From film to fiction

Ann Turner is an award-winning screenwriter and director. Her first film after graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts School of Film and Television was the historical feature, Celia.

On release, the film received wide recognition and praise. Time Out, the famous London what’s-on magazine, considers it one of the best directorial debuts of all time, and Samuel Wigley positions it on the British Film Institute website alongside films by Ingmar Bergman, Stephen Spielberg, Louis Malle, Yasujiro Ozu, Satyajit Ray and John Boorman. Celia went on to win the Grand Prix at the Creteil International Women’s Film Festival.

With a string of other films to her credit, Ann Turner has now turned her storytelling ability and keen eye for drama to fiction writing. Her first novel, The Lost Swimmer, was published at the beginning of this month by Simon and Schuster.

Asked if she ever thought, in the early stages of what has been a long and successful career as a film director and screenwriter, whether she’d end up as an author, Ms Turner’s response was equivocal.
“No and yes,” she says.

“My love of narrative in all mediums – film, literature, television and theatre – led me to study film and the training I received encouraged storytelling with idiosyncratic characters, plot, theme, and above all, a keen visual sensibility.”

Ms Turner credits her ability to transfer the skills she learned as a student to the freedom she was given to be what those in the industry call an ‘auteur’, that is, a writer-director who authors their own films.

“This developed a skillset that has proved inestimably useful in making the transition from feature films to novels, and has revealed to me the depth and quality of the education I received”, she says.

Ms Turner believes that, at this time when creative careers can be more fluid than ever before, and practitioners move more seamlessly from medium to medium, learning the art of narrative is crucially important.

“It can develop paths to the imagination that will unleash stories and help make choices as to how the drama unfolds, crafting complex ideas into a satisfying, dramatic whole,” she says.

“Cinema works through images, with screenplay, direction, performance, sound, music, production design and editing as key factors.

“A novelist uses words to paint images, to evoke the senses. Sentences can be as rhythmic as music, paragraphs can weave a picture in a reader’s mind that is just as powerful and, at times, more powerful than a cinematic image. Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste can be conjured by an author.”

In The Lost Swimmer Ms Turner is able to use her pen alone to successfully evoke the pervading sense of suspense for which her film oeuvre is known and admired. In her debut novel as in her debut film, emotions such as love and trust, and relationships in which truth and certainty are inverted, are explored.

“At the core, powers of observation and a sense of drama and characterisation are essential to both feature films and novels,” Ms Turner says.

“Of course novels can be much more internal, delving into minds in a different way from film. And film is often far more action based.

“But there is a huge amount of knowledge that is common to both mediums.”

The obvious difference is that films require large budgets, whereas a novel can be created by one person in a room. The similarity is that both genres need support and concerted inputs from external bodies. In the case of novels, these include publishers and booksellers.

In moving from film to a two-book deal with a recognised publisher, Ms Turner envisages an alternative journey that film graduates can take.

“This parallel path opens new territories in a fresh way, utilising our training as film makers to create a satisfying avenue as auteurs and authors.”

www.vca.unimelb.edu.au/artistic-disciplines/film-and-television