All posts by Scott A. McConnell
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On Greta Garbo’s Greatness: An Appreciation of the Silent Icon’s Sound Star Turn in Queen Christina
“Spoils, glory, flags and trumpets! What is behind these high-sounding words? Death and destruction, triumphals of crippled men, Sweden victorious in a... -
Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious: How to Create Drama from Internal Conflict and Ironic Suspense
To stop a Nazi plot, an American agent pimps the woman he loves to a dangerous Nazi. This is the premise of... -
The Mark of Zorro Unmasked: Analyzing the Irony and Disguises of Tyrone Power’s Swashbuckling 1940s Hero
Some movies offer their audience the experience of an efficacious hero wittily fighting evil in a dramatic but benevolent world. The 1940 film The... -
100 Seconds of Greatness: Analyzing the First Scene of John Ford’s The Searchers
What made John Ford a great director? Let’s try an experiment to help answer that question. Let’s look at a one minute,...
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Inside the Issue: Acting
Sydney on the Map: To Land Breakout Roles, Sydney Sweeney Draws Her Own Maps of the Characters She Inhabits
A reverent initiate of a patriarchal regime; a disturbed young psychiatric hospital ward; a sexually questioning teen with a flair for the dramatic; a mysterious denizen...Inside the Issue: Directing
Think Like A Photographer: Generation Wealth’s Lauren Greenfield Shares How Still Techniques Make Better Movies
The biggest change I experienced when I went from making pictures to making films was the sense of an arc—of creating a story over time, and...Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: Casting Unknowns Was Key to Finding the Laughs and Lived-In Feel of Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade
Before I directed my first film, Eighth Grade, I had heard that 90 percent of directing is casting. I’m sure there are other directors who weigh...2