Cinematic Storytelling

How do directors use screen direction to suggest conflict? How do screenwriters exploit film space to show change? How does editing style determine emotional response?

Many first-time writers and directors do not consider this. They forgo the huge creative resource of the film medium, defaulting instead to dialogue and narration to tell their screen story. Yet most movies are carried by sound and picture. What the industry's most successful writers and directors have in common is that they have mastered the cinematic conventions specific to the medium. They have harnessed non-dialogue techniques to create some of the most cinematic moments in movie history.

Cinematic Storytelling is intended to help writers and directors more fully exploit the medium's storytelling techniques. It contains 100 non-dialogue techniques that have been used by the industry's top writers and directors. From Metropolis and Citizen Kane to Dead Man and Kill Bill, the book illustrates—through 500 frame grabs and 75 script excerpts—how the inherent storytelling devices specific to film were exploited.

You can learn how non-dialogue film techniques can advance story. You can discover how master screenwriters exploit cinematic conventions to create powerful scenarios.

It is brilliantly illustrated throughout with 500 carefully chosen frame grabs from classic films of the past and present.