Sunday 22 February 2009

Literature Review - Scriptwriting


Wells, P (2007) Scriptwriting, Switzerland: Ava Publishing SA

The third book I have chosen to review is yet another by Paul Wells. I thought about approaching the essay from different angles and decided on looking at different aspects of animation. Scriptwriting is a major part and is where the 'gags' in animation originate. The book holds a large collection of different animation styles from different animators, which is interesting to see how through writing came these brilliant pieces of work.

Interestingly the book covers writing for different genres, including comedy. "The key preoccupation of the comedy writer is not the structure of the joke or gag, but the mechanism that prompts the laugh." The cartoon, "Johnny Bravo" is used as an example in writing a comedy script. The basis of the comedy is derived from the actual character design. Johnny is very muscular and strong, however has the brain the size of a pea. "His primary agenda is getting "chicks". Repetition is used in almost every comical animation. Johnny Bravo is no different as he is put into similar situations usually beginning with him talking to a girl with his pick up lines, and resulting with him being beaten up. According to Wells, there are seven key gag types and three theories of comedy; Superiority, Relief and Incongruity.

Personally this book has helped me understand how animators adapt scripts into their actual animations in their unique way and how they interpret different ideas. I will definitely use this knowledge and incorporate this into my own work.

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