Taisho film

[Bernardi-Buralli]

Sarah,

During the silent period, amateur competitions for stories with potential
for script/scenario adaptation were often also sponsored by the film
industry itself, so that there are points in time where there was an active
pursuit of amateur talent by professional management. This was true of US,
European, and Japanese industries, but to different degrees. Amateur
scriptwriting was in fact a huge industry in the US (you could take
correspondence courses) and there is a large amount of literature that
survives from the phenomenon--some libraries even have copies of some of the
correspondence course material. (There are good articles on this phenomenon
in a special issue on screenwriting of FILM HISTORY.) This (script
solicitation) is also true in Japan, with examples that can be traced as far
back as c. 1908. 

I've published extensively on screenwriting during the silent period, with a
particular focus on the Pure Film Movement, but my most recent
publication--with a pretty self-explanatory title--is:

WRITING IN LIGHT: THE SILENT SCENARIO AND THE JAPANESE PURE FILM MOVEMENT
(Wayne State University Press, 2001)

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0814329616/ref%3Ded%5Foe%5Fp/002-0535
866-0788051

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XHQCO231
M&mscssid=20J33SWSELDQ9GU18E738FHCSDHLE5C8&isbn=0814329616

(the barnes and noble link has list of contents)


One thing I tried to do was to try to look at early conceptions of
screenwriting, screenwriting practice, extant "screen texts" (photoplays,
films scripts, scenarios, screenplays) and the related film synopses and
plot summaries mentioned below within an appropriately international
context, as silent cinema was a global phenomenon in a very unique way.

I hope this is helpful.

Joanne Bernardi
Associate Professor of Japanese and Film
PO Box 270082
University of Rochester
Rochester NY 14627
tel: +585-275-4268
fax: +585-273-1097


> From: Aaron Gerow <gerow at ynu.ac.jp>
> Reply-To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
> Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 09:46:32 +0900
> To: KineJapan <KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu>
> Subject: Re: Taisho film
> 
>> Magazines often encourage "amateur" contributions for a number of
>> reasons, but I was slightly surprised to see such an example
>> involving film given the expense of the medium. Are there other
>> examples?  In this case, the magazine ran a four page narration of
>> the story with stills along with a "the making of" type article.
> 
> With the rise of the pure film movement in the late 1910s, which itself
> was strongly focused on scriptwriting, most of the film-related magazines
> at the time ran script contests. Only a few of those were ever made into
> a film, but given the poverty level of production at the time (for
> instance, in the mid 1920s, Naoki Sanjugo became the champion of cheap
> independent production), doing a film based on a winning script was not
> "risking" that much. In fact, given the popularity of film journalism
> among some fans, perhaps it may have added a bit of publicity (the
> magazine was sure to publicize the resulting film). Keep in mind that
> this attests both to the lack of a clear division of labor in the
> industry and the lack of "professional" standards for some jobs in that
> division of labor (in a sense, anyone could possibly write a script in
> the early days). Some of the early scriptwriters in fact came from film
> journalism, like Noda Kogo and Takada Tamotsu.
> 
>> Not being entirely familiar with the film industry, I wondered if
>> "treatment" would be an apt translation of "eiga monogatari" or not.
> 
> Note also that the publication of scripts was itself a central part of
> film journalism at the time. Even before scriptwriting became
> established, film magazines were mostly filled with plot summaries or
> film novelizations. Some of these were called "eiga monogatari", a term
> more from film journalism than from the industry. I have a piece on these
> issues in Cavanaugh and Washburn's Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, and
> Yamamoto Naoki just wrote an interesting essay on these "eiga monogatari"
> for the Meiji Gakuin Art Studies Bulletin.
> 
> 
> Aaron Gerow
> Associate Professor
> International Student Center
> Yokohama National University
> 79-1 Tokiwadai
> Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama 240-8501
> JAPAN
> E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
> Phone: 81-45-339-3170
> Fax: 81-45-339-3171
>