Screenwriting in a Digital Era

Screenwriting in a Digital Era examines the practices of writing for the screen from early Hollywood to the new realism. Looking back to prehistories of the form, Kathryn Millard links screenwriting to visual and oral storytelling around the globe, and explores new methods of collaboration and authorship in the digital environment.

“Screenwriting in the Digital Era is a tour de force provocateur and polemic. Scholar and film-maker, Millard looks back at alternative models of image-based storytelling and presentation in independent and non-Western contexts as a way of looking forward, and defining the digital literacies of screen-writing in the contemporary period. Using a variety of practice-based examples, and an eclectic array of theoretical models from social psychology, sociology, musicology and photography, the text demonstrates how improvisation and composition are fundamental aspects of creating sustainable screenwriting, and advancing screen works.” (Paul Wells, Loughborough University)

“Kathryn Millard's brilliant book asks: what is involved in screenwriting in the digital era? Surely much more than just words on a page. With images, sounds, fragments of story, impressions of place, and research materials, we improvise, perform, assemble, re-mix on our computers. We project our imagination into the world (real or otherwise) that we hope to capture on screen. Conventional accounts of screenwriting find the classic story templates wherever they look; Millard, by contrasts, finds the 'seeds of the new' everywhere in the experiments of the past. Hers is the first truly international survey to look beyond Hollywood for its rich and varied inspiration. It is a book for the future of cinema and all screen media.” (Adrian Martin, Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany)

“Screenwriting in a Digital Era is an extraordinary work comprising gem-like essays about the nature of creativity and collaboration that illuminatesthe working methods of a diverse group of filmmakers. She explores the ways pictures and stories have been combined through time, taking us from Egyptian shadow plays to European magic lanterns to contemporary global digital cinema.” (Kelley Conway, University of Madison-Wisconsin, USA)

Kathryn Millard is an essayist,  filmmaker and academic. She has written, produced and directed award-wining feature films including  drama, documentary and hybrid works. Kathryn is Professor of Screen and Creative Arts at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia