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      Book

      What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay
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      Book

      What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay

      DOI link for What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay

      What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay book

      An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors

      What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay

      DOI link for What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay

      What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay book

      An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors
      ByPeter Markham
      Edition 1st Edition
      First Published 2020
      eBook Published 8 September 2020
      Pub. Location London
      Imprint Routledge
      DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367815363
      Pages 202
      eBook ISBN 9780367815363
      Subjects Arts
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      Markham, P. (2020). What’s the Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay: An Essential Guide for Directors and Writer-Directors (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367815363

      ABSTRACT

      A structured perspective on the crucial interface of director and screenplay, this book encompasses twenty-two seminal aspects of the approach to story and script that a director needs to understand before embarking on all other facets of the director’s craft.

      Drawing on seventeen years of teaching filmmaking at a graduate level and on his prior career as a director and in production at the BBC, Markham shows how the filmmaker can apply rigorous analysis of the elements of dramatic narrative in a screenplay to their creative vision, whether of a short or feature, TV episode or season. Combining examination of such fundamental topics as story, premise, theme, genre, world and setting, tone, structure, and key images with the introduction of less familiar concepts such as cultural, social, and moral canvas, narrative point of view, and the journey of the audience, What’s The Story? The Director Meets Their Screenplay applies the insights of each chapter to a case study—the screenplay of the short film Contrapelo, nominated for the Jury Award at Tribeca in 2014.


      This book is an essential resource for any aspiring director who wants to understand exactly how to approach a screenplay in order to get the very best from it, and an invaluable resource for any filmmaker who wants to understand the important creative interplay between the director and screenplay in bringing a story to life.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      chapter |2 pages

      Introduction

      part Part A|134 pages

      The approach

      chapter 1|5 pages

      What’s the story?

      chapter 2|6 pages

      Premise

      chapter 3|5 pages

      Theme

      chapter 4|18 pages

      Genre

      chapter 5|4 pages

      World/setting

      chapter 6|6 pages

      Cultural, social, and moral canvas

      chapter 7|6 pages

      Tone

      chapter 8|8 pages

      Structure

      chapter 9|6 pages

      Passage of time

      chapter 10|16 pages

      Character

      chapter 11|14 pages

      Narrative point of view

      chapter 12|7 pages

      Introduction of the protagonist and main characters

      chapter 13|4 pages

      Key images, objects, and motifs

      chapter 14|9 pages

      Opening image, frame, shot

      chapter 15|5 pages

      Closing image, frame, shot

      chapter 16|7 pages

      Endings

      chapter 17|4 pages

      The 5-step creative analysis of the screenplay

      chapter 18|2 pages

      The director’s statement

      part Part B|45 pages

      The case study—Contrapelo screenplay by Liska Ostojic and Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer

      chapter 19|23 pages

      Screenplay

      chapter 20|19 pages

      Contrapelo case study

      chapter 21|1 pages

      Conclusion

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