This is a comprehensive guide to writing the first draft of a feature length screenplay. While it focuses on the college semester (16 Weeks), it is also completely appropriate for anyone attempting to write a screenplay within a timeline. The text breaks down different approaches to designing a screenplay by providing pragmatic guidelines enhancing your ability to use creativity rather than focusing on rules. It highlights the skills necessary to execute compelling visual language to achieve good story, plot, dialog, dynamic characters, and help you put it all together. Think of this as a companion tool as you write. The language is simplified and yet academic, theoretically sound and yet pragmatic. It also offers additional insight into the history of screenwriting, the re-write process, and the specific skill sets needed for adaptation. This book is easy to understand and provides accounts for context from the author as a professional screenwriter, as well as anecdotes from other professionals (David Mickey Evans - The Sand Lot, and Vince McKewin - Fly Away Home, and Jeb Stuart - Die Hard, The Fugitive, Dana Coen - JAG, NCIS, and Anthony Tambakis - Warrior, Suicide Squad 2).

Scriptwriting for Web Series: Writing for the Digital Age offers aspiring writers a comprehensive how-to guide to scriptwriting for web series in the digital age. Containing in-depth advice on writing both short- and long-form webisodes as part of a series, as well as standalone pieces, it goes beyond the screenwriting process to discuss production, promotion and copyright in order to offer a well-rounded guide to creating and distributing a successful web series. Written in a friendly, readable and jargon-free style by an experienced scriptwriting professor and two award-winning web series creators, it offers invaluable professional insights, as well as examples from successful series, sample scripts and interviews with key series creators, writers and industry professionals.

In this revised and updated edition of the StoryCenter's popular guide to digital storytelling, StoryCenter founder Joe Lambert offers budding storytellers the skills and tools they need to craft compelling digital stories. Using a "Seven Steps" approach, Lambert helps storytellers identify the fundamentals of dynamic digital storytelling - from conceiving a story, to seeing, assembling, and sharing it. Readers will also find new explorations of the global applications of digital storytelling in education and other fields, as well as additional information about copyright, ethics, and distribution. The book is filled with resources about past and present projects on the grassroots and institutional level, including new chapters specifically for students and a discussion of the latest tools and projects in mobile device-based media. This accessible guide's meaningful examples and inviting tone makes this an essential for any student learning the steps toward digital storytelling.

In this revised and updated edition of the StoryCenter's popular guide to digital storytelling, StoryCenter founder Joe Lambert offers budding storytellers the skills and tools they need to craft compelling digital stories. Using a "Seven Steps" approach, Lambert helps storytellers identify the fundamentals of dynamic digital storytelling - from conceiving a story, to seeing, assembling, and sharing it. Readers will also find new explorations of the global applications of digital storytelling in education and other fields, as well as additional information about copyright, ethics, and distribution. The book is filled with resources about past and present projects on the grassroots and institutional level, including new chapters specifically for students and a discussion of the latest tools and projects in mobile device-based media. This accessible guide's meaningful examples and inviting tone makes this an essential for any student learning the steps toward digital storytelling.

Doctor Who - new dawn explores the latest cultural moment in this long-running BBC TV series: the casting of a female lead. Analysing showrunner Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker's era means considering contemporary Doctor Who as an inclusive, regendered brand. Featuring original interview material with cast members, this edited collection also includes an in-depth discussion with Segun Akinola, composer of the iconic theme tune's current version. The book critically address the series' representations of diversity, as well as fan responses to the thirteenth Doctor via the likes of memes, cosplay and even translation into Spanish as a grammatically gendered language. In addition, concluding essays look at how this moment of Who has been merchandised, especially via the 'experience economy', and how official/unofficial reactions to UK lockdown helped the show to further re-emphasise its public-service potential. -- .

"Looking for Eric" is a magical, social realist film about a football fanatic postman on the verge of a nervous breakdown who finds a very special life-coach in the guise of his hero, Eric Cantona. Eric the postman is slipping through his own fingers - His chaotic family, his wild stepsons, and the cement mixer in the front garden don't help, but it is Eric's own secret that drives him to the brink. Can he face Lily, the woman he once loved thirty years ago? Despite outrageous efforts and misplaced goodwill from his football fan mates, Eric continues to sink. In desperate times it takes a spliff and a special friend from foreign parts to challenge a lost postman to make that journey into the most perilous territory of all - the past. As the Chinese, and one Frenchman, say, 'He who is afraid to throw the dice, will never throw a six.' This title features the full screenplay, including extra scenes, sixteen pages of colour photographs, plus introductions from Paul Laverty, Ken Loach, Eric Cantona and production notes from the cast and crew.

Orlando is Sally Potter's bold, unsentimental re-working of Virginia Woolf's classic novel in which an innocent aristocrat journeys through 400 years of English history - first as a man, then as a woman. The film has won more than twenty international awards and enjoyed considerable box-office success around the world. Addressing contemporary concerns about gender and identity, the screenplay is remarkably true to the spirit of Virginia Woolf. But it also skilfully adapts the original story to give it a striking, cinematic form. How Sally Potter has achieved this is described in the book's Introduction, which outlines the process by which Woolf's novel has been transformed into Potter's film.

Describing in detail precise differences between the psychological experience of reading a novel and watching a movie, "Make Believe in Film and Fiction" shows how movies' unique magnification of movements produces stories especially potent in exposing hypocrisy, the spread of criminality in contemporary society, and the relation of private experience to the natural environment. By contrasts of novels with visual storytelling the book also displays how fiction facilitates sharing of subjective fantasies, frees the mind from limiting spatial and temporal preconceptions, and dramatizes the ethical significance of even trivial and commonplace behavior, while intensifying readers' awareness of how they think and feel.

Only 23-years-old when he directed his extraordinary debut feature Gummo, Harmony Korine has since continued to serve notice that he is the riskiest, most radical young talent in independent US film. This collection of three screenplays displays his defiantly unorthodox approach to film form, as well as the unclassifiable imaginative energy that drives all of his work.

Once you understand the basics of screenwriting, ideas for your next screenplay are everywhere. Whether it comes from a favorite children's book, a summer novel you discover accidentally, a news story that catches your imagination, or a chapter from your own life - advanced screenwriting strategies should now guide you through your first adaptation. In Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics, award-winning screenwriter Eric Williams uses examples from award-winning screenplays to explain new storytelling techniques. His real-world examples illustrate a range of advanced approaches - including new ways to identify and craft tension, how to reimagine structure and character, and how to strengthen emotional depth in your characters and in the audience. Screen Adaptation: Beyond the Basics teaches readers new ways to engage with source material in order to make successful adaptation decisions, regardless of the source material. The book offers: Three detailed examples of award-winning adaptations by the author, including the complete short story and final scripts used in the Voices From the Heartland project; Breakout boxes highlighting modern and historical adaptations and providing examples for each concept discussed in the book; More than fifty charts providing easy-to-use visual representations of complex concepts; New screenwriting techniques developed by the author, including the Triangle of Knowledge, the Storyteller's Parallax, and the idea of Super Genres as part of a Screenwriters Taxonomy.

First there is an opportunity, then there is a betrayal. Twenty years have gone by. Much has changed but just as much remains the same. Mark Renton returns to the only place he can ever call home. They are waiting for him, of course: Spud, Sick Boy, and Frank Begbie. But they are not alone. Other old friends are waiting too: sorrow, loss, joy, vengeance, hatred, friendship, love, longing, fear, regret, diamorphine, self-destruction and mortal danger, they are all lined up to welcome him, ready to join the dance. Mark Renton returns, to the chaos of life and death.

Labyrinth: One classic film, fifty-five sonnets retells the cult classic film in the form of Shakespearean sonnets. It was inspired by A Corrigan's love of the film and the fact that she wished the novelisation had been more poetic, and physically resembled the book in the film more closely. She started writing the book late last year, intending it to be a celebration of the film's thirtieth anniversary, but it has now also become a tribute to its star, David Bowie. Many of the poems were composed at Bowie shrines; titles of various Bowie songs also found their way into the text. Labyrinth: One classic film, fifty-five sonnets is written in the form of Shakespearean sonnets, to reflect the fact that several of the lines Sarah quotes from her book in the film resemble iambic pentameter, but the language is intended to be more accessible. The book is aimed at Labyrinth aficionados, as well as fans of David Bowie and people who like sonnets and/or traditional rhyming poetry. A Corrigan takes inspiration from the works of Tolkien, Tanith Lee, and Neil Gaiman, and was specifically influenced by Christina Rossetti's 'Goblin Market' and Lewis Carroll's 'The Hunting of the Snark'.

'This remarkable play is about a nightmare all women must have dreamed at some time, and most men...' Ronald Bryden, Observer (1967) 'Joe Egg is unlike any play I've seen; concerns about whether it's dated fade next to the claims that can now be made for it. It's in the collisions between pious and rogue thoughts that the play's energy lies. We don't know what to feel. Which is why, once seen, Joe Egg won't go away.' Robert Butler, Independent on Sunday (1993)

Indigenous Cultural Translation is about the process that made it possible to film the 2011 Taiwanese blockbuster Seediq Bale in Seediq, an endangered indigenous language. Seediq Bale celebrates the headhunters who rebelled against or collaborated with the Japanese colonizers at or around a hill station called Musha starting on October 27, 1930, while this book celebrates the grandchildren of headhunters, rebels, and collaborators who translated the Mandarin-language screenplay into Seediq in central Taiwan nearly eighty years later. As a "thick description" of Seediq Bale, this book describes the translation process in detail, showing how the screenwriter included Mandarin translations of Seediq texts recorded during the Japanese era in his screenplay, and then how the Seediq translators backtranslated these texts into Seediq, changing them significantly. It argues that the translators made significant changes to these texts according to the consensus about traditional Seediq culture they have been building in modern Taiwan, and that this same consensus informs the interpretation of the Musha Incident and of Seediq culture that they articulated in their Mandarin-Seediq translation of the screenplay as a whole. The argument more generally is that in building cultural consensus, indigenous peoples like the Seediq are "translating" their traditions into alternative modernities in settler states around the world.

Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, Fifth Edition, stands alone among screenwriting books by emphasizing that human connection, though often overlooked, is as essential to writing effective screenplays as conflict. This ground-breaking book will show you how to advance and deepen your screenwriting skills, increasing your ability to write richer, more resonant short screenplays that will connect with your audience. Award-winning writer and director Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches you the all-important basics of dramatic technique and guides you through the challenging craft of writing short screenplays with carefully focused exercises of increasing length and complexity. In completing these exercises and applying Johnson's techniques and insights to your own work, you will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter's purpose, craft effective patterns of human change, and strengthen your storytelling skills. This 20th Anniversary Edition features 11 short screenplays, including Academy Award winning Barry Jenkins' (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) luminous short film, My Josephine, and an accompanying companion website that features the completed films and additional screenplay examples. The book has also been expanded and updated to include two new award-winning screenplays Killer Kart and The Great Wall of Vicky Lynn. and a brand-new chapter exploring the use of genre in the short film. An absolute must-have resource for students of screenwriting.

An exciting new strand in The Television Series, the 'Moments in Television' collections celebrate the power and artistry of television, whilst interrogating key critical concepts in television scholarship. Each 'Moments' book is organised around a provocative binary theme. Substance / styleoffers fresh perspectives on television's essential qualities and aesthetic significance. It reassesses the synergy between substance and style, highlighting the potential for meaning to arise through their integration. The book's chosen programmes are persuasively illuminated in new ways. The book explores an eclectic range of TV fictions, dramatic and comedic. Contributors from diverse perspectives come together to expand and enrich the kind of close analysis most commonly found in television aesthetics. Sustained, detailed programme analyses are sensitively framed within historical, technological, institutional, cultural, creative and art-historical contexts. -- .

Quentin Tarantino's films have single-handedly revived and redefined American noir, bringing to Hollywood a new energy, irony, and cool. Tarantino has won awards and accolades around the world, earned a devoted following among critics, actors, and audiences, and paved the way for a new generation of young filmmakers.

Tarantino's directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, hit the screen with a freshness and brutal edge that left critics and audiences stunned. The story of a heist gone wrong, the film weaves a taut and menacing path, laced with bursts of absurd and unexpected humor, as an eccentric cast of urban outlaws attempts to identify the rat in their midst. The film established the groundbreaking aesthetic-smart-ass, hard-edged, and ultraviolent -- that made Tarantino one of the most sought-after directors in the nation. As Newsweek wrote, "Reservoir Dogs leaves little doubt that you are in the presence of major league talent".

In the early 1970s Harold Pinter joined forces with director Joseph Losey and Proust scholar Barbara Bray to develop a screenplay of Proust's masterpiece, Remembrance of Things Past. Pinter took more than a year to conceive and write the screenplay and called the experience "the best working year of my life." Although never produced, Harold Pinter's The Proust Screenplay is considered one of the greatest adaptations for the cinema ever written.

With fidelity to Proust's text, the screenplay is an extraordinary re-creation by one of the leading playwrights of our time. It is, in its way, a unique collaboration between two extraordinary writers united across more than half a century and two different cultures by a special concern for time and memory.

One of the major hits of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, a film that proved too hot for Disney to handle, Kevin Smith's ribald, revolutionary new film Dogma is a comic theological fantasy that is sure to be one of this fall's most provocative offerings. Two fallen angels (Matt Damon and Ben Affleck), sentenced to eternal exile in Wisconsin, are trying to get back into heaven. A renegade cardinal in New Jersey (George Carlin), as part of his "Catholicism -- Wow " campaign, has opened a loophole in Catholic doctrine that would give them their opportunity -- and, in proving God's judgment wrong, unmake the universe. An abortion clinic counselor (Linda Fiorentino) who may or may not be of holy bloodlines, is tapped as the very reluctant savior. Accompanied by the thirteenth apostle (Chris Rock), a wayward muse (Salma Hayek), and two very questionable prophets (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, a.k.a. Jay and Silent Bob), she sets off on a mission to save the world.

'Behind the clownish make-up, Steve Martin gives a sweet and serious performance as a latter-day Cyrano de Bergerac in Roxanne. It's easy to see why Mr. Martin, who wrote the film...was moved to reinvent this role...Mr. Martin's screenplay is bighearted and funny.' The New York Times

Reading and Writing a Screenplay takes you on a journey through the many possible ways of writing, reading and imagining fiction and documentary projects for cinema, television and new media. It explores the critical role of a script as a document to be written and read with both future readers and the future film it will be giving life to in mind. The book explores the screenplay and the screenwriting process by approaching the film script in three different ways: how it is written, how it is read and how it can be rewritten. Combining contemporary screenwriting practices with historical and academic context, Isabelle Raynauld provides key analytical tools and reading strategies for conceptualizing and scripting projects based on the impact different writing styles can have on readers, with various examples ranging from early cinema to new media and new platforms throughout. This title offers an alternative, thought-provoking and inspiring approach to reading and writing a screenplay that is ideal for directors, producers, actors, students, aspiring screenwriters and readers interested in understanding how an effective screenplay is created.

Following the death of her mother, nineteen-year-old Lucy Harmon is sent by her father to Italy to stay with old family friends and to have her portrait done. She is eager to renew her acquaintance with Niccolo Donati, the handsome young boy from a neighboring family with whom she shared her first kiss on a visit four years earlier, and anxious to solve a riddle left in her mother's diary--the answer to which may change Lucy's life forever.

Playwright David Mamet's brilliant debut as a film director, House of Games is a psychological thriller in which a young woman psychiatrist falls prey to an elaborate and ingenious con game by one of her patients, who entraps her--with her own subconscious connivance--in a series of criminal escapades. It is a breathless roller-coaster ride of a movie that keeps springing one bizarre surprise after another, sustaining suspense with dazzling audacity. The unsuspecting audience is lured into a psychological and moral thicket of troubling implications, which bear the unmistakable imprint of Mamet's intensely personal vision.
Here is the complete screenplay of House of Games, with many illustrations selected from the film and an introduction by the author recounting in candid detail his experience as a first-time director.