(Ebook) Film Genre for the Screenwriter by Jule Selbo ISBN 9781317695677, 9781138020818, 9781138020832, 1317695674, 1138020818, 1138020834, 2014004469

(Ebook) Film Genre for the Screenwriter by Jule Selbo ISBN 9781317695677, 9781138020818, 9781138020832, 1317695674, 1138020818, 1138020834, 2014004469

As an American screenwriter working in Hollywood for nearly twenty years I have worked in film and television, writing live action as well as animation projects. I resisted categorization of my capabilities or strengths as a writer; I wrote a romantic comedy for Columbia Pictures, drama/fantasy for Paramount, a bio-pic for Disney, action/adventure/coming-of-age scripts for George Lucas’ Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, melodrama for Aaron Spelling’s Melrose Place, sci-fi for 20th Century Fox, horror and sci-fi for George Romero’s Tales From the Darkside and Monsters, comedy for Comedy Network and adaptations of children’s literature for Disney, Fox, PBS and others. I jumped into writing in these genres relying almost entirely on the surface knowledge I had gained over years of reading literature and viewing films. Because I enjoy the analysis of film, even as I worked as a professional screenwriter I continued studying my craft in classes in the area of story structure—mostly because I never came across classes dedicated to the understanding or dissection of film genre for the screenwriter. To my mind, an analysis of genre was a blind spot in the teaching and writing on the craft of screenwriting. This lack of attention to the question of genre became even clearer to me when I began my academic career and it became my task to instruct students in screenwriting.