1st Edition
Crafting the Scene Lessons in Storytelling from the Masters of Cinema
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 – Why Scenes?
CHAPTER 2 - The Rules of Enchantment: Aristotle’s Poetics
CHAPTER 3 - The Playground Scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) – Believing is Seeing and Constructing Subjectivity
CHAPTER 4 - The Death of the Thief Scene in Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954) – Space, Time, and Efficient Exposition
CHAPTER 5 - The Dôme Café Scene in Agnes Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1961) – Real Time and Real Life in the Service of Fiction
CHAPTER 6 - The Wall of Fame Scene in Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) – Shaping the Scene for Complexity and Payoff
CHAPTER 7 - The Roadhouse Slaughter Scene in Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark (1987) – Invigorating Genre Through Subversion and Making the Familiar Strange Again
CHAPTER 8 – Why Bother?
BONUS CHAPTER - Taylor Swift’s Music Video for "Shake it Off" (2014) – Micro Behaviors, Macro Humility, and Moving Toward Real Inclusion
APPENDIX: WHERE TO WATCH THE SCENES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
SELECTED TEXTS
INDEX
Biography
Will Hong is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media Production at the State Univeristy of New York at New Paltz. He spent two decades in the film and television industry in New York City working on short and feature-length independent films, music videos (including from artists Weezer, Alicia Keys, Black-Eyed Peas, Modest Mouse), numerous TV spots and promos for such clients as ESPN, Phillips-Van Heusen, HBO, Kenneth Cole, Macy’s, HGTV and MTV, reality television shows (HouseHunters International), as well as corporate (silver Telly Award winner) and associated web-based content. He has taught the fundamentals of storytelling and filmmaking at The Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute, the New York Film Academy (NYC), the Dalton School, and Marist College in Poughkeepsie, NY.
'Will Hong’s excellent Crafting the Scene: Lessons in Storytelling from the Masters of Cinema fills a gaping hole in many curriculums. It is a rich, exhaustive exploration of the role of individual scenes from a film that touches on both how they work on their own as scenes worth studying but also how they fit into the film in a big picture kind of way.'
David Greenberg, University of the Arts
