A Biblical poetics for filmmakers
Keywords
filmmaking, narrative, bible, religious education, narrator
Abstract
In this paper, we present a poetics, or guide manual, for making narrative films that resemble biblical narratives. It is similar to Aristotle’s Poetics, only his was for creating drama (though it is of course often used for film now) and was based on Greek dramas and epics. Our poetics is specifically for making films and is based on an even more ancient body of narratives—the Hebrew Bible. In articulating a biblical poetics for filmmakers, we draw heavily on the work of a few of the many biblical-narrative scholars of the last half-century, who draw in turn from the even more extensive research that has been done on narrative theory in general. Our project is one that Aristotle might have undertaken if he had read the Bible and its commentators and known about film.
Original Publication Citation
Packard, D., Campbell, P., & McDonald, J.K. (2014). A Biblical poetics for filmmakers. Religions, 5(2), 502-521.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Packard, Dennis Jay; Campbell, Preston; and McDonald, Jason K., "A Biblical poetics for filmmakers" (2014). Faculty Publications. 1761.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/1761
Document Type
Peer-Reviewed Article
Publication Date
2014
Permanent URL
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/3710
Publisher
MDPI
Language
English
College
David O. McKay School of Education
Department
Instructional Psychology and Technology
Copyright Status
© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Copyright Use Information
http://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/