Hauntological Screenwriting: Reflections on Writing Render

Journal article | Journal of Screenwriting, Volume 13, Number 1

In this practice-based research article, Tracy Mathewson reflects on the development of Render, a feature-length conspiracy screenplay exploring whether—and how—viable justice can be represented within twenty-first-century technological and conspiracy culture. The project connects the practical challenges of screenwriting with a theoretical investigation of how contemporary conspiracy narratives can respond to changing forms of technological power. 

The article uses hauntology as a framework for understanding the movement between successive screenplay drafts: what is no longer present, represented by the previous draft, and what has not yet arrived, represented by the next. Through this perspective, Mathewson examines writing as a process situated between theory and practice, objective analysis and subjective experience. Academic discussion is interwoven with personal reflection, foregrounding the intuitive and sometimes unplanned decisions through which a screenplay develops. 

The research introduces narrative techniques including “corruption of the protagonist”, “emergence of the inner voice” and the “many-headed monster”. It also develops the distinction between “seen” and “unseen” threats, examining surveillance capitalism as the logic underpinning “Big Technology” as a new force within the conspiracy genre. Together, these ideas offer a vocabulary for developing and analysing contemporary conspiracy screenplays, while making the uncertainties and discoveries of the writing process part of the research itself.