Storyality Theory: Understanding Film Success

STORYALITY THEORY :
Consilience, Evolutionary
Epistemology & Holonic Memetics
JT Velikovsky
Doctoral candidate:
(Film/Screenwriting/Transmedia)
School of Humanities and Communication Arts
University of Western Sydney

Outline of this Paper:
1. Consilience
2. Movies
3. Knowledge
4. Systems Theory
5. Memetics (Holons)
6. The StoryAlity Theory

INDUSTRY EXPERIENCE - JT Velikovsky
• 91-94 – Newcastle Uni (B.A. Comms - Screenwriting)
• 95-96 – Screenwriting & Filmmaking - AFTRS, 2 years
• 98 – Story Analyst (Fox, Polygram, Screen NSW, etc)
• 2000 - Inform P/L – National Games Market Analyst
• 2000-2002 - Game Writer/Designer @ Ratbag Games
• 2004-5 - Director/Game Designer, A-Rage/UniSA
• 2005-7 - Game Designer/Writer – Red Tribe Games
• 2008 – Transmedia Consulting, Film, TV, Comix, ARGS
Writing Feature Film Scripts (30)
• 2010-2013
• XCOM (Game) – 2K Games - screenwriter
• CAUGHT INSIDE (2011) – film screenwriter
• THE JUNGLE (2013) – script editor, crew roles
• Script Assessor & Judge - Australian Writer’s Guild

Top 20 Most-Viral Movies:
Biggest `cost-benefit ratio’ movies, for Artists & Audiences
See: On The Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, Fiction (Boyd 2009)

Feature Film: Domain & Field
1906 – The Story of The Kelly Gang (Tait, 1906; 70 mins )
Currently = 500,000 movies (!)
Vogel, HL (2011),
Entertainment Industry Economics - A Guide For Financial Analysis,
8th Edn, Cambridge University Press, New York.

Feature Film: Domain & Field
Film = Theatre + Photography + Literature
(Csikszentmihalyi 1995)

Feature Film Field… (People)
(Domains within Domains)

Real-World Problem:
70% of movies lose money (Vogel 2011)

The `< 1% Problem’ in Movies
StoryAlity #1 – About My Doctoral Research on Film / Screenwriting / Transmedia
http://storyality.wordpress.com/2012/08/12/hello-world/ (Velikovsky 2012)

Consilience
See: E O Wilson `Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge’ (1998)

14
Consilience: or `vertical integration’
Physics, Chemistry, Life, Psychology, Sociology, Culturology
c.f. EO Wilson in `Creativity’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1996, pp. 318-9)

1a. Consilience…?
BEFORE:
Wilson, EO (1998), Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge,
1st edn, Knopf: Distributed by Random House, New York.

1c. History of Consilience
William Whewell (1883 - “scientist”)
C.P. Snow (1959 - `The Two Cultures’)
Karl Popper & Ernst Gombrich
Arthur Koestler (1964, 1967, 1978)
E.O. Wilson (1975, 1998)
Csikszentmihalyi (1988, 1996)
DK Simonton (1999-2011)

`Great Flicks’ (2011)
Simonton, DK (2011),
Great Flicks: Scientific Studies
of Cinematic Creativity and Aesthetics,
Oxford University Press, New York; Oxford.
Distinguished Professor
Dean Keith Simonton
Department of Psychology
University of California, Davis

CRITICAL vs RoI SUCCESS
• There is little overlap in critical and commercial success (virality)
• Writer-Directors are over-represented
Simonton, Great Flicks (2011)

1d. History of Consilience (2)
`EVOCRITICISM’ / `BIOPOETICS’ / `BIOAESTHETICS’ /
`LITERARY DARWINISM’ (1995-)
• Joseph Carroll (1995-)
• Cooke & Turner (1999)
• Ellen Dissanayake (1995)
• Dennis Dutton (2010)
• Jonathan Gottschall (2008, 2012)
• Michelle Scalise Sugiyama (2010)
• Brian Boyd (2009)
For more, see:
StoryAlity #71 – On Consilience & Creativity
http://storyality.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/storyality-71-
Consilience-is-coming-Read-all-about-it/

THESIS TITLE
“STORYALITY THEORY - UNDERSTANDING AND EXPLORING
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN:
CREATIVITY;
THEORIES OF
NARRATOLOGY;
SCREENWRITING;
AND
NARRATIVE FICTION
FEATURE FILM-MAKING
PRACTICES.”

THINGS THAT DON’T CAUSE A
MOVIE TO GO VIRAL in CULTURE:
1. “Star power” (i.e. Casting of `A-list’ actors)
The top 20 RoI films didn’t have `Stars’ in them
2. Timing (e.g. with regards to holidays)
A bad film story is a bad film story - even on a holiday
3. Number of screens that the Film opened on
Wide-opening films still bomb if the story is bad
4. Opening Weekend box office figures
Word of mouth spreads : “That film is lousy, don’t bother”
5. Oscars™ (i.e. nominations, and/or wins)
Only 2 of the top 20 RoI films have Oscar wins
6. Reviews
Reviews don’t make a significant difference to virality
7. Marketing
Marketing does not improve the odds (De Vany 2004)

THINGS THAT DO CAUSE A MOVIE
TO GO VIRAL in CULTURE:
1. The film Story. (That is all.)
`It would have been hard to imagine at the outset that by
applying high-brow mathematical and statistical science
we would end up proving [William] Goldman’s fundamental
truth that, in the movies “Nobody knows anything”. None of
our results is more surprising than finding that hard-
headed science puts the creative process at the very center
of the motion picture universe. There is no formula.
Outcomes cannot be predicted. There is no reason for
management to get in the way of the creative process.
Character, creativity and good storytelling trump
everything else.’
(De Vany 2004, Hollywood Economics, p. 6)

FINDING #3 (ON: THEMES)
Top 20 RoI Films - all have the same Themes:
(1) Survival, (2) Family/Community, (3) Justice (Revenge)
Evocriticism / Ev Psych
(Joseph Carroll, 1995, 2004, 2011)
Consilience
(EO Wilson, 1998)

Why are films successful..?
Because:
Human Nature.
Q: What is… `Human Nature’ ?
A: See: Evolutionary Psychology.

How..?
Q: How to make a successful movie?
A: Make a movie many people like.
Q: What do people like?
A: See Evolutionary Psychology.

Ev Psych: `Human Nature’
Carroll, J (2012), 'The Truth About Fiction: Biological
Reality And Imaginary Lives', Style, vol. 46, no. 2. (pp.33-5)

Ev Psych: Human Nature
Reality And Imaginary Lives', Style, vol. 46, no. 2.

Ev Psych: Human Nature
Reality And Imaginary Lives', PowerPoint slides.
https://umsl.academia.edu/JosephCarroll

Primary Dataset: (n = 20)
& in the Creative: Person, Process, Product (Film) & Place
Product: Common elements in the: Story; Screenplay; Film…

FINDINGS #1-10
In the Top 20 RoI Films: STORY / SCREENPLAY / FILM
1. These are `Villain Triumphant’ stories
2. These films have no `character arcs’ (for the protagonist)
3. All have the same Themes: 1 Survival, 2 Family/Community, 3 Justice
4. 2 parts: Before the `tragedy’ strikes - and, After
5. None are adaptations – all are `original screen stories’
6. 18 x set Present Day (except: Mad Max, American Graffiti)
7. Temporally linear (no `alternate’ structures <> Primer)
8. 90 screenplay pages / (90 mins screen time)
9. Settings: US, Australia, Ireland, UK, Mexico
10.19/20 are spoken-English-language (one is in Spanish)

FINDINGS #11-17
PRODUCTION:
11. 17 / 20 are independent films
12. Budget Range: $7k - $11m (Avg. Budget = $1.9m)
13. None have `stars’ (A-list actors)
14. None have big Marketing budgets
15. 13/20 had sequels
THE CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS:
16. All Writer-hyphenates (Writer- Director/Producer/Actor)
17. 18.5 / 20 are male, and 1.5 are female

GENRE in the Top 20 RoI
FINDING #18: There are no “Drama” genre films in the Top 20…
But - there are several Dramas in the `Bottom 20 RoI’ Films

1. What is Knowledge..?
`The School of Athens’ – Raphael (1510)

1c. `Schools of Thought’
1. Adaptation Studies (e.g. Bluestone, Bruhn, Gjelsvik, Hanssen, Linda Hutcheon, Thomas Leitch)
2. Aestheticism (e.g. Harold Bloom, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Oscar Wilde)
3. Aesthetics/Philosophy of Art (e.g. Noël Carroll, Peter Lamarque, Stephen Davies, Greg Currie)
4. American Pragmatism (e.g. Charles Sanders Pierce, William James, John Dewey)
5. Archetypal/Mythic (e.g. Maud Bodkin, Northrop Frye, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, James Frazer)
6. Australian Realism (e.g. John Anderson, David Malet Armstrong, J.J.C. Smart)
7. Autobiographical Theory (e.g. Thomas Cooley, Albert E. Stone, Avrom Fleishman, Robert Smith, Paul de Man)
8. Chicago Aristotelians (e.g. R.S. Crane, Wayne Booth, Richard Levin)
9. Cognitive Cultural Studies (e.g. Lisa Zunshine, Patrick Colm Hogan, Nancy Easterlin, Brian Boyd, David Bordwell)
10. Colonialism (e.g. Jürgen Osterhammel, Robert J. C. Young, Diderot, de Tocqueville)
11. Post-Colonialism (e.g. Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, Leela Gandhi)
12. Creativity Studies (e.g. Csikszentmihalyi, Sawyer, Simonton, Gardner, Boden, Koestler)
13. Cultural Studies (e.g. Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams, Marshall McLuhan, Henry Jenkins)
14. Deconstructionism (e.g. Derrida, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller)
15. Digital Literary Studies (e.g. Siemens, Schreibman, Crompton, Hoover, Liu)
16. Ecocriticism (e.g. William Rueckert, Joseph Meeker, Cheryll Glotfelty)
17. Empirical Literary Studies (e.g. Willie van Peer, Sonia Zyngier, Marisa Bortolussi, Frank Hakemulder)
18. Evocriticism/Biopoetics/Literary Darwinism/Consilience (e.g. EO Wilson, Brian Boyd, Joseph Carroll, Jon Gottschall, Brett Cooke, Frederick Turner, Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, David Bordwell,
Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Daniel Dennett)
19. Existentialism (e.g. Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Albert Camus, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche)
20. Feminism (e.g. Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Laura Mulvey)
21. Formalism (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Vladimir Propp, Roman Jakobson, Viktor Shklovsky, David Bordwell)
22. Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory (e.g. Freud, Jacques Lacan, Charles Mauron)
23. Game Studies (e.g. Kurt Squire, Jane McGonigal, Jesper Juul, Henry Jenkins, Ian Bogost, Salen & Zimmerman, John Maynard Smith, Ernest W. Adams)
24. Gender studies (e.g. Judith Butler, Virginia Woolf, Rory Ridley-Duff, DonnaHaraway)
25. Genetic Studies (e.g. Jed Deppman, Daniel Ferrer, Michael Groden)
26. Genre Criticism (e.g. Aristotle, Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin, Carolyn Miller)
27. German Hermeneutics / Phenomenology (e.g. Kant, Hegel, Husserl)
28. History of the Book and of Reading (e.g. Finkelstein, Gameson, Chow)
29. Historicism (e.g. Hegel, Marx, Boas)
30. New Historicism (e.g. Stephen Greenblatt, H. Aram Veeser, Michel Foucault)
31. Linguistic Analysis of Literature (e.g. Hasan, Wales, Talib)
32. Literature and Science (e.g. Beer, Gossin, Westfall)
33. Marxism (e.g. Marx, Fredric Jameson, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno,Terry Eagleton, Slavoj Žižek)
34. Post-Modernism (e.g. Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari, Baudrillard, Lyotard, Jameson)
35. Narratology (e.g. Wayne Booth, Gerard Genette, Seymour Chatman, Meir Sternberg, David Herman)
36. New Criticism (e.g. I. A. Richards, T. S. Eliot, Cleanth Brooks)
37. Philosophy of Science (e.g. Popper, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Simonton)
38. Practice Theory (e.g. Bourdieu, Giddens, Postill, Schatzki, Latour, Rouse, Pickering)
39. Presentism (e.g LaCapra, Grady & Hawkes, Headlam Wells)
40. Queer Theory (e.g. Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick)
41. Reader Response (e.g. Stanley Fish, I. A. Richards, Louise Rosenblatt, Wolfgang Iser)
42. Reception Studies (e.g. Jauss, Hall, Holub)
43. Rhetoric (e.g. Plato, Kenneth Burke, Alex C Parrish)
44. Semiotics (e.g. Peirce, de Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Culler)
45. Structuralism (e.g. Lévi-Strauss, A. J. Greimas, Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes, Roman Jakobson, Vladimir Propp)
46. Post-Structuralism (e.g. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean Baudrillard, J. Hillis Miller, Jacques Lacan, Helene Cixous, Paul de Man)
47. Systems Theory (e.g. Altmann & Koch, Sadowski, von Bertalanffy, Laszlo, Koestler)
48. Territorialism (e.g. Ardrey, Goodenough)
49. Theology/Religion (e.g. Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Buddha, L Ron Hubbard, Dennis Taylor)
50. Translation Studies (e.g. Toury, Holmes, Venuti)
51. Transmedia Studies (e.g. Marsha Kinder, Henry Jenkins, Christy Dena)
52. Travel Theory (e.g. Jean Baudrillard, Alison Blunt, Kristi Siegel, Umberto Eco)
StoryAlity #113: Survey – Schools of Thought in the Arts / Humanities
http://storyality.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/storyality-113-schools-
of-thought-in-the-arts-humanities-survey/

Evolutionary Epistemology - DT Campbell
in (Popper & Schilpp 1974, pp. 412–63) See also: (Gontier 2006, pp. 1-29).
The evolutionary spiral of ideas… (Koestler 1967, after Garstang 1922)
(Koestler, A, The Ghost In The Machine 1967/1989, p. 168)

FINDING #16
All the 20 key creatives are writer-hyphenates:
• Writer-Director; or Writer-Producer; or Writer-Actor,
• (and/or, all 3)
What does it mean? It pays to stay involved in production.

http://storyality.wordpress.com/creative-practice-theory/

42
1. Born: Bio-Psycho-Socio-Cultural background / `talents’
2. Develop a habitus (a `feel for the game’- of Film)
3. Absorb the Domain/s (films, books, courses, the web, etc.)
4. Internalize the Domain/s (e.g. Feature Films, Writing, Story)
5. Practise their craft skills (the `10-Year Rule’…[Hayes 1989])
6. Navigate the Field, and assume a position within it
7. Acquire 3 forms of Capital (economic, social, cultural)
8. Implement a `creative’ work (a Feature Film)
9. The work is judged `creative’ by The Field…
10. Acquire symbolic capital (e.g. awards)
11. Continue the cycle from # 2) above – AND/OR:
12. Retire / Die
Velikovsky (2013)
CREATIVE PRACTICE THEORY
As per the Top 20 RoI writer-hyphenates:

Virality of memes in Systems
The `pond-ripple’ model of film meme virality (Velikovsky 2012)

FINDING #21: …A System?
FREQUENCY OF TOP 20 RoI FILMS = 2.05 YEARS (R2=96%)

Figure 5-2 - The increasingly large concentric circles in this simplified schematic represent the
major levels at which creativity forces operate. (Hennessey & Amabile 2010, p. 571)
CREATIVITY: SYSTEMS THEORIES
`What we need now are all encompassing systems theories of creativity
designed to tie together and make sense of the diversity of perspectives
found in the literature - from the innermost neurological level to the
outermost cultural level.’ (Hennessey & Amabile 2010)
Annual Review of Psychology, 2010

46
`For creativity to occur, a set of rules and practices must be transmitted from
the domain to the individual. The individual must then produce a novel
variation in the content of the domain. The variation then must be selected
by the field for inclusion in the domain’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1999: p 315)
DIFi SYSTEMS MODEL OF CREATIVITY

DIFi Systems Theory
The Domain, Individual, Field interaction
Systems model of Creativity (Csikszentmihalyi 1988, 1996)

Systems Theory
A system and its environment (Sadowski 1999, p. 19)
Sadowski, P (1999), Systems Theory as an Approach to the Study of Literature:
Origins and Functions of Literature, E. Mellen Press, Lewiston, N.Y.

Systems Theory
The autonomous system and its environment (Sadowski 1999, p. 76)
Sadowski, P (1999), Systems Theory as an Approach to the Study of Literature:
Origins and Functions of Literature, E. Mellen Press, Lewiston, N.Y.

Systems Theory: Movies
SOCIETY (Field) and CULTURE (Domain):
Two self-coupled systems

51
`For creativity to occur, a set of rules and practices must be transmitted from
the domain to the individual. The individual must then produce a novel
variation in the content of the domain. The variation then must be selected
by the field for inclusion in the domain’ (Csikszentmihalyi 1999: p 315)
DIFi SYSTEMS MODEL OF CREATIVITY

GENES = MEMES (Evolution)
(i.e., Selection, Variation, Transmission)
Creativity, Genes and Biological Evolution
Figure 1: Model of Biological Evolution
(M. Csikszentmihalyi and Wolfe 2000: 83)
`Creativity is the engine that drives cultural evolution.’
Creativity, Memes and Cultural Evolution
Figure 2: The Systems Model of Creativity

EVIDENCE: A FILM SYSTEM…?
CREATIVE PRACTICE THEORY – AGENT-BASED MODEL OF THE FILM SYSTEM
(Velikovsky 2013)
http://storyality.wordpress.com/creative-practice-theory/

Holarchy of concepts in StoryAlity Theory (2014)

Holons/Holarchies
Janus: A Summing Up (Koestler 1978, pp. 28-9)

61
Holons / Holarchies
A bio-psycho-socio-politico-geo-cultural
holarchy (Velikovsky 2013)
A holon is a node in a holarchy.
It is a part and also a whole.
The laws of holarchies:
[1] A holon looks up for what it needs to
integrate with.
[2] It looks sideways for what it needs
to compete &/or cooperate with.
[3] It looks down for what it wants to
control &/or command.
(Funch 1995, after Koestler 1964-78)
Also c.f.: Miller, J.G. (1978), Living Systems,
McGraw-Hill, New York.

62
Memes (ideas) are holons
The structure of the meme – the unit of culture: the holon (Velikovsky 2013)
Holons: co-operate/compete sideways/command down/integrate up
Creativity/Evolution: Selection, Variation, Transmission-with-heredity

STORYALITY PREDICTIONS:
StoryAlity Theory predicts - a Top 20 RoI Film:
CRITERIA PROBABILITY
• Will arrive every 2.05 yrs 96% chance
• Will be by a writer-hyphenate 100% chance
• Will follow StoryAlity structure 100% chance
• Will be 90 mins/ 90 scenes 80% chance
• Will be a Horror genre film 50% chance
• Will be `found footage’ 15% chance
• Will be a Drama genre 0% chance
• Will be a `monomyth’ story 15% chance
• Will be a `Villain Triumphant ‘ 100% chance
• Will have `character arcs’ 0% chance
• Will have the `3 primal Themes’ 100% chance

64http://storyality.wordpress.com/
StoryAlity Research Blog:

• Psychology – the systems model (Csikszentmihalyi)
• Sociology – practice theory (Bourdieu)
• Philosophy – holons (Koestler)
• Memetics – memes (Dawkins)
• Narratology – story theory
• Communications – communication theory models
• Statistics – analysis of the story elements in top 20 films
• Probability Theory – high-ROI film predictive theory
• Complexity Theory – modelling the feature film system
• Computer Modelling – agent-based modelling
• Film Screenwriting Theory – since 1913 & `script gurus’
• Film Production Case Studies – Top & Bottom 20 RoI
• Evolutionary Literary Theory – Darwin (Carroll, Boyd)
Interdisciplinary Components
of: Creative Practice Theory Narratology

Storyality Theory: Understanding Film Success

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