Conventional wisdom* among amateur directors and beginning film lecturers is that camera directions should “never” appear in a film script. Yet, the camera is probably the one thing that separates a screenplay from a stage-play. (Okay, so there’s CGI, logos and subtitles, as well as editing overlays, but the stage can have its own version of these effects. Even animation can be achieved with a giant flip book.)
I’d wax lyrical about Universal studios turning 100, but that’s irrelevant. In the silent era film scenarios looked different than they do today. Let’s take a look at our experience, and at other scripts for well known films, and at why the myth persists. Continue reading “Should screenwriters use camera directions?”
Most film students will know of the Kuleshov experiment by their second year in film school. And most historians will know who Karl Marx, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon and Napoleon Bonaparte are.
On CNN, Timothy Stanely 