Kurosawa Kiyoshi / scripts

[Voorhees.Scott@epamail.epa.gov]

U.S. scripts that specify shots and camera angles would be the product
of the director and camera crew, and not the screenwriter. The job of a
screenwriter in the US is limited to telling the story, and not to
specifying preproduction details. Commonly referenced books on
screenplay writing, such as "How to Write a Selling Screenplay" by
Christopher Keane and "Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting" by
Syd Field, warn novice authors to avoid such details. This suggests that
American and Japanese screenwriters follow the same guidelines in
drafting their work. The absence of many Japanese shooting scripts may
simply reflect a different attitude among movie industry professionals
in the two countries concerning public access to their internal working
materials.

Scott Voorhees
Novice Screenwriter
__________________


>Furthermore, they are often only simple distillations of the dialogue.
Don't count on getting preproduction versions of scenarios from the
scenarios magazines or Kinejun, either. This is always a problem.

My impression is that a journal like Shinario, which is put out by
screenwriters, is less a distillation of the dialogue than a
representation of the screenwriter's craft. Thus what they publish is
the script as the scriptwriter created it. In production it may have
changed, but this is essentially the way the script was when it was
finished by the writer. I should note, however, that Japanese
screenwriting has rarely been that focused on the production aspects of
the film. Thus while US scripts will often specify shot length and even
camera movement, most Japanese scripts, even at the production stage, do
not go to that length. Much of that info is handwritten into the script
during filming, or done in a separate storyboard.

>department library has an emphasis on scripts, and we're buying
thousands of scenarios from LA. Does anyone know if there are comparable
sources for production scenarios in Japan? I have one for Ran sitting on
my shelf, but it was a present from someone on the inside. Jinbocho
seems to have television scripts, but not film...

The Waseda Enpaku has thousands of these scripts, some donated by the
directors themselves. And you can occasionally find them in Jinbocho and
other used markets as well. I have a couple of old Toei scripts myself.

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