1st Edition
The Screenplay Business Managing Creativity and Script Development in the Film Industry
The development of a film screenplay is a complex and collaborative process, beginning with an initial story and continuing through drafting and financing to the start of the shoot. And yet the best ways of understanding and managing this process have never been properly studied. The Screenplay Business is the first book to do exactly that, addressing such questions as:
- How do film scripts get written, and what are the tensions between creativity and business?
- How can the team of the writer, producer, director and development executive work together most effectively?
The Screenplay Business presents a theoretical and practical framework for understanding the business of independent script development, and encompasses ideas about creativity, motivation, managing creative people, value chains, and MBA leadership theories.
This book will help producers and writers to nurture their stories through the long development process to the screen. It explains the international film business, and contains new research and extensive interviews with leading industry figures, including practical advice on how to run script meetings and handle notes; how to build a sustainable business; and how to understand what really happens when a script is written.
The Screenplay Business is a new key text for academics and students researching film and media, and indispensable reading for anyone working in film screenplay development today.
Biography
Peter Bloore is a produced film screenwriter; a media business consultant specializing in business strategy, creativity and drama development; and Senior Lecturer in Creativity at the University of East Anglia. He is co-writing a new screenplay and working on a novel.
'The Screenplay Business book is long overdue and of excellent relevance and value to both practitioners and academics working in the creative industries. Bloore successfully blends rigorous research with a sensitive analysis of the more vulnerable aspects of the creative process.' - Angus Finney, film business consultant and author of The International Film Business (2010)
'a great synthesis of ideas about development and a very useful contribution to all of us working in the field.' - Julian Friedmann, Film, TV and Literary Agent
'The market is saturated with books on the craft of screenwriting, but few look at the mechanics of development. The Screenplay Business fills the gap with fresh insights underpinned by the latest research findings from psychology, social science and business management. I’m certain that many existing writers, producers and development executives will benefit from the author’s synthesis of these diverse bodies of research... An engaging, valuable and timely contribution to our understanding of feature film development.' - Jim Barratt, Film Business Consultant
