Dear colleagues.
William Archer was influential in the English-speaking world and in his manual “Playmaking” (1912), he discusses widely the 3-act structure and the 5-act structure using Shakespeare and Ibsen as references.
As for movies, in “Film Technique and Film Acting”, Pudovkin compares the acts of stage plays to film reels; discusses the relationship of sequences to reels; discusses the pacing of the scenario with reel lengths in mind. The texts are from the 20s and 30s.
Both books are available online.
Paul Joseph Gulino in his book “Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach” (2004) suggests that in 1910s, “act” sometimes meant the same as “reel”. And that until the 50s screenplays were often written in reel-length sequences identified by letters (A, B,C…), generally 8 sequences in a feature length film.
In my research I have come across an article in a Finnish film magazine from 1939 advising aspiring writers that the plot should be divided into sequences, 5 to 8 in number. Also Frances Marion in “How to Write and Sell film Stories”(1938) mentions sequences and reels, but not acts.
Writing by sequences is a tradition still in use as presented by Gulino in his book. The method was introduced into the curricula of the screenwriting departments of Columbia University and the USC by Frank Daniel, who was the head of FAMU film school in Prague before 1968. Daniel himself had studied in VGIK Moscow (where Pudovkin had once been a teacher).
Best wishes
Raija Talvio
researcher
Department of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design
Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture
PL 31000, FIN-00076 Aalto
Finland
tel. +358 50 5689818, +358 50 5644156
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
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