Briefly explain why movie scripts seldom make interesting reading and give an example of how the way a director shoots the script can change the meaning of the story

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Answer: The ideal answer should include:
1. Movie scripts seldom make for interesting reading, precisely because they are like blueprints of the finished product. Unlike a play, which usually can be read with pleasure, too much is missing in a screenplay.
2. Even highly detailed scripts seldom offer us a sense of a film’s mise en scène, one of the principal methods of expression at the director’s disposal.
3. Critic Andrew Sarris pointed out how the director’s choice of shot—or the way in which the action is photographed—is the crucial element in most films. The choice between a close-up and a long-shot, for example, may quite often transcend the plot.
4. For example, if the story of Little Red Riding Hood is told with the Wolf in close-up and Little Red Riding Hood in long-shot, the director is concerned primarily with the emotional problems of a wolf with a compulsion to eat little girls. If Little Red Riding Hood is in close-up and the Wolf in long-shot, the emphasis is shifted to the emotional problems of vestigial virginity in a wicked world.
5. Thus, two different stories are being told with the same basic anecdotal material. What is at stake in the two versions of Little Red Riding Hood are two contrasting directorial attitudes toward life. One director identifies more with the Wolf—the male, the compulsive, the corrupted, even evil itself. The second director identifies with the little girl—the innocence, the illusion, the ideal and hope of the race. Needless to say, few critics bother to make any distinction, proving perhaps that direction as creation is still only dimly understood.