MS 190: Authorship is the course website for the Fall 2006 Media Studies senior seminar at Pomona College in Claremont, California.
Many Authors
Submitted by Ikura on 19 September 2006 - 5:22pm.
Forgive me if I'm getting ahead of the text here, but i just got finished reading a line of Janet Staiger's essay and I wanted to comment on it before I trudged on. The part I'm referring to is on page 32, where she talks about Kael's statement that "Mankiewicz's authorship has been obscured in favor of Welle's contributions..."
The idea of community authorship is one that I bet pops up in this book many many times, but speaking in the present, film and video productions are interesting in terms of authorship, as so many authors are involved. The fact that a film is derived from a screenplay, which is in some sense the "true" work. However, most, if not all film is first and foremost attributed to the skills (or lack thereof) of the director. It is as if the entire film is contrived from one person (im talking about Hollywood narrative film here, we all know one person can make a film alone), while in fact, so many people are required to author a single piece. Key authors include, Writer, Editor, DP, Art director, effects editor, even down to make-up, not to mention the actors themselves who in some sense, author their roles. Yet, outside the film industry, credit is mainly given to the director and the director alone. In that sense, many authors are killed in the process of producing a film, some for better or worse, but considering authorship becomes a new beast than just dealing with a text written by a single author. I shall read on, as im sure this will come up more...
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authorship
Not to nitpick, because I agree with the principle of what you say about authorship in film. However, the director is the true author of the film, even though he is handed a screenplay that is already done. Just as much, an book author who is told a story and then writes about it, is still the author of that book. They are simply taking something, and transferring it to a different medium. They are still the "author" of the new work however. Even though, more people help a director make a film, than help a writer make a novel, the final choices are ultimately his or hers, and therefore he or she should get most of the credit.
yeah but...
While I agree whole-heartedly that the multiplicity of authorship in film is systematically overlooked and far too often accredited to the director alone, in the name of academia I will attempt to make a counter-argument. Though I know very little about the intricacies of film production, I do know that more often than not the director has a hand in every facet of production from the editing of the script to costume design and therefore can be seen as the visionary of the film. Though I imagine that all these other "authors" have creative agency in their own right, I assume the director (as suggested by the title) is the person that directs others in their respective roles in the film's production and oversees their creations until it has fulfilled the “ultimate” vision of the director.
In all fairness to casual movie-goers like myself and the majority of mainstream audiences, when I watch a movie, I would never come out thinking, "Wow, great movie but the art directing was abysmal," or "Man, that movie really sucked but the lighting and costume design was top-of-the-line." The reality is that a film is judged by its overall coherence and appeal to an audience which is exactly what the director is there to do.