical Proof that the StoryAlity™ Theory works: `The Devil Inside’ (2012)
20. StoryAlity #67 – The STORYALITY™ Screenwriting Manual (2013): out now on Kindle
21. StoryAlity #68 – StoryAlity Theory 3MT (3-Minute Thesis)
22. StoryAlity #69 – StoryAlity Theory – 20-minute paper @ the `Interventions & Intersections’ Conference (2013)
23. StoryAlity #69B – Some Predictions of the StoryAlity Theory

On Systems Theory and Evolution

1. StoryAlity #70 – Key Concepts in Systems Theory, Cybernetics & Evolution
2. StoryAlity #70A – The (StoryAlity) Systematizer
3. StoryAlity #70B – The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (Capra & Luisi 2014)
4. StoryAlity #70C – Systems Philosophy (Laszlo 1972)
5. StoryAlity #70C2 – General Systems Theory: Problems, Perspectives, Practice (Skyttner 2005)
6. StoryAlity #70D – The Evolving Self (Csikszentmihalyi 1993)
7. StoryAlity #70E – On Human Nature – and Evolutionary Psychology

On Consilience, Evocriticism, (a.k.a. Bioaesthetics, Biopoetics, or Literary Darwinism) and the StoryAlity Theory

1. StoryAlity #71 – On Consilience in the Arts / Humanities / Communication
2. StoryAlity #71B – Invalid criticisms of Consilience
3. StoryAlity #71C – Consilience and Vertical Integration
4. StoryAlity #71D – CineMetrics
5. StoryAlity #72 – Gene Theory and Story: G,T,C,A… (coincidence..?)
6. StoryAlity #73 – The Heros Journey: It’s Not What You Think
7. StoryAlity #74 – How Does Life – and the Universe Work, in Literature and Film? (Carroll)
8. StoryAlity #75 – The 5 Key `Factors of Life’ in the Top 20 RoI Films
9. StoryAlity #76 – On – The new `RoI’ Numbers – at The-Numbers.com…
10. StoryAlity #77 – On the bio-cultural approach to Film Study
11. StoryAlity #78 – On `the war of nature’ (from Origin of Species) by Charles Darwin
12. StoryAlity #79 – `These instincts are highly complex…’ (The Descent of Man) by Charles Darwin
13. StoryAlity #80 – `Our civilizations were jerry-built around the biogram’ (E O Wilson)
14. StoryAlity #81 – `Human Universals’ (Donald Brown) and, E O Wilson on Sociobiology
15. StoryAlity #82 – Pinker on `Evolution, Emotion and Explanation’
16. StoryAlity #83 – David Sloan Wilson on Evolutionary Social Constructivism, and BVSR
17. StoryAlity #84 – Pinker on `Art and Adaptation’
18. StoryAlity #85 – The Arts and Their Interpretation (E O Wilson)
19. StoryAlity #86 – Arts of Seduction (Miller)
20. StoryAlity #87 – `Does Beauty Build Adapted Minds?’ (Tooby & Cosmides)
21. StoryAlity #88 – On Evolution, Emotion and Film (David Bordwell)
22. StoryAlity #89 – Demonism breeds demonism (Gottschall)
23. StoryAlity #90 – Freud was wrong about Oedipus (Sugiyama) 
24. StoryAlity #91 – Status and Mating Games (Nettle) – Part 1
25. StoryAlity #92 – Status and Mating Games (Nettle) – Part 2
26. StoryAlity #93 – Jealousy in `Othello’ (Nordlund)
27. StoryAlity #94 – Freud was wrong (Easterlin)
28. StoryAlity #95 – Human Nature in `Wuthering Heights’ (Carroll)
29. StoryAlity #96 – Transmedia Practice: A Collective Approach (2014)
30. StoryAlity #97 – Biocultural Dissertations (A list of 120 biocultural PhDs and MAs)
31. StoryAlity #98 – What were the first feature films of 15 great Directors – and what do they all have in common?
32. StoryAlity #99 – 12 x Guest blog-posts on StoryAlity Theory @ The Story Dept

On the structure of the Meme (the unit of culture) – and: towards a true Science of Memetics

1. StoryAlity #100 – The Holon-Parton Structure of the Meme – the Unit of Culture (Velikovsky 2013, 2014, 2016)
2. StoryAlity #100A – The 3 Universal Laws of Holon/Partons (Velikovsky 2015)
3. StoryAlity #101 – A Science of Memetic Culturology (Velikovsky 2013)
4. StoryAlity #102 – Reply to 4 critics of “Memetics as a pseudo-science” (Part 1 of 4) – Hallpike 2004
   
5. StoryAlity #103 – Reply to 4 critics of “Memetics as a pseudo-science” (Part 2 of 4) – Polichak 2002
6. StoryAlity #104 – Reply to 4 critics of “Memetics as a pseudo-science” (Part 3 of 4) – Benitez-Bribiesca 2001
7. StoryAlity #105 – Reply to 4 critics of “Memetics as a pseudo-science” (Part 4 of 4) – Lanier 1996
8. StoryAlity #106 – Movie Pitches, Hybrid Memes, and Steve Worland’s `Combustion’
9. StoryAlity #107 – Preliminary Remarks on Literary Memetics (Rancour-Laferriere)
10. StoryAlity #108 – Memetics – and `An Ecopoetics of Beauty and Meaning’ (Turner)
11. StoryAlity #109 – Memetics and Film
12. StoryAlity #110 – Twenty(-Something) Controversies, in Ten Domains
13. StoryAlity #111 – `Weapons of Mass Instruction: Memetic Engineering and Directed Biocultural Evolution’ (includes a YouTube video of a paper I delivered at the 2014 ICD Symposium)
14. StoryAlity #112 – On Reductionism and Determinism – and – Expansionism and Indeterminism
15. StoryAlity #113 – `Schools of Thought’ in the Arts / Humanities / Communication – A Survey
16. StoryAlity #114 – ASPERA Conference 2014 (includes a YouTube video of a paper on The StoryAlity Theory K-Film which I delivered at ASPERA 2014). See also: Post #65 above, for the online StoryAlity K-film.
17. StoryAlity #114B – The Less Than 1% Problem in the Domain of Novels
18. StoryAlity #115 – The `Less-Than-1%’ Problem in the Domain of Film
19. StoryAlity #116 – StoryAlity Theory @ `Interventions and Intersections’ 2014 (UWS PG Conference)
20. StoryAlity #117 – Velikovsky’s 40 Domain Problems in Screenwriting (or: “Consilient PhDs We’d Like To See”) 
21. StoryAlity #118 – The 1000 Project – The 1000 `Rules’ of Screenwriting (Velikovsky)
22. StoryAlity #119 – The holarchy of StoryAlity Theory
23. StoryAlity #119B – Modernist Times Symposium (2014) – and Professor Brian Boyd Masterclass

On Videogames:

1. StoryAlity #120 – Videogames as Art
2. StoryAlity #121 – How To Build a Box-Office Bomb: Base It On A Board Game!
3. StoryAlity #122 – The IE2014 International Interactive Entertainment Conference

Okay back to Movies

1. StoryAlity #123 – How To Make A Film (2012 documentary)
2. StoryAlity #124 – Fellini (1963) nailed it: `Do you have a good box-office record?’
3. StoryAlity #125 – Women Screenwriters: An International Guide (2015)
4. StoryAlity #126 – Miller’s Compendium of Timeless Tools for the Modern Writer (2015)
5. StoryAlity #127 – The Science of Cinema articles – at WIRED.com
6. StoryAlity#128 – Evocriticism, STEM, and STEAM (Walker 2013)
7. StoryAlity#129 – Post-Modernist `Theory’ is dead as disco
8. StoryAlity#129B – Metamodernism – What is it?

On Memetics and Cultural Evolution:

1. StoryAlity #130 – Why Some Things Are Popular (Velikovsky 2014)
2. StoryAlity #131 – Why Things (like, some Movies) Are Popular – and – The Anna Karenina principle
3. StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter (Velikovsky 2016)
4. StoryAlity #133 – On the giallo genre
5. StoryAlity #134 – The ANZCA2016 Conference
6. StoryAlity #134A – On Documentary Transmedia (journal article in Convergence)
7. StoryAlity #135 – PhD Dissertation Addendum
8. StoryAlity #136 – Pop Culture in Asia and Oceania (2016)
9. StoryAlity #137 – Culturology – and, the CES (Cultural Evolution Society)
10. StoryAlity #138 – Darwin on the evolution of words and languages
11. StoryAlity #138B – Cultural Analytics, and yada yada yada
12. StoryAlity #139 – On the evolution of Darwin’s `Tree of Life’ Diagram
13. StoryAlity#140 – The Evolution of the Systems Model of Creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1988-onwards)
14. StoryAlity #141 – The StoryAlity-Theory `Robo-Raconteur’ artificial-writer
15. StoryAlity #142 – Our StoryAlity so far – random Technological Marvels
16. StoryAlity #143 – All of life is doing science
17. StoryAlity #144 – The structure of the meme, the unit of culture (in: The Encyclopedia of Information Science & Technology, Velikovsky 2017)
18. StoryAlity #145 – Five views of the monomyth (Velikovsky 2017)
19. StoryAlity #146 – Flow Theory = Evolutionary Theory
20. StoryAlity #147 – Transmedia @ the ANZCA2017 Communication Conference
21. StoryAlity #148 – Why is Movie Screenwriting So Tricky, Anyway?
22. StoryAlity #148A – Evolutionary Culturology
23. StoryAlity #149 – Karl Popper on creativity and problem-solving
24. StoryAlity #149B – The Tree of Culture
25. StoryAlity #150 – Key Findings – from The StoryAlity PhD on High-RoI Movies
26. StoryAlity #151 – My article on Stanley Kubrick, Charles Darwin and Joe Campbell’s monomyth, in The Journal of Genius and Eminence (March 2018)
27. StoryAlity #152 – The Holon/Parton Structure of the Meme, or The Unit of Culture. In the book Advanced Methodologies and Technologies in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Simulation, and Human-Computer Interaction (2019)
28. StoryAlity #153 – Film Production Courses & (so-called) Film “Theory” 
29. StoryAlity #154 – Units of culture vs. Units of biology
30. StoryAlity #155 – Kubrick on problem-solving
31. StoryAlity #156 – Creativity 4.0 Diagram (now with added: A.I.!)
32. StoryAlity #157 – Opening shots of the Top 20 RoI Movies
33. StoryAlity #158 – Writeur Theory
34. StoryAlity #159 – The Darwin-Wallace (1858) paper & creativity
35. StoryAlity #160 – Reply to “Why are Australian films now so unpopular?”
36. StoryAlity #161 – `Technology – Memes: Units of Culture’ in: Encyclopedia of Creativity (3rd Edn, 02020)
37. StoryAlity #162 – RUNAWAY CHAINSAW – EPK
38. StoryAlity #163 – The 5-C Model of Creativity
39. StoryAlity #164 – i=P
40. StoryAlity #165 – The HOLON/parton Structure of the Meme [book-chapters]
41. StoryAlity #166 – The Newcastle School of Creativity & CCIRP
42. StoryAlity #167 – Model-Dependent Realism
43. StoryAlity #168 – The Problem-Solution Model of Creativity
44. StoryAlity #169 – Ev Cult presentations
45. StoryAlity #170 – Research update
46. StoryAlity #170B – Quotes on the hard problem of culture (and Ev Cult’s solution)
47. StoryAlity #171 – Flowcharts of the scientific method
48. StoryAlity #172 – P3 of EC Addendum
49. StoryAlity #173 – Ev Cult, and Information, Communication & Systems Science
50. StoryAlity #174 – The many memes of Sir Karl Popper
51. (TBA…)

And: To Be Continued…

(This Blog updated weekly. Usually. Unless I’m really busy or something.)

——————————————–

Dr JT Velikovsky, PhD.

High-RoI Story/Screenplay/Movie/Transmedia Researcher

The above is (mostly) an adapted excerpt, from my doctoral thesis: “Communication, Creativity, and Consilience in Cinema” It is presented here for the benefit of fellow screenwriting and filmmaking researchers.

JT Velikovsky is a produced feature film screenwriter and million-selling transmedia writer-director-producer. He has been a professional story analyst for major film studios, film funding organizations, and for the national writer’s guild. For more see: http://on-writering.blogspot.com/

————————————

Roger (Corman) And Me. (Me with my x-ray eyes, JT Velikovsky, staring intently at the back of Roger’s head) at The Open City Film Festival, Newcastle NSW, Australia, way back when in 1996. Nash and Joel Edgerton’s (and Keiran DArcy- Smith’s!) wonderful first short film (`LOADED’) actually won the Festival.

And, as promised:

A NOTE ON THE STRUCTURAL & FUNCTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF THIS WEBLOG INDEX:

Given that `the feature film screenwriting convention’ is composed of a deep and complex web of assumptions (most of which – are possibly  incorrect, as the empirical evidence might suggest) we perhaps first may need to go through each individual `accepted truth’ (or, doxa, or piece of `received wisdom’ – many of which are often taken on faith, yet are not, necessarily, correct) in `the screenwriting convention’ (as, Dr Ian W. Macdonald, the greatly-esteemed founder of the SRN and the Journal of Screenwriting calls it in his excellent 2004 PhD thesis on screenwriting). And, so we should ideally examine more closely, whether these beliefs (some of which I would note, are very widely and deeply held) are currently correct / true.

Once that `complex web of assumptions’ about `the screenwriting convention’ is first fact-checked, we can then present The StoryAlity Film/Story Screenplay Theory. For this reason – it’s not until StoryAlity Post #50-60 above, that we actually explain/elaborate StoryAlity Theory. (Though you can of course, simply skip to StoryAlity post #50 – but, I would probably advise reading from Posts #1-#49 at some point, to see “the broader picture” with regard to, the screenwriting domain.)

And – please do, check any and all of the empirical evidence, for yourself. As Einstein once said: `The most important thing of all, is to question the accepted truths.’ It is exactly there – where the major scientific discoveries and breakthroughs occur.

And – Thanks so much for reading! Comments and critiques always welcome; Karl Popper notes that is how Science works: critical rationalism.

– JT Velikovsky

That’s how far down this page scrolls.