How Scripts Are Made

by Inga Karetnikova

Book Overview

Inga Karetnikova's method is that of the art teacher: she asks students to study great works in detail, to analyze them, and then to create their own. She stresses that her examination is interested only in how the scripts are written and what makes them work, not in a cultural or scholarly examination of them. Karetnikova analyzes eight screenplays--TheGodfather, Rashomon, La Strada, Bicycle Thief, Nosferatu, The Servant, Viridiana,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0809313804
• ISBN13: 9780809313808
• Release Date: August 1990
• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

A Good Teacher And A Good Book Indeed

I also was a student of Ms Karetnikova at Emerson College in Boston, and not only did I learned from her how to appreciate and create a commercial script but also how to make it a piece of good work. Ms Karetnikova has the gift of knowledge that will inspire any writer to build good scripts with the basic premise of good idea. This book is a typical example of what Inga can teach you. --This text refers to the Paperback edition Pablo Vargas-Atlanta, GA GA Films October 15, 2003

A teacher who really knows her stuff

I learned under Ms. Karetnikova at Emerson College in Boston, and she is a very talented teacher. She knows how to take the raw material of a writer and encourage it to blossom into a script worthy of selling. Inga knows that her students are wanting to write scripts that will sell, and she teaches others in this book how to truly look at a script so they will know how to produce one themselves.

Really good, not a dull how-to book

It's too bad I'm the first reviewing this book, it's being overlooked. I borrowed it from a friend who read it as a textbook at college. It satisfies the academician because it looks at the 8 scripts critically and gives a historical perspective to the art of scriptwriting. But it's also great for complete novices like me. It breaks the scripts apart and shows why the dialogues, the suspense, use of details etc. makes the scripts and films great ones. It leads you and inspires you while giving you a lot of space for creativity. Another book on script writing I'm reading right now seems so bland and so didactic now after having read "How Scripts are Made."