Analyzes director Richard Lester's and scriptwriter Charles Wood's efforts in adapting "How I Won the War" and "Dingo" for film. (RB)

Examines similarities and differences between writing short, live-action narrative films and writing feature films. Examines market influence, budget, structure, and story factors. Describes useful procedures for inclusion in a scriptwriting class. (KEH)

Offers practical advice for directors and actors regarding script analysis. Contains questions which the director can use to create a thorough analysis of the script and questions to challenge the actors. Asserts that answering these questions helps actors build a detailed character analysis providing directors with hints about how gesture and…

Reviews the selection of screenwriting texts as well as other material available to the screenwriter teacher and screenwriter. Focuses on writing materials for film and prime time television only. (KEH)

Continues a discussion of script analysis for actors. Focuses on specific scenes and how an eventual scene-by-scene analysis will help students determine a "throughline" of a play's action. Uses a scene from "Romeo and Juliet" to illustrate scene analysis. Gives 13 script questions for students to answer. Presents six tips for…

Presents a dramatic script involving a professor and students in an innovative but unsuccessful course. Makes a case for "edu-prop drama," which engages spectators in fictitious recreation of classroom dynamics. Asserts that having symbolic players in the educational game engage in dramatized, but realistic, conflict dialogue can provoke candid…

Defines and analyzes the ideological conditions which motivate a writer to conclude a screenplay with an open ending. Questions whether screenwriting instructors in the 1990s should encourage their students to write nonclassical Hollywood cinema endings. (KEH)

Frame analysis is an approach to social situations that can be applied profitably to literature and performance. A frame is the reality status of a situation; keys are the characteristics that define a frame. Most literary works are keying on real life frameworks. Literary works that are based on other literary works, such as parodies, are…

Argues that contemporary screenwriters have much to learn from journalism and from theater, especially in the move away from the linearity of the high-concept film to a richer, more complex screen story. Examines the writing skills and techniques of journalist and playwrights in developing both foreground and background stories. (KEH)

Intended as a guide for research in the literature of film, this book lists publications that range from early film writings to books published through mid-1977. Entries are listed alphabetically by author or by title, and are numbered sequentially within the following sections: guides and handbooks, dictionaries and encyclopedias, annuals and…