Screenwriting

Abstract: Movie studios often have to choose among thousands of scripts to decide which ones to turn into movies. Despite the huge amount of money at stake, this process---known as green-lighting in the movie industry---is largely a guesswork based on experts' experience and intuitions. In this paper, we propose a new approach to help studios evaluate scripts that will then lead to more profitable green-lighting decisions. Our approach combines screenwriting domain knowledge, natural-language processing techniques, and statistical learning methods to forecast a movie's return on investment (ROI) based only on textual information available in movie scripts. We test our model in a holdout decision task to show that our model is able to significantly improve a studio's gross ROI.

Abstract: When executives need to persuade an audience, most try to build a case with facts, statistics, and some quotes from authorities. In other words, they resort to "companyspeak," the tools of rhetoric they have been trained to use. In this conversation with HBR, Robert McKee, the world's best-known screenwriting lecturer, argues that executives can engage people in a much deeper--and ultimately more convincing--way if they toss out their Power-Point slides and memos and learn to tell good stories. As human beings, we make sense of our experiences through stories. But becoming a good storyteller is hard. It requires imagination and an understanding of what makes a story worth telling. All great stories deal with the conflict between subjective expectations and an uncooperative objective reality. They show a protagonist wrestling with antagonizing forces, not a rosy picture of results meeting expectations--which no one ends up believing. Consider the CEO of a biotech start-up that has discovered a chemical compound to prevent heart attacks. He could make a pitch to investors by offering up market projections, the business plan, and upbeat, hypothetical scenarios. Or he could captivate them by telling the story of his father, who died of a heart attack, and of the CEO's subsequent struggle against various antagonists--nature, the FDA, potential rivals--to bring to market the effective, low-cost test that might have prevented his father's death. Good storytellers are not necessarily good leaders, but they do share certain traits. Both are self-aware, and both are skeptics who realize that all people--and institutions--wear masks. Compelling stories can be found behind those masks.

Abstract: Preface 1. Go with the Flow? Analyzing Television 2. What Do They Think They're Doing? Theory and Practice in Screenwriting 3. The Dispersal of Narrative: Adaptations, Sequels, Serials, Spin-offs, and Sagas 4. The Strange Cases of David Lynch Notes Index

Abstract: Study Guide: How You Might Use This Book Part 1: Techniques and Teaching Functions that Exploit Video's Strengths, Adding Pedagogic Value 1. Video That Adds Cognitive Value or Skills Value 2. Video That Adds Experiential Value 3. Video That Adds Nurturing Value Part 2: Optimal Media Selection and Deployment 4. Matching Media Attributes to Learning Tasks and Functions Part 3: Pedagogic Screenwriting Principles for Video 5. Screenwriting for Video in Educational Multimedia: An Overview of the Screenwriting Principles 6. Screenwriting for Video in Educational Multimedia: In-Depth Coverage of the Screenwriting Principles Part 4: Picture-Word Synergy for Audiovision and Multimedia 7. Principles of Picture-Word Synergy for Audiovision 8. Screenwriting Principles for a Multimedia Package - Picture Word Synergy for Mutltimedia With Audio Commentary