People who create, control or direct artistic vision
- Literature - author is traditionally singular creator but work is often amended/improved by an 'editor' or may be co-writter. Sometimes credited author is not even creator but work is 'ghostwritten' (e.g. Zoella book Girl Online)
- Music - producer/songwriters may have significant influence on final artists product (Timbaland, Eno, Phil Spector)
- Technology - Steve Jobs was the creative force behind Apple but innovates designs, though 'inspired' by Jobs, were created by Jonathan Ive (original iMac, iPod and iPad)
- Games - generically produced by design studio teams: but some game creators developing a highly personal creative style and approach (Hideo Kojima/Metal Gear Solid, David Cage/Heavy Rain.
Formal production hierarchy
- Executive producer - primarily responsible for financial control but may have creative input, particularly in editing and post-production stages
- Producer - primarily supervises production logistics and budget in tandem with director. May originate project and usually hires writers and the director and be involved in casting
- Director - primarily responsible for creative vision and creative decisions in collaboration with creative team.
- Writer - responsible for authoring original script or adapting existing literary material
Changing face of creative control
CINEMA
- Silent era (1900-1927): the director (Griffiths, Chaplin)
- Studio era (1930s-60s): the producer (Freed, Selznick)
- 'New Wave' (1960s-80s): directors and writer - directors
TELEVISION
- 'Golden Age' (1950S-60S): producers and writers
- 'New Wave' (1960s-70s): producers and directors
- 'Writers' (1980s-Present): producers-writers and show runners
Origins of the auteur theory
- Cahiers Du Cinema (radical French film journal) - in 1954, critic (and later director) Francois Truffaut writes a polemic in which he coins the phrase 'la politique des auteurs' (The Authors Policy)
- Reaction against 'bland' commercial cinema where the director largely regarded as 'chief technician' who just shot the script (metteur-en-scene)
- Truffaut and fellow critics wanted instead a cinema d'auteurs: directors (and director-writers) who expressed an individualistic world view and use of mise en scene
- This 'auteur cinema' expressed in ground-breaking French New Wave films of late 50s-early 60s
Definition of 'auteur'
- The auteur theory was championed in the US by film critic Andrew Sarris in his essay 'Notes On The Auteur Theory In 1962'
- Sarris states THREE key criteria that define an auteur:
1. The technical competence of the director - ability to organise a film with clarity and coherence
2. The distinguishable personality of the director - recurring signature style
3. Interior meaning - the cinematic art created from tension between a directors personality and his material
- There are no bad films: only bad directors
- Even the worst film of an 'auteur' director can be rescued from anonymity
Issues with auteur theory
- Doesn't recognise collaborative nature of film and television, and contribution of writers and technicians
- What directors were attempting to portray was secondary to the actual visualisation on screen
- Only a few rare directors have 'final cut'
- Genre theory as alternative to auteur theory
Karl vs Sarris
Pauline Kael was a highly influential American film critic and rival of Andrew Sarris who attacked the auteur theory in an article entitled 'Circles and Squares'
- On technical competence, Kael said that "sometimes the greatest artists in a medium bypass or violate the simple technical competence that is so necessary for hacks... (the greatness of a director) ...is in being able to achieve his own personal expression and style"
- On personal style, Kael argued that often the works in which we are most aware of the personality of the director makes a good movie, we look at the movie and don't think about the directors personality; "when he makes a stinker we notice his familiar touches because theres not much else to watch"
- On 'interior meaning', Kael said that it is "the opposite of what we have always taken for granted in the arts, that the artist expresses himself in the unity of form and content"
Genre Theory vs Auteur Theory
Genre theory focuses on:
- Generic similarities
- How texts are determined by historical/social/political contexts
- How texts emerge as commercial products from an industry
Auteur theory focuses on:
- Individual stylistic features
- How texts are determined by directors' creativity
- How texts emerge as part of a directors body of work
A writer's medium?
- As a new art form in the 1950s, TV was heavily reliant on dialogue-led stage and literary adaptations and studio-based genre productions (sitcoms, soaps, sci-fi)
- Writers, producers and directors came principally from radio and theatre
-The core model became the close writer-producer working relationship with directors largely 'hired guns'.
- Contemporary TV show runners (writers/executive producers) include David Chase (The Sopranos), Steven Moffat (Doctor Who and Sherlock), Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad) and Shonda Rhimes (Greys Anatomy and Scandal)
- While genre shows and long-run series still demand a factory line mentality, the move to shorter single-story narrative arc serials allows writers to function more as TV novelists (House of Cards is even made up of episodes titled, "Chapter One", "Chapter Two", etc.)
Possible TV 'auteurs'?
STEPHEN POLIAKOFF
- Began writing career in theatre; award-winning playwright
- Commissioned by BBC and others to write several TV films, working with established producers and directors
- Made directing debut with HIDDEN CITY (1988, Film4)
- Since 1988, Poliakoff has written and directed over a dozen features, TV movies and mini-series, mostly for the BBC
- Considered pre-eminent BBC writer-director - and allowed to exercise editorial control over casting and final cut
Technical Competence
Although not formally-trained visual director, Poliakoff is widely considered to have evolved a degree of technical competence
'Competence' is seen as control:
A. Framing (shot)
B. Camera movement
C. Editing
in order to convey narrative
Conclusion
- Notions of authorship must be viewed and analysed in the context of historical timeframe, production methods and creative control
- Are ideas of individual authorship appropriate in a collaborative industry like TV or film?
- Can individuals leave their thematic and stylistic fingerprints on the films and TV programmes they work on when so many other people are involved in the production process and when they rarely if every have final cut?
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