1st Edition
Aesthetics of Film Production A Hands-On Guide to Authorial Voice
Exploring aesthetic decision-making skills through active, critical interpretation of the screenplay, this book investigates the ways filmmakers translate a screenplay into a powerful film. Guiding the reader through the formal choices a filmmaker makes, this book encompasses all aspects of the filmmaking process, including directing, acting, cinematography, lighting, production design, sound, and editing.
Author Joyce illustrates how to apply aesthetics in a way that encourages creative thinking and stylistic choices, while emphasizing the importance of active decision-making to foreground the screenplay in the filmmaking process. Focusing on how films should be crafted stylistically from beat to beat, the book provides tangible footholds to assist filmmakers with the aesthetic decision-making process, empowering filmmakers to create films to resonate emotionally and intellectually.
Ideal for students of filmmaking and aspiring filmmakers looking to train their gut and hone their creative and aesthetic decision-making in the filmmaking process.
Additional online screenplay samples show how one singular story can be told with different emphasis and narrative perspectives.
Preface
Chapter 1: Aesthetics
Chapter 2: Respecting the Audience
Chapter 3: Story and Character
Chapter 4: Critical Script Analysis for Technical and Aesthetic Decision Making
Chapter 5: Training Your Gut
Chapter 6: Developing an Evolving Aesthetic
Chapter 7: Engaging and Surprising Characters
Chapter 8: Applying Active Characters
Chapter 9: What’s Your Point (Of View)
Chapter 10: Synthesis
Chapter 11: Post-Production Begins in Pre-Production
Chapter 12: Cinematography without a Camera
Chapter 13: Understanding the Importance of Diegesis in Sound Design
Chapter 14: The Long Listen… And Other Editing Structures
Chapter 15: The Director’s Responsibility to the Actor
Chapter 16: Final Footholds: Your Call to Action
Appendix A: Character Analysis Sheet
Appendix B: Questions to Train Your Gut
Appendix C: Sample Marked-Up Script
Appendix D: Sample-Implied Narrator Perspectives
Index
Biography
James B. Joyce is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University, covering foundational production courses through senior capstone productions with a philosophy of emphasizing a synthetic relationship between content and craft. Currently, James is in preproduction for two short films and is writing his second feature-length screenplay.
