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Literature & Fiction: Amazon Chat * Summary1. Description: Scripts Read Directors2. An excerpt: "Play organized through stoping our reading process. It's full of intentional gaps, breakes; they are to be filled in by the stage..." 3. Table of contents: script.vtheatre.net 4. Review: Questions"People can name any number of popular actors, but hardly anyone knows who writes the material that makes these actors famous. In the theatre very few playwrights are able to consistently write plays that are commercially, much less artistically, successful over a lifetime. It has been said that playwriting is the hardest form of literature because it is such a limiting form. Typically a playwright has one big hit, follows it with a modest success, then writes subsequent plays that seem to attract little attention. From our perspective at the end of the twentieth century it is easy to pick out some of the few who have overcome this pattern." *NotesFor me, the stage is not a battlefield for theories, philosophies and manifestoes, but rather an instrument whose possibilities I seek to know by playing with it. Of course, in my plays there are people and they hold to some belief or philosophy--a lot of blockheads would make for a dull piece--but my plays are not for what people have to say: what is said is there because my plays deal with people, and thinking and believing and philosophizing are all, to some extent at least, a part of human nature. The problems I face as a playwright are practical, working problems, problems I face not before, but during the writing. To be quite accurate about it, these problems usually come up after the writing is done, arising out of a certain curiosity to know how I did it. What I am concerned with are empirical rules, the possibilities of the theatre... the artist indeed has no need for scholarship. Scholarship derives laws from what exists already: otherwise it would not be scholarship. But the laws thus established have no value for the artist, even when they are true. The artist cannot accept a law he has not discovered for himself.... Scholarship sees only the result; the process, which led to this result, is what the playwright cannot forget. What he says has to be taken with a grain of salt. What he thinks about his art changes as he creates his art; his thoughts are always subject to his mood and the moment. What alone really counts for him is what he is doing at a given moment; for its own sake he can betray what he did just a little while ago. {Durrenmat] - §3 the Designer and the Playwright
 One of the reasons it is so difficult to find many playwrights with long careers is that the successful ones are often lured by the big bucks to go to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. It's interesting that screenwriters seem even less well-known by the general public than playwrights, even though they can make far more money. Unless a screenwriter is a writer-slash-director like Spike Lee, Oliver Stone, and Quentin Tarentino, or already well known as a novelist like Michael Crichton, no one will have heard of him. The situation is somewhat better in television which is principally a writer-producer's medium. The lead writer on a successful show will often be offered a "development deal" in which he becomes the writer-producer on a new show of his own. Star writers such as these get their names all over the credits. Many people have heard of Steven Bochco (NYPD Blue), David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, The Practice), Darren Star (Sex and the City, Melrose Place, Grosse Point) and Aaron Sorkin (Sportsnight, The West Wing)." * Playwright Versus Director: Authorial Intentions and Performance Interpretations by Sidney Berger, Jeane Luere; Greenwood Press, 1994 DAY 1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
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Do not touch bad scripts!
Must read "drama" pages: Dramatic Literature files and Playscript Analysis @ script.vtheatre.net... If you think this is too much reading about writing, forget about directing.The third of the prime elements of the dramatic arts is the story. In most cases it is written in script form by the "first artist" of the theatre: the playwright. This third element is also characterized by the fact that it is the only permanent one. The audience goes home after a performance, never to be reconstituted in exactly the same way again. The cast disperses after the the show closes to take on new projects. Only the script remains, because it, unlike the performance, is not temporary. It exists unchanged through time by virtue of its form: literature. Dramatic literature is a subcategory of literature, and a huge body of such work has accumulated over the centuries. In this chapter we shall look at the nature of dramatic literature and analyze its structure. Like any large grouping it is helpful to break it down in some way to better comprehend it, so we shall describe its different types. (see script.vtheatre.net) & http://homepage.mac.com/roberthuber/school/1delec15a.html
If those who write plays are playwrights, then what do we call the writers of those twentieth century manifestations of dramatic art--film and television--screenwrights? And what do we call their scripts? Those who write films are screenwriters, and their products are screenplays. Those who write for television are known simply as writers and their product, while sometimes formally called a teleplay, is usually just a script. Another distinction between these modes worth noting is this. Plays (except musicals) are nearly always the work of a single author, but screenplays often go through several hands before production. A look at the credits of a film may reveal that it is based on an idea by..., or a play by..., or story by..., then one or more screenwriters. It is not uncommon for producers to ask an established screenwriter to rework the screenplay originally created by someone else. This includes writing a final draft from someone else's first draft, a complete rewrite, or simply "polishing" a script. These so-called script doctors are then given co-credit.
The difference is even more pronounced in television where programs, especially situation comedies, are essentially written by committee. A staff of about a dozen writers in a room work out the A and B stories, the major and minor plots of the episode. Next the lead writer does an outline based on this which is then brought back to "the room" for notes. The lead writer then goes away and writes the first draft which is again returned to the room for notes; comments from the staff and producers. Then the lead writer writes a second draft which goes back to the room for line-by-line revision, including the "punching-up" of certain jokes and gags. The resulting revision goes to the cast to read over the weekend. On Monday morning the cast gets together with the director and writers for a "table-read." At this point the producer gets notes from executives representing both the studio which is producing it and the network which will broadcast it. During the week the writing staff does further revisions until the episode is shot before a live studio audience on Friday. Most of the fifty or so sitcoms currently airing are written in this way. This kind of "gang writing" can only work in serialized programs where the characters and situation are well established and continuing. Stephen Engel, one of the lead writers on NBC's Just Shoot Me defends the value of the approach this way. "By plotting it out in advance, you prevent the wholesale destruction of the script. A good sitcom script is like a house: start building without a blueprint and you end up having to tear everything down and start over."
http://homepage.mac.com/roberthuber/school/1delec11.html
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When you first look at a published script you will notice that it contains two kinds of text: dialogue spoken by the characters, and stage directions usually printed in italics within parentheses.
Stage directions include the following:
* descriptions of the scene and setting
* blocking and business
* line reading suggestions
* technical cues
Some of these stage directions are provided by the playwright in the original manuscript, but others are added by the director and stage manager in the course of the first production.
The first time a play is performed it is done from the playwright's original manuscript and the producing company pays the playwright a negotiated royalty for this privilege; the minimum amounts being suggested by the Dramatist's Guild. After the play's initial run, the playwright negotiates with one of several companies who specialize in publishing scripts and handling their subsequent production rights and royalties. The two largest of these companies are Samuel French & Co., and the Dramatist's Play Service. Such a published script, called the acting edition, is soft cover and may include such things as a photograph of the set, stage directions, prop and costume lists, scenery floorplan, and other explanatory materials helpful to anyone wishing to stage it. If a play is sufficiently successful the playwright may gain additional income from sales of a hard cover reader's edition through a regular book publisher. The reader's edition is set in a more easily readable type and format, omits the technical details, and adds production photos. Film and television scripts are rarely published unless they have become acknowledged classics such as Citizen Kane, or cult favorites like Pulp Fiction.
Terrence McNally says "Playwriting is not about writing dialogue, it's about writing behavior." But dialogue is the only "code" we have to express behavior. When reading any script, remember that it is in a kind of shorthand. It assumes that the contributions of the actor, director, and designers will flesh-out the story. Unlike a novel, it may not contain all the information that you need to clearly understand it. Therefore, when you read a play script you should try to visualize the setting and see the actors as specific human beings in motion. When you read a script you are creating the production in your mind's eye.
http://homepage.mac.com/roberthuber/school/1delec11.html
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Format
Play scripts are broken down into sections for convenience. The largest section is the Act, usually designated by a Roman numeral (Act I). Most classical plays follow the five-act form first suggested by the ancient Greeks. Since the 1800s it has become more typical to use only three acts. Today, some plays are divided into only two acts with an intermission break between them. Acts may be further broken down into scenes, normally designated by Arabic numerals (Scene 3). There may be any number of scenes, but usually scenes change when there is a shift in time or place. Since some scenes are quite long, directors may arbitrarily break them into so-called French scenes: the points when a character enters or exits the stage. This is done for the convenience of rehearsal. Actors, as a part of their character analysis, will often break scenes down even further into beats. Beats are the organizational sub-units of a scene, such as the points where a character's objectives change. Finally, beats can be broken down into individual lines. Indeed, some editions of Shakespeare's plays even have line numbers to facilitate discussion and close analysis of the text.
Screenplays do not use the traditional Act/Scene format, a convention which derives from literary and printing traditions. Rather, their divisible units are functions of the technology of the camera, both film and videotape. Their largest unit is the scene, which is divided into sequences, which are made up of shots. A shot is a continuous run of film which contains no cuts or edits. Shots in turn are composed of the smallest element: the frame. Instead of stage directions, as such, film "shooting" scripts contain shot notations in regard to the position and movement of the camera, and the focus and angle of the lens. Since these scripts are not intended to be read by laymen, only those who work in production need be able to interpret them.
Those who are seriously interested in writing should make sure their manuscripts are in the proper industry-standard format. Guidelines are published by the unions and are also available as computer software such as Final Draft. One of these programs, Dramatica, not only gives you the proper format but even assists you in plotting and creating characters.
[ http://homepage.mac.com/roberthuber/school/1delec11.html ]
Total Directing: Integrating Camera and Performance in Film and Television (Paperback) 1879505711
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