Semiotics for Screenwriters


Book Description

You're trying to finish a screenplay, but there's a voice in your ear whispering, “You should know more about how cinema story works.” Perhaps you've heard how many successful screenwriters deconstruct or “break down” films and study them. You'd like to try this method but ask yourself, “How do I start?” Semiotics for Screenwriters can help you with this daunting task by taking you on a unique journey through 3 classic films - It's a Wonderful Life, Lost in Translation, and Get Out - that shows you the hidden universal language of plot, character, and theme at work in them. This method will reveal the mechanics of cinema story, then show you how to apply this knowledge to your own screenwriting. Semiotics is a powerful system of analysis applied in many fields, including literature and psychology. In this book you'll learn to deploy this method to break down classic films then apply it to writing, developing and correcting your own screenplays.




Semiotics for Screenwriters


Book Description

You're trying to finish a screenplay, but there's a voice in your ear whispering, “You should know more about how cinema story works.” Perhaps you've heard how many successful screenwriters deconstruct or “break down” films and study them. You'd like to try this method but ask yourself, “How do I start?” Semiotics for Screenwriters can help you with this daunting task by taking you on a unique journey through 3 classic films - It's a Wonderful Life, Lost in Translation, and Get Out - that shows you the hidden universal language of plot, character, and theme at work in them. This method will reveal the mechanics of cinema story, then show you how to apply this knowledge to your own screenwriting. Semiotics is a powerful system of analysis applied in many fields, including literature and psychology. In this book you'll learn to deploy this method to break down classic films then apply it to writing, developing and correcting your own screenplays.







Key Terms in Semiotics


Book Description

Provides information that a student needs when encountering semiotics for the first time or as a more advanced reader wishing to do in-depth semiotic readings. This book provides a brief historical overview of the field, an explanation of semiotic theory, key term definitions, outlines of the work of key thinkers, and key readings for students.




The Passions in Characters: A Method Based on the Semiotics of Passions for Writing Series Such as "Game of Thrones" and Movies Such as "Rome"


Book Description

New theory of narrative revolutionizes the way of writing screenplaysWriter and linguist Hermes Leal, after three decades of research on the Semiotics of Passion, a new field of knowledge for the 21st century, founded in France in the 1990s, launches a new theory in the form of an online course in which he applies, for the first time to fiction screenwriting, an unprecedented way to write stories and develop characters.Unlike screenplay manuals, "Passions in the Narrative" deals with formulas, schemes, and theoretical models that address the superficial and deep layers of characters and narrative, where the characters' pathological states of mind, such as admiration, hatred and resentment, govern their actions.The method, exposed through a video course (en.screenwriteronline.com) and the book "As Paixões nos Personagens" ("Passions in the Characters") offers writers new tools never tested before to build great screenplays, exemplifying how this knowledge actually works in practice, using the original screenplays of "Game of Thrones" and "Roma" as models.The course method is formed essentially by "seven theoretical schemes," which intersect, forming the narrative theory based on the actions and emotions of the characters. They are: Narrative Program, Existential Simulacrum, Extraordinary Event, Surprise, Damage and Fracture, and Rage and Revenge.




Screenwriters and Screenwriting


Book Description

Screenwriters and Screenwriting is an innovative, fresh and lively book that is useful for both screenwriting practice and academic study. It is international in scope, with case studies and analyses from the US, the UK, Australia, Japan, Ireland and Denmark. The book presents a distinctive collection of chapters from creative academics and critical practitioners that serve one purpose: to put aspects of screenwriting practice into their relevant contexts. Focusing on how screenplays are written, developed and received, the contributors challenge assumptions of what 'screenwriting studies' might be, and celebrates the role of the screenwriter in the creation of a screenplay. It is intended to be thought provoking and stimulating, with the ultimate aim of inspiring current and future screenwriting practitioners and scholars.




Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters


Book Description

An insightful how-to guide for writing screenplays that uses Aristotle's great work as a guide. Long considered the bible for storytellers, Aristotle's Poetics is a fixture of college courses on everything from fiction writing to dramatic theory. Now Michael Tierno shows how this great work can be an invaluable resource to screenwriters or anyone interested in studying plot structure. In carefully organized chapters, Tierno breaks down the fundamentals of screenwriting, highlighting particular aspects of Aristotle's work. Then, using examples from some of the best movies ever made, he demonstrates how to apply these ancient insights to modern-day screenwriting. This user-friendly guide covers a multitude of topics, from plotting and subplotting to dialogue and dramatic unity. Writing in a highly readable, informal tone, Tierno makes Aristotle's monumental work accessible to beginners and pros alike in areas such as screenwriting, film theory, fiction, and playwriting.




Words Script and Pictures the Semiotics of Visual Language


Book Description

This volume contains two of Professor Meyer Schapiro's most important works on the complex and provocative relationships between writing and images. In "Words and Pictures: On the Literal and the Symbolic in the Illustration of a Text", Professor Schapiro examines the relationship between images and the texts that it is their function to illustrate. This relationship is far from simple, and lends itself to all sorts of variations, transformations, displacements, overflowings, and even contradictions that are ultimately symbols of "changing ideas and ways of thought". The second text, "Script in Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language", is published here for the first time. For generations, medieval book art served as a prime field for the invention of styles of art and as the expression of individual sensibilities. Against this background, Schapiro elaborates on the intricate ways in which medieval artists transformed writing and images in their books, often integrating them to convey, in highly concise formats, their powerful messages. In some cases, a physical bond with language even determined pictorial factors. While Professor Schapiro focuses on medieval examples, he extends his investigation to modern art by analyzing script in the works of Goya, Picasso, Homer, and Manet.




Semiotics of the Media


Book Description




Adaptation for Screenwriters


Book Description

Develop the critical and creative skills to 'translate' a story from page to screen with this step-by-step guide to the process of screen adaptation you'll learn to: - interrogate a novel or short story to release its 'inner film' - convert fictional prose into visual drama - overcome the obstacles presented by different media 'languages' - approach key strategic decisions - both technical and interpretive - draft and re-draft your plot, characters and dialogue - professionally format and submit your finished script In addition to examples taken from 'literary classics', contemporary novels, genre fiction, short stories, and biographical material, Marland and Edgar embrace the wider phenomenon of re-telling and updating existing stories, such as the 'appropriation' of popular figures, inter-film adaptation (sequels and 'reboots'), and development into other visual forms including graphic fiction and video games. Whether you are producing a faithful adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, or planning to pair up the crime-fighting duo of Sherlock Holmes and Batman, Adaptation for Screenwriters will be your guide.