Short Film Screenwriting

Austin Bunn’s Short Film Screenwriting is an informative and revealing deep dive into the elements, mechanics, and poetry of the short-form screenplay. By conducting case studies of diverse material, Bunn has filled a gap in film scholarship. This is an essential book for aspiring screenwriters and film students whose first foray into the medium will likely be creating their own short films. * Andrea Berloff, Filmmaker, including The Kitchen (2019), Straight Outta Compton (2015), World Trade Center (2006), and others, USA * Austin Bunn’s Short Film Screenwriting is a valuable resource for anyone starting work on their first short screenplay or their one hundredth. The insights into the innumerable possible shapes and perspectives involved in crafting a great short film are many, and Austin Bunn provides just enough insight, information, and practical background to widen a filmmaker’s cinematic possibilities and yet bring their ideas into diamond-sharp focus. The inclusion of sample short film screenplays is particularly instructive; this book is a high quality screenwriting tool by a clearly gifted teacher and practitioner. * Venero Armanno, Associate Professor in Creative Writing, The University of Queensland, Australia, The University of Queensland, Australia, and author of The Volcano, The Crying Forest, Gabriella’s Book of Fire, Burning Down, Black Mountain, Travel Under Any Star, and many more. * We are all familiar with books on feature screenwriting—some formulaic, some inspirational. What Austin Bunn has done here is to focus instead on the short film. Short Film Screenwriting is at once a deeply useful manual on how to construct an effective and moving short film and an anthology of some of the best examples of the form. But, because Bunn is so damn insightful, and so damn generous with his wisdom, his engaged and engaging book ends up speaking to lovers and crafters of films of all lengths. In short: this is one of the best books on screenwriting, period. * Howard A. Rodman, Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, USA, and former president of the Writers Guild of America West * This is a book that actually does what an instructor in screenwriting needs it to do. Austin Bunn creates a working knowledge base that will allow students of short film to get started right away. Readers of this book will learn about what is happening right now in film, instead of having to weed through ruminations on award-winning scripts from forty-odd years ago. I can see a student, in a single semester, working through this text, creating their own script, and actually getting some friends together to start filming. * Mark D. Baumgartner, Associate Professor, East Tennessee State University, USA *