Film Authorship and Collaboration
Berys Gaut · Oxford University Press eBooks · 1997
This chapter talks about film authorship and collaboration. There are five dimensions related to authorial claims: firstly, the kind of claim which is subdivided into three sections, namely, existential, hermeneutic, evaluative; secondly, the ontology of the author of which there are two kinds and they are actual person or critical construct; thirdly, authors and artists; fourthly, occupiers of the authorial role; and lastly, number of authors which can be single or multiple. These five dimensions are logically independent of each other. Within each dimension further subdivisions of options could also be made. Therefore, a number of authorial theses are correct. There are correct ontological, hermeneutic, and evaluative theses, and these are formulated in terms of actual and multiple authors. Film authorship should not be rejected in the cavalier fashion of some critics. Theories of authorship deserve a more careful treatment than they have generally received.