Author: J. J. Murphy Publisher: Film and Culture Series ISBN: 9780231191975 Category : Independent films Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
"J.J. Murphy analyzes the shifting role of the screenplay in the history of modern American independent cinema. He argues that in moving away from the traditional Hollywood approach of using a script developed in pre-production, key independent filmmakers used psychodrama and improvisation to create a new kind of cinema that allowed for more complex characterization and pushed dramatic interaction to the point where the boundary between the fiction and reality begin to dissolve. Murphy begins with filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960s and the works of John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, Jonas Mekas, and other independent directors. In reading key films and analyzing the techniques of these directors, he demonstrates how their divergence from the script, to varying degrees, created a new American cinema. Murphy then turns his attention to the twenty-first century when filmmakers, influenced by the freedom afforded by digital technology, explored many of the same strategies. Films by Gus Van Sant as well as those associated with mumblecore helped set a new precedent for this second wave of unconventional scripting practices. In his focus on improvisation, psychodrama, and a new approach to scripting, Murphy provides a new history of American indie filmmaking and how it challenged Hollywood industrial practices and performance styles"--
Author: J. J. Murphy Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231549598 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 507
Book Description
Most films rely on a script developed in pre-production. Yet beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the recent mumblecore movement, key independent filmmakers have broken with the traditional screenplay. Instead, they have turned to new approaches to scripting that allow for more complex characterization and shift the emphasis from the page to performance. In Rewriting Indie Cinema, J. J. Murphy explores these alternative forms of scripting and how they have shaped American film from the 1950s to the present. He traces a strain of indie cinema that used improvisation and psychodrama, a therapeutic form of improvised acting based on a performer’s own life experiences. Murphy begins in the 1950s and 1960s with John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Barbara Loden, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, William Greaves, and other independent directors who sought to create a new type of narrative cinema. In the twenty-first century, filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, the Safdie brothers, Joe Swanberg, and Sean Baker developed similar strategies, sometimes benefitting from the freedom of digital technology. In reading key films and analyzing their techniques, Rewriting Indie Cinema demonstrates how divergence from the script has blurred the divide between fiction and nonfiction. Showing the ways in which filmmakers have striven to capture the subtleties of everyday behavior, Murphy provides a new history of American indie filmmaking and how it challenges Hollywood industrial practices.
Author: J.J. Murphy Publisher: ISBN: Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 312
Book Description
Within the last twenty-five years, an enormous burst of creative production has emerged from independent filmmakers. From Stranger than Paradise (1984) and Slacker (1991) to Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), indie cinema has become part of mainstream culture. But what makes these films independent? Is it simply a matter of budget and production values? Or are there aesthetic qualities that set them off from ordinary Hollywood entertainment? In this groundbreaking new study, J.J. Murphy argues that the independent feature film from the 1980s to the present has developed a distinct approach of its own, centering on new and different conceptions of cinematic storytelling. The film script is the heart of the creative originality to be found in the independent movement. Even directors noted for their idiosyncratic visual style or the handling of performers typically originate their material and write their own scripts. By studying the principles underlying the independent screenplay, we gain a direct sense of the originality of this new trend in American cinema. Me and You and Memento and Fargo also presents a unique vision for the aspiring screenwriter. Most screenwriting manuals and guidebooks on the market rely on formulas believed to generate saleable Hollywood films. Many writers present a "three-act paradigm" as gospel and proceed to lay down very stringent rules for characterization, plotting, timing of climaxes, and so on, while others who appear to be more open about such rules turn out to be just as inflexible in their advice. Through in-depth critical analyses of some of the most significant independent films of recent years, J.J. Murphy emphasizes the crucial role that novelty can play in the screenwriting process.
Author: Sarah E.S. Sinwell Publisher: Rutgers University Press ISBN: 1978814712 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 204
Book Description
Indie Cinema Online investigates the changing nature of contemporary American independent cinema in an era of media convergence. Focusing on the ways in which modes of production, distribution, and exhibition are shifting with the advent of online streaming, simultaneous release strategies, and web series, this book analyzes sites such as SundanceTV, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, and other online spaces as a means of redefining independent cinema in a digital era. Analyzing the intersections among cinema studies, cultural studies, and new media studies within contemporary convergence culture, author Sarah E.S. Sinwell looks at sites of media convergence that are often ignored within most studies of digital media. Emphasizing the ways in which the forms and technologies of media culture have changed during the age of convergence, this book analyzes contemporary production, distribution, and exhibition practices as a means of examining the changing meanings of independent cinema within digital culture.
Author: J. J. Murphy Publisher: University of Texas Press ISBN: 1477324046 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 225
Book Description
In Sean Baker’s award-winning 2017 film The Florida Project, a young girl, her single mother, and her friends live in run-down motels near Disney World, the children’s summer fun contrasting with the grim conditions around them. In this book, J. J. Murphy delves deep into the movie’s development and filming while also examining it within the wider context of Baker’s career. Using production documents, different versions of the screenplay, and interviews with principal members of the production team, Murphy traces the evolution of The Florida Project from initial idea through its various stages of production. He highlights Baker’s unconventional strategies in making a film about a marginalized subculture, including alternative scripting, guerrilla-like filmmaking, improvisation, and unorthodox casting of local and first-time actors. Murphy also explores how Baker’s impromptu style sometimes rankled crew members and caused a major crisis on set, revealing the difficulties indie filmmakers can face when working with professional crews on larger films. A lively analysis of this critically acclaimed movie, its director, and its production, The Florida Project also betters our understanding of contemporary independent cinema as a whole.
Author: Michael Z. Newman Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231144652 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 314
Book Description
By locating the American indie in the historical context of the Sundance-Miramax era, the author considers indie cinema as an alternative American film culture.
Author: Cynthia Baron Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 1137408634 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
This book illustrates the many ways that actors contribute to American independent cinema. Analyzing industrial developments, it examines the impact of actors as writers, directors, and producers, and as stars able to attract investment and bring visibility to small-scale productions. Exploring cultural-aesthetic factors, the book identifies the various traditions that shape narrative designs, casting choices, and performance styles. The book offers a genealogy of industrial and aesthetic practices that connects independent filmmaking in the studio era and the 1960s and 1970s to American independent cinema in its independent, indie, indiewood, and late-indiewood forms. Chapters on actors’ involvement in the evolution of American independent cinema as a sector alternate with chapters that show how traditions such as naturalism, modernism, postmodernism, and Third Cinema influence films and performances.
Author: James Lyons Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000814165 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
This edited collection is the first book to offer a wide-ranging examination of the interface between American independent film and a converged television landscape that consists of terrestrial broadcasters, cable networks and streaming providers, in which independent film and television intersect in complex, multifaceted and creative ways. The book covers the long history of continuities and connections between the two sectors, as seen in the activities of PBS, HBO or Sundance. It considers the movement of filmmakers between indie film and TV such as Steven Soderbergh, Rian Johnson, the Duplass brothers, Joe Swanberg, Lynn Shelton and Gregg Araki; details the confluence of aesthetic and thematic elements seen in shows such as Girls, Breaking Bad, Master of None, or Glow; points to a shared interest in regional sensibilities evident in shows like One Mississippi or Fargo; and makes the case for documentaries and web series as significant entities in this domain. Collectively, the book builds a compelling picture of indie TV as a significant feature of US screen entertainment in the 21st Century. This interdisciplinary landmark volume will be a go-to reference for students and scholars of Television Studies, Film Studies and Media Studies.
Author: Mark Minett Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 019752382X Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.
Author: Justin Wyatt Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000872742 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 564
Book Description
This indispensable collection offers 51 chapters, each focused on a distinct American independent film. Screening American Independent Film presents these films chronologically, addressing works from across more than a century (1915−2020), emphasizing the breadth and long duration of American independent cinema. The collection includes canonical examples as well as films that push against and expand the definitions of "independence." The titles run from micro-budget films through marketing-friendly Indiewood projects, from auteur-driven films and festival darlings to B-movies, genre pics, and exploitation films. The chapters also introduce students to different approaches within film studies including historical and contextual framing, industrial and institutional analysis, politics and ideology, genre and authorship, representation, film analysis, exhibition and reception, and technology. Written by leading international scholars and emerging talents in film studies, this volume is the first of its kind. Paying particular attention to issues of diversity and inclusion for both the participating scholars and the content and themes within the selected films, Screening American Independent Film is an essential resource for anyone teaching or studying American cinema.
Author: J. J. Murphy
Author: J. J. Murphy
Author: J.J. Murphy
Author: Sarah E.S. Sinwell
Author: J. J. Murphy
Author: Michael Z. Newman
Author: Cynthia Baron
Author: James Lyons
Author: Mark Minett
Author: Justin Wyatt