A Brief History of the Script and Scriptwriting - Text 1
The history of the script and scriptwriting cannot be done without paying special attention to both words and things, to discourses and practices, to the diverse preparatory documents and the names they have been given, to the people who made them and their status in the production chain, and to the division of labour and the professionalization of the trades which have structured these activities. Applying indiscriminately the words script (or screenplay) and scriptwriting to all these documents and all these preparatory activities gives quite illusory retrospective coherence and consistency to a highly complex reality.[1] In fact the words and things, the discourses and practices, have changed from one period to another and from one place to another, according to the historical and social context, the country, the period, the industry, the company, the work being created, the people, etc. The nomenclature has often been unstable and the evolution non-linear.[2] The case of the United States is exemplary, however, in that there the industrialization of cinema and the standardization of the script took place early and quickly.
In the United States, the way in which a film was conceived and prepared and the role of writing in this process varied depending on the way the production was organized and whether it was centred on the cinematographer, the director or the producer.[3] In the very early years of film history, when films were short, the cinematographer chose the topic and captured or staged it without any other preparation. The only accompanying text at the time was the film’s synopsis, often a single line and rarely more than a paragraph, which appeared in the production company’s catalogue to promote the film and assist the lecturer when showing it in public.
