
I love reading through older screenplays. Decades ago, it was the screenwriter’s job to delineate every single shot in a scene, as you can see from the example of The Birds, below, which essentially meant writers had to think like directors and pay close attention to the technical aspects of a script’s structure while trying to write a moving masterpiece. What a tedious way to construct a screenplay! On one hand, the requirements of the structure took away from the creativity of writing the story (I’m thinking it must have). On the other hand, by calling all the shots (literally), a writer took all the creativity away from the director, who was no longer really directing but obeying. Continue Reading…