The phenomenal success of George Lucas's first Star Wars trilogy quite simply revolutionized the cinema; but what sets Lucas's films apart from their legion of imitators is the quality of their screenplays. Lucas originally intended this trilogy to be a single film, but the epic scope of the story (combining hi-tech, sci-fi cinephilia with elements of Arthurian myth and mysticism) demanded that it be split into three. The first panel of the triptych is A New Hope. A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, young Luke Skywalker leads a dull, isolated existence on his uncle's homestead. One day, two androids, C3PO and R2D2, show up bearing a message from Princess Leia, the leader of the rebel forces engaged in a struggle against the vicious tryranny of the Empire - as personified by the rasping presence of Darth Vader. The message leads Luke to realize his heritage as a Jedi Knight. He sets out on a wild adventure across the galaxy and, together with Leia and rogue pilot Han Solo, attempts to thwart the Empire by destroying its menacing base of operations: the Death Star.

This volume explores how to engage audiences both beyond and within the academy more deeply in environmental research through arts-based forms. It builds on a multi-pronged case study of scripts for documentary film, audio-visual and stage formats, focusing on how the identity of a place is constructed and contested in the face of environmental concerns around fossil-fuel extraction in a globalized, visual society--and specifically on the rising, international public-relations war over Alberta's stewardship of the tar sands. Each script is followed by discussion of the author's choices of initiating idea, research sources, format, voices, world of the story, structure and visual style, and other notes on the convergence of synthesis, analysis and (re)presentation in the script. Included are lively analysis and commentary on screenwriting and playwriting theory, the creation and dissemination of the scripts, and reflections to ground a proposed framework for writing eco-themed scripts for screen, audio-visual and stage formats.

The Golden Girls: the show that changed American TV, found an audience all around the world, and made a global legend out of Betty White. 1985 was the year of Live Aid, Back to the Future and the Nintendo. It also saw the start of one of the most well-known and well-loved sitcoms of all time: The Golden Girls. With a cast comprising women over 50, the show was as groundbreaking as it was hilarious. Averaging 25 million viewers an episode - and counting the Queen Mother among them - the show is still ranked among the best US sitcoms ever. And it continues to find a new audience today in younger generations on streaming, with merchandise as popular as ever. Packed with quotes and facts, this little book is perfect for any Golden Girls fan.

This book offers the first comprehensive discussion of the relationship between Modern Irish Literature and the Irish cinema, with twelve chapters written by experts in the field that deal with principal films, authors, and directors. This survey outlines the influence of screen adaptation of important texts from the national literature on the construction of an Irish cinema, many of whose films because of cultural constraints were produced and exhibited outside the country until very recently. Authors discussed include George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Liam O'Flaherty, Christy Brown, Edna O'Brien, James Joyce, and Brian Friel. The films analysed in this volume include THE QUIET MAN, THE INFORMER, MAJOR BARBARA, THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES, MY LEFT FOOT, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY, THE SNAPPER, and DANCING AT LUGHNASA. The introduction features a detailed discussion of the cultural and political questions raised by the promotion of forms of national identity by Ireland's literary and cinematic establishments.

With such iconic films as the Oscar-winning "Pulp Fiction," "Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2," and "Reservoir Dogs," Quentin Tarantino has become the most famous and revered writer/director of his generation. Now he's back with his most ambitious movie yet: the World War II epic "Inglourious Basterds." Starring Brad Pitt and filmed on location in Germany and France, it has the largest cast of characters of any Tarantino film to date. The movie will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009.
The action tale follows the parallel story of a guerilla-like squad of American soldiers called "The Basterds" and the French Jewish teenage girl Shosanna who find themselves behind enemy Nazi lines during the German occupation. When the Inglourious Basterds encounter Shosanna at a propaganda screening at the movie house she runs, they conspire to launch an unexpected plot to end the war. Pitt plays Lieutenant Aldo Raine--the leader of the Basterds. Raine is an illiterate hillbilly from the mountains of Tennessee who puts together a team of eight Jewish-American soldiers to hunt down the Nazis.
Filled with Tarantino's trademark electric dialogue and thrilling action sequences, "Inglourious Basterds "is destined to become one of the most talked about films of 2009 and a landmark in cinematic history.

In Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), Syd Field first popularized the Three-Act Paradigm of Setup, Confrontation and Resolution for conceptualizing and creating the Hollywood screenplay. For Field, the budding screenwriter needs a clear screenplay structure, one which includes two well-crafted plot points, the first at the end of Act I, the second at the end of Act II. By focusing on the importance of the four essentials of beginning and end, and the two pivotal plot points, Field did the Hollywood film industry an enormous service. Nonetheless, although he handles the issue of overall structure expertly, Field falls down when offering the screenwriter advice on how to successfully build each of the three individual Acts. This is because Field did not recognize the importance of another layer of analysis that underpins the existence of plot points. This is the level of the plot genotype.This book will offer you a richer theory of plot structure than the one Field outlines. It will do this not by contradicting anything Field has to say about the Hollywood paradigm, but by complementing it with a deeper level of analysis. Plot genotypes are the compositional schemas of particular stories. They are sets of instructions, written in the language of the plot function, for executing particular plots. This book outlines the plot genotypes for The Frog Prince, The Robber Bridegroom, Puss-in-Boots, and Little Red Riding Hood and then shows how these genotypes provide the underpinnings for the film screenplays of Pretty Woman, Wrong Turn, The Mask, and Psycho. By means of a detailed study of these four Hollywood screenplays, you will be able to offer a much richer description of what is going on at any particular point in a screenplay. In this way, you will become much sharper at understanding how screenplays work. And you will become much better at learning how to write coherent screenplays yourself.

Women Screenwriters is a study of more than 300 female writers from 60 nations, from the first film scenarios produced in 1986 to the present day. Divided into six sections by continent, the entries give an overview of the history of women screenwriters in each country, as well as individual biographies of its most influential.

This study provides the first book-length critical history of storyboarding, from the birth of cinema to the present day and beyond. It discusses the role of storyboarding in key films including Gone with the Wind , Psycho and The Empire Strikes Back , and is illustrated with a wide range of images.

The full scripts of award-winning Downton Abbey, season one including previously unseen material

Downton Abbey has become an international phenomenon and the most successful British drama of our time. Created by Oscar-winning writer Julian Fellowes, the first season delighted viewers and critics alike with stellar performances, ravishing costumes, and a gripping plot. Set in a grand country house during the late Edwardian era, season one of Downton Abbey follows the lives of the Crawley family upstairs and their servants downstairs as they approach the announcement of the First World War. Fellowes succeeds in not only entertaining his audience with a combination of sustained storylines and sharp one-liners but also in delivering a social commentary of British life. The scripts from season one give readers the opportunity to read the work in more detail and to study the characters, pace, and themes in depth. With extended commentary from Fellowes, highlighting key historical or dramatic details, this book gives invaluable insight, particularly for would-be screenwriters, into how Fellowes researched and crafted the world of Downton Abbey.

Featuring full-color photographs

Adapted for the screen by the author from his celebrated memoir, Alan Bennett's The Lady in the Van, is directed by long-standing collaborator Nicholas Hytner. The film tells the true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who 'temporarily' parked her van in Bennett's London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years. Their unique story is funny, poignant and life-affirming. The Complete Lady in the Van contains a Foreword by Nicholas Hytner, a substantial Introduction with diary entries by Alan Bennett, the original memoir and the screenplay. The book includes numerous illustrations by David Gentleman, who sketched on set throughout filming, and a colour plate-section including behind-the-scenes photographs and stills from the film

Shakespeare is everywhere in contemporary media culture. This book explores the reasons for this dissemination and reassemblage. Ranging widely over American TV drama, it discusses the use of citations in Westworld and The Wire, demonstrating how they tap into but also transform Shakespeare's preferred themes and concerns. It then examines the presentation of female presidents in shows such as Commander in Chief and House of Cards, revealing how they are modelled on figures of female sovereignty from his plays. Finally, it analyses the specifically Shakespearean dramaturgy of Deadwood and The Americans. Ultimately, the book brings into focus the way serial TV drama appropriates Shakespeare in order to give voice to the unfinished business of the American cultural imaginary. -- .

In an eclectic career spanning four decades, Italian director Riccardo Freda (1909-1999) produced films of remarkable technical skill and powerful visual style, including the swashbuckler Black Eagle (1946), an adaptation of Les Miserables (1947), the peplum Teodora, Slave Empress (1954) and a number of cult-favorite Gothic and horror films such as I Vampiri (1957), The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962) and The Ghost (1963). Freda was first championed in the 1960s by French critics who labeled him ""the European Raoul Walsh,"" and enjoyed growing critical esteem over the years. This book covers his life and career for the first time in English, with detailed analyses of his films and exclusive interviews with his collaborators and family.

Prewriting Your Screenplay cements all the bricks of a story's foundations together and forms a single, organic story-growing technique, starting with a blank slate. It shows writers how to design each element so that they perfectly interlock together like pieces of a puzzle, creating a stronger story foundation that does not leave gaps and holes for readers to find. This construction process is performed one piece at a time, one character at a time, building and incorporating each element into the whole. The book provides a clear-cut set of lessons that teaches how to construct that story base around concepts as individual as the writer's personal opinions, helping to foster an individual writer's voice. It also features end-of-chapter exercises that offer step-by-step guidance in applying each lesson, providing screenwriters with a concrete approach to building a strong foundation for a screenplay. This is the quintessential book for all writers taking their first steps towards developing a screenplay from nothing, getting them over that first monumental hump, resulting in a well-formulated story concept that is cohesive and professional.

Most movies include a love story, whether it is the central story or a subplot, and knowing how to write a believable relationship is essential to any writer's skill set. Discover the rules and laws of nature at play in a compelling love story and learn and master them. Broken into four sections, The Heart of the Film identifies the critical features of love story development, and explores every variation of this structure as well as a diverse array of relationships and types of love. Author Cynthia Whitcomb has sold over 70 feature-length screenplays and shares the keys to her success in The Heart of the Film, drawing on classic and modern films as well as her own extensive experience.

The Screenwriter's Path takes a comprehensive approach to learning how to write a screenplay-allowing the writer to use it as both a reference and a guide in constructing a script. A tenured professor of screenwriting at Emerson College in Boston, author Diane Lake has 20 years' experience writing screenplays for major studios and was a co-writer of the Academy-award winning film Frida. The book sets out a unique approach to story structure and characterization that takes writers, step by step, to a completed screenplay, and it is full of practical advice on what to do with the finished script to get it seen by the right people. By demystifying the process of writing a screenplay, Lake empowers any writer to bring their vision to the screen.

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.

Screenwriting in a Digital Era examines the practices of writing for the screen from early Hollywood to the new realism. Looking back to prehistories of the form, Kathryn Millard links screenwriting to visual and oral storytelling around the globe, and explores new methods of collaboration and authorship in the digital environment.

This unique book explores the social processes which shape fictional representations of police and crime in television dramas. Exploring ten leading British and European police dramas from the last twenty-five years, Colbran, a former scriptwriter, presents a revealing insight into police dramas, informed by media and criminological theory.

Today's Hollywood screenplays have a uniform appearance, but it has not always been this way. The earliest film writing used theatrical plays and prose fiction as models, and the silent cinemas of Germany, Russia and the United States all developed their own traditions, culminating in the unique 'screen poetry' of Carl Mayer. Hollywood studios adapted to writing for sound in different ways, while European author-directors such as Ingmar Bergman made film writing as personal a form of expression as poetry. Later, American writers as diverse as William Goldman, David Mamet and Charlie Kaufman showed that the screen writer could be as important and distinctive a figure as any director, while today's digital technology is transforming screenwriting once again. Steven Price traces the history of the screenplay, illustrating its transformations with detailed discussion of a wide range of examples from the beginnings of cinema to the present day.

There is no writer who excels at the art of adaptation for the screen so much as Harold Pinter. His consummate skill and unerring ear for dialogue, coupled with his sensitivity and understanding of the work of other authors, make these three volumes a collective masterclass in screenwriting. Everyone who values the word and loves film will savour and enjoy this wide range of work with the distinctive Pinter hallmark.

Offering unique insights into the writing and production of television drama series such as The Killing and Borgen, produced by DR, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, Novrup Redvall explores the creative collaborations in writers' rooms and 'production hotels' through detailed case studies of Denmark's public service production culture.

A new, original investigation into how screenwriting works; the practices, creative 'poetics' and texts that serve the screen idea. Using a range of film, media and creative theories, it includes new case studies on the successful ITV soap Emmerdale, Hitchcock's first major screenwriter and David Lean's unfinished film, Nostromo.