The Screenplay, Imagism and Modern Aesthetics - It's Evolution, Past Essay

The Screenplay, Imagism and Modern Aesthetics - It's Evolution, Past and Present - Essay Example Screenplays are rarely read outside the confines of the film world and academe, and they have been very little studied. Boon says this means that we should take care before we judge the genre because the facts are simply not adequately researched. The origins of screenplays are traced back to the early years of the twentieth century when cinema was just taking off. Prevailing ideas in the arts like imagism and an emerging modernism are suggested as the most suitable foundations for studying screenplays. Poetic works are cited as comparable to screenplays because they use â€Å"concrete images in a direct style that compacts the information into a tight rhetorical presentation.†3 Two further principles of imagism are suggested as belonging also to the screenplay, namely â€Å"1) the establishment of new rhythms and 2) a focus on common speech. 4 Because screenplays must be performable, they must remain very close to experience, and Boon sees their narrative rhythm, and also th e realism of the dialogue, matching modern fiction and poetics. On the format and layout of screenplays, Boon notes the rigid requirement for speaker name, colon, and spoken text in a screenplay, and argues that in novels and poems a similar approach is taken, usually but not always using quotation marks, and sometimes being omitted when the context makes it clear who is speaking. Boon notes these significantly different graphical methodologies, but somewhat perversely stresses what the two have in common: â€Å"Despite these differences, practical necessity guides the marking of dialogue in both modern prose and in the screenplay.†5 In one area Boon concedes that screenplays and novels or poems are different and that is in the impossibility of directly presenting introspection and psychological machinations in a screenplay. The use of symbolism, or of a rather intrusive narrative voiceover are the only techniques that allow the screenplay author to cover this important dimen sion. Boon finishes the article with a repetition of his main thesis: â€Å"Like any other more widely acknowledged literary forms (fiction, poetry, essay, drama), the screenplay is, in the final assessment, a creative literary form, and subject to the same historical and theoretical influences as any other creative writing.†6 There are some serious points in this article about the differences between a written text such as a screenplay and a motion picture which exists in film or nowadays also DVD form. It is certainly true that of all the participants in the making of a film the creator of the screenplay is often the least visible. Actors are used in all the publicity ventures, and the director usually takes part in interviews and is cited with the film title in all the catalogues. Authors of screenplays receive a mention the credits, and appear to receive prizes in their own special Oscar category, but beyond that, they mostly do not attain much public notice or fame. In a nother more lengthy work on the subject of screenplays, Boon reveals his own particular bias: â€Å"The lack of critical attention paid to screenplays has not been lost on screenwriters, many of whom expected screenwriters to achieve more status than they actually have.†