Aimed at students and educators across all levels of Higher Education, this agenda-setting book defines what screen production research is and looks like—and by doing so celebrates creative practice as an important pursuit in the contemporary academic landscape. Drawing on the work of international experts as well as case studies from a range of forms and genres—including screenwriting, fiction filmmaking, documentary production and mobile media practice—the book is an essential guide for those interested in the rich relationship between theory and practice. It provides theories, models, tools and best practice examples that students and researchers can follow and expand upon in their own screen production projects.
This handbook is an essential creative, critical and practical guide for students and educators of screen production internationally. It covers all aspects of screen production—from conceptualizing ideas and developing them, to realizing and then distributing them—across all forms and formats, including fiction and non-fiction for cinema, television, gallery spaces and the web. With chapters by practitioners, scholars and educators from around the world, the book provides a comprehensive collection of approaches for those studying and teaching the development and production of screen content. With college and university students in mind, the volume purposely combines theory and practice to offer a critically informed and intellectually rich guide to screen production, shaped by the needs of those working in education environments where ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ must co-exist. The Palgrave Handbook of Screen Production fills an important gap in creative-critical knowledge of screen production, while also providing practical tools and approaches for future practitioners.
Design is at the essence of storytelling, but how does a production find its style and identity? This book explains how to approach design, whether for film, television, video promo or commercial making, and introduces the techniques needed to make ideas happen. Through theory and practical exercises, it looks at design in a different way and shows how the simplest decisions can become powerful ideas on screen. Explains the roles of the design team, including the production designer and art director; Explains how to extract design information from a script and how to identify key themes that can be used to support the telling of the story; Looks at how and where to research ideas, and suggests ways to illustrate them; Explores the importance of images, colour, texture and space to captivate an audience; Shows how to prepare drawings and models using various media; Refers to film and television productions, and shows how design decisions contribute to the story.
Video Production Techniques begins with the basic skills of video production, so students experience writing, shooting and editing right away. It then moves to short-form projects and in-depth explorations of lighting and sound, concluding with an exploration of documentaries, news, and other nonfiction forms. The final section is dedicated to advanced applications, including the process of creating long-form projects, the elements of directing, and strategies for effective marketing and distribution. The book concludes with a chapter exploring professional opportunities in production and options for further study. The book includes a Companion DVD with original demonstrations, clips from professional works, and interviews with film and video professionals Key Features: includes DVD, beneficial for the independent learner unique integration of theory and production techniques covers all the basics for writing, shooting, and editing videos Companion Website with materials for students and instructors: www.videoproductiontechniques.com. Reviews: "The modest title of this book doesn't begin to reflect the ambitious scope of its design. From heady aesthetic theories to an explanation of the LLP form, Video Production Techniques provides one-stop shopping for theory, production, and business. Students of media criticism and the media industry would benefit from this book as much as students of production. After twenty-five years of teaching, I learned a lot from reading it." – Robert Thompson, Director, Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture, and Syracuse University "In the ever-evolving business of television and film, it's nice know that there is a source so accurately assembled, so dense with dynamic information, and at the end of the day, easy and enjoyable to read. Donald Diefenbach has put together an invaluable guide that I'm sure will be the bible for both young and experienced filmmakers alike." – Brett Weitz, Vice President, Fox21, division of 20th Century Fox Television I've been reading books that tell you how to make movies since the 1960s and this is far and away the best I've encountered. It covers every aspect of the film and video making process in a fresh, authoritative, readable and clear fashion. It doesn't forget the art of film while teaching the craft of it."– Ken Hanke, Film Critic, Author of Ken Russell’s Films, Charlie Chan at the Movies, and A Critical Guide to Horror Film Series
This volume brings together a range of voices from across the global environmental media community to build a comparative international set of perspectives on ‘green’ film and television production. Through this, it provides a necessary intervention in environmental media studies that actively foregrounds media infrastructure, production, policy, and labour – that is, the management and practice of media production cultures. Due to its immense sociocultural influence and economic resources, the global screen media industry is at the forefront of raising awareness for the political and social issues resulting from accelerated environmental instability. However, the 21st century relationship between screen media and the environment has another face that demands urgent scrutiny. The advent of the digital age and the vast electrical and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures required to support digital production, distribution, and archiving has resulted in the rapid expansion and diversification of the industry’s resource use, infrastructure construction, energy dependency, and consequent waste and emissions production. Addressing these structures is essential to alleviating their environmental and social impact and ensuring that the industry’s rhetoric on environmental responsibility is reflected in its practice. As a mitigating counterbalance to the above trends, there has been a heightenedpush for sustainability measures along various lines of industry management, policy, and practice. These initiatives—including the cultural values they reflect, the political economies that form their logic, the managerial and marketing tactics that orchestrate them, and the environmental realities of their implementation—form the central object of inquiry for this collection.
Production Studies, The Sequel! is an exciting exploration of the experiences of media workers in local, global, and digital communities—from prop-masters in Germany, Chinese film auteurs, producers of children’s television in Qatar, Italian radio broadcasters, filmmakers in Ethiopia and Nigeria, to seemingly-autonomous Twitterbots. Case studies examine international production cultures across five continents and incorporate a range of media, including film, television, music, social media, promotional media, video games, publishing and public broadcasting. Using the lens of cultural studies to examine media production, Production Studies, The Sequel! takes into account transnational production flows and places production studies in conversation with other major areas of media scholarship including audience studies, media industries, and media history. A follow-up to the successful Production Studies, this collection highlights new and important research in the field, and promises to generate continued discussion about the past, present, and future of production studies.
"Packed with full-color film stills, exclusive pre-production artwork and behind-the-scenes production images, this book reveals how the designer is crucial in the creation of place, character and narrative through the use of distinct design elements. Using examples from real-world projects, this book provides practical guidance on the complete design process, from breaking down the script and developing ideas through research, to creating drawings, model-making, constructing sets and choosing locations. Five key design elements are explored in detail, namely light, color, space, character positioning and set dressing, providing readers with a rich source of inspiration and the tools needed to take a project from script to a set ready to shoot on. The book includes seven case studies, developed from exclusive interviews with world-renowned designers, revealing the concepts behind some of the most engaging imagery on screen and the strands of visual metaphor that conveyed them. Taking into account a range of production budgets, Production Design for Film and TV provides filmmakers with an inspiring, yet practical look at the process of designing for screen."--
This book offers the first international look at how script development is theorised and practiced. Drawing on interviews, case studies, discourse analysis, creative practices and industry experiences, it brings together scholars and practitioners from around the world to offer critical insights into this core, but often hidden, aspect of screenwriting and screen production. Chapters speculate and reflect upon how creative, commercial and social practices – in which ideas, emotions, people and personalities combine, cohere and clash – are shaped by the practicalities, policies and rapid movements of the screen industry. Comprising two parts, the book first looks ‘into’ script development from a theoretical perspective, and second looks ‘out from’ the practice to form practitioner-led perspectives of script development. With a rising interest in screenwriting and production studies, and an increased appetite for practice-based research, the book offers a timely mapping of the terrain of script development, providing rich foundations for both study and practice.
This book examines the challenges often experienced by film practitioners who find themselves researching within the academy, either as students or academics. In light of this the author presents her own journey from practitioner to researcher as a lens. Her practice- based research has been a quest to ”revision” memories, by creating filmic images that elicit memory and remembering. In so doing she has used a range of platforms: multi- screen video installation, still- framing the moving image and remixing found footage. Central to this research has been the importance of family storytelling and sharing, the relationship of the visual and memory, the agency of nostalgia and the role of aura, particularly evident in the re-appropriating of super 8 home movies into a variety of forms. Important to this is has been the relationship of the viewer and the viewed in particular the role of an immersive environment of viewing.
Using cine-ethnomusicology as a focus, Cineworlding introduces readers to ways of thinking eco-cinematically. Screens are omnipresent, we carry digital cinema production equipment in our pockets, but this screen-based technological revolution has barely impacted social science scholarship. Mixing existential phenomenological fiction about social science digital cinema research practice followed by theoretical reflection and discussion of methods, this book has emerged from a decade-long inquiry into cineworlding and a desire to help others produce digital media to engage creatively with the digital networks that surround us.
