Aesthetics of Film Production: A Hands-On Guide to Authorial Voice
ISBN: 9781003120896
Platform/Publisher: Taylor & Francis / Routledge
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Arts; Humanities; Filmmaking and Postproduction; Media & Film Studies; Cinematography; Directing; Film Studies;

Exploring aesthetic decision-making skills through active, critical interpretation of the screenplay, this book investigates the ways filmmakers translate a screenplay into a powerful film. Guiding the reader through the formal choices a filmmaker makes, this book encompasses all aspects of the filmmaking process, including directing, acting, cinematography, lighting, production design, sound, and editing.

Author Joyce illustrates how to apply aesthetics in a way that encourages creative thinking and stylistic choices, while emphasizing the importance of active decision-making to foreground the screenplay in the filmmaking process. Focusing on how films should be crafted stylistically from beat to beat, the book provides tangible footholds to assist filmmakers with the aesthetic decision-making process, empowering filmmakers to create films to resonate emotionally and intellectually.

Ideal for students of filmmaking and aspiring filmmakers looking to train their gut and hone their creative and aesthetic decision-making in the filmmaking process.

Additional online screenplay samples show how one singular story can be told with different emphasis and narrative perspectives.


James B. Joyce is an Associate Professor at Cleveland State University, covering foundational production courses through senior capstone productions with a philosophy of emphasizing a synthetic relationship between content and craft. Currently, James is in preproduction for two short films and is writing his second feature-length screenplay.

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