Writing

Finding The Personal Voice In Filmmaking

Finding The Personal Voice In Filmmaking by Erik Knudsen explores the largely ignored reality of intimate feelings and their role in causing and motivating the development of ideas that are both personal and universal. The book draws on original research from filmmakers in Malaysia, Ghana and Colombia to offer practical strategies and techniques for developing ideas. Finding The Personal Voice In Filmmaking marks the first book to help filmmakers see the connection between feelings, creativity, story and cinematic imagery in a transcendental way. The book is published by Palgrave Macmillan and is due to be published in the autumn of 2018.

Doubt

The Doubt Project – book and film – has been constructed out of Erik Knudsen’s recent photographs, his entire body of films and some reflexive writing related to this theme of doubt from the past 25 years of writing notebooks. He has created a new reflexive film out of his previous films. Some of the poems in the book have found their way into the narration of the film, as have some of the photographs. The structure of the film mirrors that of the narrative of the book. The book consists of 74 B&W pages in 210 x 210 mm paperback. Published by One Day Films Ltd, November 2017. This book is also available on Amazon.

Method in Madness – a case study in practice research methods

Erik Knudsen has a book chapter entitled Method In Madness – a case study in practice research methods in the book Screen Production Research published by Palgrave and edited by Craig Batty and Susan Kerrigan. This chapter uses the case of The Raven On The Jetty as an example of how a feature film destined for the commercial market has also been used as a university research project. This book is also available on Amazon.

The Raven On The Jetty Production Scrapbook and DVD

This is a unique book in which the story of The Raven On The Jetty is told scene by scene with parts of the director’s personal storyboard and notes, production stills of the behind the scenes activities during shooting and stills from the film. Also included, is the complete screenplay and credits of the film, as well as a DVD of the complete film. The book consists of 156 colour pages in 200 x 250 mm hardback. Published by One Day Films Ltd, April 2015.

Dependency and Independence In British Independent Film

Erik Knudsen has written a book chapter for the forthcoming book, Independent Filmmaking Around The Globe, edited by Doris Baltruschat and Mary P Erickson for the University of Toronto Press. The book chapter, Dependency and Independence in British Independent Film, takes a critical look at contemporary British independent film and explores, amongst other things, what is meant by independence. April 2015.

Cuba in Waiting: A Photographic Essay

The beautifully crumbling facades of buildings and infrastructure attract many visitors from all over the world who wish to catch a nostalgic glimpse of the 1940s and 1950s Cuba. However, this nostalgic beauty, and the disarming warmth of the people of Cuba, hides a reality that faces most Cubans; a reality of poverty and oppressed aspirations. Cuba has seen little change since the Revolution instigated by Fidel Castro Ruz in 1959 and there is a strong hidden desire for desperately needed change. No one wants to live like this.The photographs in this essay capture an elusive hope in the sadness of waiting and a strange beauty in the decaying idealism of the revolution. This book is now available from a number of book outlets, including Amazon.

Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice

Erik Knudsen has co-authored, with Wilma de Jong and Jerry Rothwell from the University of Sussex, a book on creative documentary practice for Pearson Education. The book was published in August 2011 and is available through good book outlets, including Amazon.

“A brilliantly useful and comprehensive book that takes you through the A to Z of documentary filming. Read it, digest it, take what is useful and go and make a brilliant film!” – Nick Broomfield, documentary filmmaker.

Transcendental Realism in Documentary

This is a chapter which Erik Knudsen contributed to the book, Rethinking Documentary, published by the Open University Press (2008). The chapter, ‘Transcendental Realism in Documentary’, explores a different approach to thinking of and using film narrative in an effort to portray and elicit our more transcendent feelings and relationships to actuality and the factual. It looks at how the documentary can engage with not just empirical observations and the psychologically explicable, but how documentary can also explore more transcendent realities, which are usually as important as the empirically factual in affecting people’s lives. Read the chapter here…

Creation and I

Published initially in the Journal of Media Practice, volume 3, number 2, 2004, this article explores the personal relationship between film, filmmaker and teaching. The article was then subsequently published as a chapter in the book, Visualising Anthropology, edited by Anna Grimshaw and Amanda Ravetz (Intellect, 2004).

The Total Filmmaker: thinking of screenwriting, directing and editing as one role

An article written by Erik Knudsen for New Writing: the international journal for the practice and theory of creative writing, Vol. 13, No. 1, about the relationship between screenwriting, directing and editing during the making of his feature film, The Raven On The Jetty and the implications on how we teach screenwriting. For the full article, visit Bournemouth University repository or New Writing, where this article is freely available. Or read the abstract.

Eyes And Narrative Perspectives On Story

An article written by Erik Knudsen for the Journal of Media Practice, Vol. 15, No. 1, about his approach to working with eyes and eye lines in his feature film, The Raven On The Jetty.

Cinema of Poverty: Independence and Simplicity in an Age of Abundance and Complexity

An article written by Erik Knudsen and published by the peer reviewed online film journal, Wide Screen Vol 2 No 2.

Zen and the Art of Film Narrative

A paper presented at the Rethinking the Screenplay Conference, held at the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland, 11 September 2009, and pulished by the Journal of Screenwriting, Vol. 1 No. 2.

Fact and Mysticism in Documentary

An academic research report by Erik Knudsen on the completion of Heart of Gold, first published in the Journal of Media Practice, volume 8, number 1.

Eyes of the Beholder

First published in the Journal of Media Practice, volume 5, number 3, 2005. An article questioning the UK Film Council’s approach to developing screen talent.

Fear Eats the Soul

First published in the Journal of Media Practice, volume 1, number 3, 2000. An article about the importance of encouraging students to connect to their personal experinces when creating work.

Framing The Eternally Present

A discussion of the use of detail and moment in pursuit of a transcendental realism in Erik Knudsen’s feature film,Brannigan’s March.

Types of Emotion and Classic Narrative Mechanisms

A paper presented at the Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Dallas, USA, in 1996.