Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique

Transcription

1 Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique. Kristin Thompson. 398 pages , Harvard University Press, In a book as entertaining as it is enlightening, Kristin Thompson offers the first in-depth analysis of Hollywood's storytelling techniques and how they are used to make complex, easily comprehensible, entertaining films. She also takes on the myth that modern Hollywood films are based on a narrative system radically different from the one in use during the Golden Age of the studio system. Drawing on a wide range of films from the 1920s to the 1990s--from Keaton's Our Hospitality to Casablanca to Terminator 2--Thompson explains such staples of narrative as the goal-oriented protagonist, the double plot-line, and dialogue hooks. She domonstrates that the "three-act

2 structure," a concept widely used by practitioners and media commentators, fails to explain how Hollywood stories are put together. Thompson then demonstrates in detail how classical narrative techniques work in ten box-office and critical successes made since the New Hollywood began in the 1970s: Tootsie, Back to the Future, The Silence of the Lambs, Groundhog Day, Desperately Seeking Susan, Amadeus, The Hunt for Red October, Parenthood, Alien, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In passing, she suggests reasons for the apparent slump in quality in Hollywood films of the 1990s. The results will be of interest to movie fans, scholars, and film practitioners alike. DOWNLOAD PDF HERE: Breaking the Glass Armor Kristin Thompson. Neoformalist Film Analysis. 361 pages. "Classical works have for us become covered with the glassy armor of familiarity," wrote Victor Shklovsky in Here Kristin Thompson "defamiliarizes" the reader with eleven. ISBN: Performing Arts DOWNLOAD PDF HERE:

3 According to Kristin Thompson, little has changed in how writers structure narratives for Hollywood pictures. Despite the proclamations of the Movie Brats in the early 1970s or the effects of our own more recent post-modern condition, Hollywood narratives continue. For screenwriters, the focus largely is on how DVFx can open up their story- telling. is a contemporary phenomenon that detracts from a glorious past of much better storytelling, in spite of to impact narrative is highlighted by Laura Kipnis's comment that, â śnew computer software. In a book as entertaining as it is enlightening, Kristin Thompson offers the first in-depth analysis of Hollywood's storytelling techniques and how they are used to make complex, easily comprehensible, entertaining films. She also takes on the myth that modern.

4 Historical period(s). What I'm interested in is a more differentiated understanding of the world were reď ected, rejected, or disavowed, transmuted or negotiated, and it made this new mass public visible to itself and to society.12 What is more, Hollywood's reď exive relation. Have begun to rethink the logic of traditional narratives, arguing that the storytelling we know multiple options, and open-endedness within a broadly telic and goal-oriented storytelling format. and generating horizons with higher degrees of complexity, can lead to new kinds.

5 Storytellers' well-entrenched strategies for manipulating time, space, causality, point of view, and all the rest reflect what is perceptually and 7. On the patterns of redundancy in Groundhog Day, see Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Analyzing Classical. Speed Internet access could download movies that had not yet opened.the next task for Thompson also offered general arguments against the power of merchandising to shape storytelling. mapping out varieties of allusionism, he as- cribes the impulse to a new generation. Of narration, focusing more on the activities and aspirations of the storyteller and too spatiality â and argue for an understanding of game designers less as storytellers and more Increasingly, we inhabit a world of transmedia storytelling, one that depends less on each individual. INTRODUCTION 77 5 Charles Musser MOVING TOWARDS FICTIONAL NARRATIVES: STORY FILMS Armor: Neoformalist Film Analysis (Princeton University Press, 1988), Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Harvard University.

6 established: 25th April 2013