On Story - Screenwriters and Their Craft - Softcover

Austin Film Festival

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292754604 ISBN 13: 9780292754607

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2013

Synopsis

Austin Film Festival (AFF) is the first organization of its kind to focus on the writer’s creative contribution to film. Its annual Film Festival and Conference offers screenings, panels, workshops, and roundtable discussions that help new writers and filmmakers connect with mentors and gain advice and insight from masters, as well as refreshing veterans with new ideas. To extend the Festival’s reach, AFF produces On Story, a television series currently airing on PBS-affiliated stations and streaming online that presents footage of high-caliber artists talking candidly and provocatively about the art and craft of screenwriting and filmmaking, often using examples from their own films.

This book distills the advice of renowned, award-winning screenwriters who have appeared on On Story, including John Lee Hancock, Peter Hedges, Lawrence Kasdan, Whit Stillman, Robin Swicord, and Randall Wallace. In their own lively words and stories transcribed from interviews and panel discussions, they cover the entire development of a screenplay, from inspiration, story, process, structure, characters, and dialogue to rewriting and collaboration. Their advice is fresh, practical, and proven—these writers know how to tell a story on screen. Enjoy this collection of ideas and use it to jumpstart your own screenwriting career.

About this title

About the Author

Barbara Morgan cofounded Austin Film Festival in 1993 and has served as Executive Director since its inception. A feature filmmaker and producer, she also developed and produces the TV series On Story: Presented by Austin Film Festival.

Maya Perez is a producer/consultant for On Story: Presented by Austin Film Festival and a board member of the Austin Film Festival, for which she has also served as Conference Director. She is a Michener Fellow in Screenwriting at the University of Texas at Austin until 2015.

Reviews

This companion book to the Austin Film Festival’s TV show, On Story, which airs on PBS affiliates, offers words of wisdom from such venerated screenwriters as Lawrence Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981), Caroline Thompson (Edward Scissorhands, 1990), Randall Wallace (Braveheart, 1995), John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side, 2009), and many other renowned scribes. Unlike the countless how-to books on the market, this volume offers conversations with the various writers (most no more than 10 pages long), who share their thoughts on topics such as process, structure, rewriting, character, and dialogue. Everyone has a different take—for example, while Bill Wittliff (Legends of the Fall, 1994) believes writing to be far from solitary because of the time a writer spends with the characters he creates, Anne Rapp (Cookie’s Fortune, 1999) finds it a lonely venture until she gets lost in the world of the story. Rapp’s amusing account of her writing routine is not to be missed. Chock-full of wit and sage advice, this collection is a must-read for writers with silver screen ambitions. --Kristine Huntley

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0292754604
• ISBN 13: 9780292754607
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 196
• Editor: Morgan Barbara, Perez Maya