Introduction to Screen Narrative


Book Description

Bringing together the expertise of world-leading screenwriters and scholars, this book offers a comprehensive overview of how screen narratives work. Exploring a variety of mediums including feature films, television, animation, and video games, the volume provides a contextual overview of the form and applies this to the practice of screenwriting. Featuring over 20 contributions, the volume surveys the art of screen narrative, and allows students and screenwriters to draw on crucial insights to further improve their screenwriting craft. Editors Paul Taberham and Catalina Iricinschi have curated a volume that spans a range of disciplines including screenwriting, film theory, philosophy and psychology with experience and expertise in storytelling, modern blockbusters, puzzle films and art cinema. Screenwriters interviewed include: Josh Weinstein (The Simpsons, Gravity Falls), David Greenberg (Stomping Ground, Used to Love Her), Evan Skolnick and Ioana Uricaru. Ideal for students of Screenwriting and Screen Narrative as well as aspiring screenwriters wanting to provide theoretical context to their craft.




An Introduction to Film Analysis


Book Description

An Introduction to Film Analysis is designed to introduce students to filmmaking techniques while also providing an invaluable guide to film interpretation. It takes readers step by step through: -the basic technical terms -shot-by-shot analyses of film sequences -set design, composition, editing, camera work, post-production, art direction and more -each chapter provides clear examples and full colour images from classic as well as contemporary films Ryan and Lenos's updated edition introduces students to the different kinds of lenses and their effects, the multiple possibilities of lighting, and the way post-production modifies images through such processes as saturation and desaturation. Students will learn to ask why the camera is placed where it is, why an edit occurs where it does, or why the set is designed in a certain way. The second section of the book focuses on critical analysis, introducing students to the various approaches to film, from psychology to history, with new analysis on postcolonial, transnational and Affect Theory. New to this edition is a third section featuring several in-depth analyses of films to put into practice what comes before: The Birds, The Shining, Vagabond, In the Mood for Love, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.




Screen Media


Book Description

Screen Media offers screen enthusiasts the analytical and theoretical vocabulary required to articulate responses to film and television. The authors emphasise the importance of 'thinking on both sides of the screen'. They show how to develop the skills to understand and analyse how and why a screen text was shot, scored, and edited in a particular way, and then to consider what impact those production choices might have on the audience. Stadler and McWilliam set production techniques and approaches to screen analysis in historical context. They demystify technological developments and explain the implications of increasing convergence of film and television technologies. They also discuss aesthetics, narrative, realism, genre, celebrity, cult media and global screen culture. Throughout they highlight the links between screen theory and creative practice. With extensive international examples, Screen Media is an ideal introduction to critical engagement with film and television. 'Screen Media offers a systematic approach to film and television analysis. The examples chosen by the authors are both appropriate and timely, and are presented in a very lively and readable form that will appeal to an international readership.' - Rebecca L. Abbott, Professor of Film, Video + Interactive Media, Quinnipiac University, USA




Closed Circuits


Book Description

The recent uproar over NSA dataveillance can obscure the fact that surveillance has been part of our lives for decades. And cinema has long been aware of its power—and potential for abuse. In Closed Circuits, Garrett Stewart analyzes a broad spectrum of films, from M and Rear Window through The Conversation to Déjà Vu, Source Code, and The Bourne Legacy, in which cinema has articulated—and performed—the drama of inspection’s unreturned look. While mainstays of the thriller, both the act and the technology of surveillance, Stewart argues, speak to something more foundational in the very work of cinema. The shared axis of montage and espionage—with editing designed to draw us in and make us forget the omnipresence of the narrative camera—extends to larger questions about the politics of an oversight regime that is increasingly remote and robotic. To such a global technopticon, one telltale response is a proliferating mode of digitally enhanced “surveillancinema.”




Screenplay


Book Description

Providing examples from well-known movies, Field explains the structural and stylistic elements as well as writing techniques basic to the creation of a successful film script.




Writing About Screen Media


Book Description

Writing About Screen Media presents strategies for writing about a broad range of media objects – including film, television, social media, advertising, video games, mobile media, music videos, and digital media – in an equally broad range of formats. The book’s case studies showcase media studies’ geographical and industrial breadth, with essays covering topics as varied as: Brazilian telenovelas, K-pop music videos, Bombay cinema credit sequences, global streaming services, film festivals, archives, and more. With the expertise of over forty esteemed media scholars, the collection combines personal reflections about writing with practical advice. Writing About Screen Media reflects the diversity of screen media criticism and encourages both beginning and established writers to experiment with content and form. Through its unprecedented scope, this volume will engage not only those who may be writing about film and other screen media for the first time but also accomplished writers who are interested in exploring new screen media objects, new approaches to writing about media, and new formats for critical expression.




Exploring Seriality on Screen


Book Description

This collective book analyzes seriality as a major phenomenon increasingly connecting audiovisual narratives (cinematic films and television series) in the 20th and 21st centuries. The book historicizes and contextualizes the notion of seriality, combining narratological, aesthetic, industrial, philosophical, and political perspectives, showing how seriality as a paradigm informs media convergence and resides at the core of cinema and television history. By associating theoretical considerations and close readings of specific works, as well as diachronic and synchronic approaches, this volume offers a complex panorama of issues related to seriality including audience engagement, intertextuality and transmediality, cultural legitimacy, authorship, and medium specificity in remakes, adaptations, sequels, and reboots. Written by a team of international scholars, this book highlights a diversity of methodologies that will be of interest to scholars and doctoral students across disciplinary areas such as media studies, film studies, literature, aesthetics, and cultural studies. It will also interest students attending classes on serial audiovisual narratives and will appeal to fans of the series it addresses, such as Fargo, Twin Peaks, The Hunger Games, Bates Motel, and Sherlock.




Words on Screen


Book Description

Michel Chion is well known in contemporary film studies for his innovative investigations into aspects of cinema that scholars have traditionally overlooked. Following his work on sound in film in Audio-Vision and Film, a Sound Art, Words on Screen is Chion's survey of everything the seventh art gives us to read on screen. He analyzes titles, credits, and intertitles, but also less obvious forms of writing that appear on screen, from the tear-stained letter in a character's hand to reversed writing seen in mirrors. Through this examination, Chion delves into the multitude of roles that words on screen play: how they can generate narrative, be torn up or consumed but still remain in the viewer's consciousness, take on symbolic dimensions, and bear every possible relation to cinematic space. With his characteristic originality, Chion performs a poetic inventory of the possibilities of written text in the film image. Taking examples from hundreds of films spanning years and genres, from the silents to the present, he probes the ways that words on screen are used and their implications for film analysis and theory. In the process, he opens up and unearths the specific poetry of visual text in film. Exhaustively researched and illustrated with hundreds of examples, Words on Screen is a stunning demonstration of a creative scholar's ability to achieve a radically new understanding of cinema.




The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound


Book Description

The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound provides a detailed and comprehensive overview of screen music and sound studies, addressing the ways in which music and sound interact with forms of narrative media such as television, videogames, and film. The inclusive framework of "screen music and sound" allows readers to explore the intersections and connections between various types of media and music and sound, reflecting the current state of scholarship and the future of the field. A diverse range of international scholars have contributed an impressive set of forty-six chapters that move from foundational knowledge to cutting edge topics that highlight new key areas. The companion is thematically organized into five cohesive areas of study: Issues in the Study of Screen Music and Sound—discusses the essential topics of the discipline Historical Approaches—examines periods of historical change or transition Production and Process—focuses on issues of collaboration, institutional politics, and the impact of technology and industrial practices Cultural and Aesthetic Perspectives—contextualizes an aesthetic approach within a wider framework of cultural knowledge Analyses and Methodologies—explores potential methodologies for interrogating screen music and sound Covering a wide range of topic areas drawn from musicology, sound studies, and media studies, The Routledge Companion to Screen Music and Sound provides researchers and students with an effective overview of music’s role in narrative media, as well as new methodological and aesthetic insights.




Integrated Storytelling by Design


Book Description

This pioneering work equips you with the skills needed to create and design powerful stories and concepts for interactive, digital, multi-platform storytelling and experience design that will take audience engagement to the next level. Klaus Sommer Paulsen presents a bold new vision of what storytelling can become if it is reinvented as an audience-centric design method. His practices unlock new ways of combining story with experience for a variety of existing, new and upcoming platforms. Merging theory and practice, storytelling and design principles, this innovative toolkit instructs the next generation of creators on how to successfully balance narratives, design and digital innovation to develop strategies and concepts that both apply and transcend current technology. Packed with theory and exercises intended to unlock new narrative dimensions, Integrated Storytelling by Design is a must-read for creative professionals looking to shape the future of themed, branded and immersive experiences.