Collection in focus
Unpublished scripts
Special Collections holds a large number of unpublished scripts. Around 25,000 are held as part of our numbered script collection, and another 5,000 scripts form part of the named Special Collections, for example, the David Lean, Joseph Losey, Powell and Pressburger, Derek Jarman and David Puttnam Collections all contain numerous scripts, drafts and treatments. There are also collections of scripts (often supplemented by correspondence and other papers) relating to writers including Lajos Biro, T E B Clarke, David Climie, Beverley Cross, Jeffrey Dell, Janet Green, Trevor Griffiths, Julia Jones, Angus MacPhail, Bill Naughton, Eric Paice, and Eliot Stannard. While our scripts are international in scope, the main strength of the collection is in British and American cinema and television.
Our unpublished script collection is continually growing and ranges from silent film scenarios to scripts for the latest releases. We also have scripts for a range of television programmes which includes complete drama series as well as samples from long-running soaps such as Coronation Street (we hold a camera script for the first ever episode, transmitted in December 1960). We are always looking to fill gaps in our holdings and are especially interested in adding to our collection of silent scenarios, and in receiving script donations from contemporary practitioners.
Unpublished scripts can be illuminating in a variety of ways. They can reveal how a film changed and developed from early treatment to finished film, they can provide a picture of a lost or unrealised project, or offer insight into the working processes of writers, directors, actors etc. Annotated scripts provide a particularly fascinating glimpse into the making of a film or television programme. Directors' working scripts are often full of notes, alterations and diagrams that can tell us much about their working methods, for example. The same can be said for actors, and we hold a number of Dirk Bogarde's scripts that convey a great deal about the way in which he approached his acting roles.
Scripts donated by those working in other capacities can be equally precious and illuminating. Ann Skinner was responsible for continuity on a number of significant British or British-made features in the 1960s and 70s including Darling (1965), Far From the Madding Crowd (1967), Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), and Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971). Her scripts clearly demonstrate the extent to which the shooting script becomes an on-set bible, while revealing the extensive responsibilities of the continuity or script supervisor. Many of these scripts are supplemented with quantities of reference photographs. These record information such as scene set ups and details of the films' mise-en-scène and there are numerous snapshots of actors unselfconsciously modelling their costumes. Each script therefore offers a completely unique and rarely-seen insight into the film in question.
Special Collections also includes examples of screenplays and scripts that defy standard expectations of what a script looks like. As perhaps to be expected, many of these that form part of the Derek Jarman Collection are beautiful objects that can be classified as works of art in themselves. The majority are in notebooks or albums, with decorated covers and objects such as feathers and mirrors stuck in. There are handwritten treatments, cut-and-paste scripts made up of manuscript and typescript sequences, scripts with passages from other texts pasted in (as with The Tempest, 1979), and scripts full of designs and storyboards by Jarman and his collaborator Christopher Hobbs.
This is just a small selection from our collection. Please contact us if you would like to find out more, or are looking for a particular title. For information on how to access unpublished scripts please see our access information.
The BFI National Library has a large collection of published scripts that can be searched via the Library Catalogue.
