Eric R. Williams

Eric R. Williams is a noted screenwriter, academic and virtual reality cinema director. Williams has written four books and two audiobooks on the subjects of screenwriting, film appreciation and new media storytelling. 
* 2014 - Media and the Creative Process 
* 2017 - Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics 
* 2017 - The Screenwriters Taxonomy 
* 2018 - How to View and Appreciate Great Movies 
* 2019 - Falling in Love with Romance Films Williams, Eric. Falling in Love with Romance Movies. Audible Original. The Great Courses, 2019. https://www.audible.com/pd/Falling-in-Love-with-Romance-Movies-Audiobook/B07XPDH9YT.
* 2021 - Virtual Reality Cinema: Narrative Tips and Techniques 
== Education and Career ==
Williams earned his MFA in Film from Columbia University in 1997, directing the feature film Snakes and Arrows as his thesis.  He chose Columbia University so that he could study writing and producing from James Schamus, Richard Brick, David Shaber and Terry Southern. Snakes & Arrows opened the door for him to meet Peter Falk, who hired Williams to write a Columbo (character)|Columbo made-for-tv murder mystery for Universal Pictures|Universal Studios in 1998. 
 
Williams studies the creative process of film adaptations and writes screenplay adaptations. He adapted Luis Alberto Urrea’s anthology "Across the Wire" in 2003; Bill Littlefield's novel "The Prospect" in 2005; and the anthology Voices from the Heartland in 2008. Williams' work on Voices received the "Ohio Arts Council Award of Individual Excellence in Screenwriting" in 2009. These screenplays are shared as examples in his book Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics. 
 
In 2008, Williams received an Emmy Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his interactive story design work with WOUB Public Media. Williams continued his relationship with WOUB between 2009-2010, co-producing three documentary projects : 
* Breaking News: the Collision of Journalism and Consumerism in a Democracy (feature documentary) 
* Redefining Appalachia (television series) 
* Guyana Pepperpot (television series) 
Williams edited Breaking News in 2009. However, a majority of the documentary was shot between 2005 - 2008 while Williams taught media production as part of an international project in Kiev|Kiev, Ukraine following the Orange Revolution. Guyana Pepperpot was funded by the US Agency for International Development (United States Agency for International Development|USAID) and produced in Guyana under Williams' direction. 
Williams began writing and producing virtual reality experiences at Ohio University's Game Research and Immersive Design Lab in 2016. As one of his first non-fiction projects, Williams worked with emergency room doctors to implement a first-of-its-kind VR cinema training experience for medical students. Williams' research introduced the concept of PRE-ality to medical education.Binstock, Y. (2018). What is Virtual Reality?: Everything You Wanted to Know Featuring Exclusive Interviews With the Leaders of the VR Industry. Amazon/Kindle. Retrieved June 6, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/What-Virtual-Reality-Everything-Interviews-ebook/dp/B071DZ6PJK  Williams' first narrative virtual reality project was Re:Disappearing. Williams co-directed a feature length educational VR project with Carrie Love and Josh Crook in 2017. 
== Notable Work ==
Williams developed the Screenwriters Taxonomy over the course of ten years and eventually published his work 2017. As he explains in the book: "The taxonomy is a process for creative storytellers (writers, producers, directors) to recognize, discuss and reinvent storytelling paradigms that have evolved over the decades." Williams' system of organizing fictional narrative films is based on the Taxonomy of All Living Things. The taxonomy provides a template for discussing narrative feature films using seven categories:
# Film Type
# Super-Genre
# Macro-Genre
# Micro-Genre
# Voice
# Pathway
# Point of View
In 2017, Williams co-directed the Medicaid Educational Simulation Project with Carrie Love and Josh Crook. Their narrative virtual reality project successfully improved cultural self-efficacy in healthcare providers. After three years of research at Ohio University's Game Research and Immersive Design Lab, Williams and Love subsequently wrote a book with cinematographer Matt Love identifying at least four new concepts for telling stories using virtual reality cinema (also known as "cine-VR"): 
# Persona Gap
# Pre-ality and Pre-Emotion
# Story Engagement Matrix
# Directorial Control vs Audience Agency
== References ==
== External Links ==
* Webpage
* Williams at Ohio University
Category:1968 births
Category:British screenwriters
Category:British academics