Reviews for The understructure of writing for film & television

The average rating for The understructure of writing for film & television based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-01-10 00:00:00 Anthony Soto I feel somewhat awkward rating this because I am completely not the intended audience. I picked this up hoping for a theoretical overview of musical theater; what I got was a practical workbook, full of exercises and long lists of songs for further study. If you actually want to write for theater, these may be useful exercises and important lists (though at this point the lists are sort of a time capsule, and what Engel considered the height of musical theater circa the 1970s is often forgotten today). If you're just curious how the musical theater industry works . . . there are still some gems here, particularly in the Libretto chapter and the essays section, but a lot of it is too technical for me and my lack of musical training to follow. That doesn't make it a bad book, just a tightly targeted one.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-16 00:00:00 Alex Zachary Engel was an influential figure in musical writing and definitely had strongly held opinions about what makes for great musical theater. On the one hand, he sounds dogmatic and preaches formulaic approaches in this guide. On the other hand, those formulaic approaches still dominate musical theater today, audiences like the formula, and veering from that formula can get you in a whole lot of trouble.