None of this, of course, should come at the cost of character development, but the way my script was going, all the action and excitement came at the end of my 3 minute pilot, meaning you got to sit through an awful lot of not much happening for the first 2 and a half minutes.
Two and a half minutes of character development is great, but it’s no way to hook people. I think it might work better to front load the action and put the character development in along the way while telling an entertaining story. That’s what the audience is there for, right? Isn’t this the basic hook of the In Medias Res construction? (See the beginning of Star Wars, or any James Bond movie, for the simplest, most obvious examples.)
So, I took another run at this script to move the action set piece from the end of the episode to the front, and it really starts off with a BANG now. Very anxious to get on with it…
As a note on the earlier post, I really dig the rotating model – well not the rotation itself, but the model. Really great job!
I also think you’re on the right track with the script. You can’t afford to loose the audience on a shortfilm, so my take is that it has to be very straightforward and grab you right away. Starting with a bang does that. Just make sure you leave a cliffhanger aswell and not compleatly satisfying us (your audience) by dropping all the dynamite at one place. Still.. I know next to nothing about the script itself so I’m still equally clueless aswell as curious.
Thanks, Mathias.
As for the script, it’s about all I can do not to post it for you all to look at. I really like it… it’s a lot of fun to read, I think it’s going to be fun to make, and I hope it will be fun to watch.
The good news is that there’s slightly less to build in this version of the script than there was in the previous, and that’s not on purpose. Production-based approach INDEED!
heh heh
Steve, you need to review the opening hour of character development in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. It’s the best done character work on screen as far as I’m concerned -it lasts an hour b/c he has 7 characters to define, but it’s so well integrated into the film that you’ll never mind it.
To be honest, it’s probably one of the best films ever, so you should see it anyway if you haven’t.
Now back to my regularly scheduled vacation.
Marc – I hear ya. I’m a Kurosawa fan, obviously. But I know I’m no Kurosawa, either, so I’m picking my battles here. I know I can do an action sequence, so that’s probably the best way for me to begin. Play to your strengths, the man says. I do what I’m told.
Enjoy that vacation, but come back soon. 12 ain’t the same without ya.
I love In Medias Res, great way to start a story.
I think most stories I ever make up start that way.
I just hope it doesn’t go out having lost its energy.
We may not need another bang, but save a little poof at least for the end.
Instead of calling your latest revision “Third Draft”, you could have titled it “Fast Forward”! (Would have fit the graphic, too). Just a pedantic, flippant, facetious observation…
Love the new Cassie character, by the way.
Publishing the script would be a huge spoiler so I can see why you don’t want to see it posted. If you’d decide to publish it afterwards, I’d love to check it out to compare to the final result. Still you decide. I’m just enjoying the progress. Keep it up.
… I am doubting my own script now, curses… BUT yes this method is the best way of getting people hooked.
The only gripe I have about the Bond flicks (altho it’s become staple to them all) is that the opening scene usually has nothing to do with the plot of the rest of the movie – it simply establishes Bond as a playboy who botches up his last mission before the main film.
In a way, the bond flicks have an in-built “warm-up” act.
But I digress. I am a fan of flicks who use that method as a simultaneous attention grabber, and set up. Good choice of Star Wars pic, cos it does precisely that.
Flawedprefect said:
The only gripe I have about the Bond flicks (altho it’s become staple to them all) is that the opening scene usually has nothing to do with the plot of the rest of the movie – it simply establishes Bond as a playboy who botches up his last mission before the main film.
I agree that there is a little narrative mismatch in most of the Bond beginnings, but they certainly do what they are intended to do: grab your attention. Moreover, they are tone-setters, that let you know you are in the hands of a filmmaker that is going to tell you an action-packed, entertaining story, and there is certain value in that, the story mismatch notwithstanding.
But I digress. I am a fan of flicks who use that method as a simultaneous attention grabber, and set up. Good choice of Star Wars pic, cos it does precisely that.
I’m glad you said that, because I think the Star Wars pic not only evokes the opening scene of Star Wars, which was a real attention getter (and was copied by just about every Sci-Fi film for several years) but also, by being an attractive graphic, illustrates the point far better than I could have done with mere words.
Thanks for writing in. You’ve given me a great topic for today’s blog post.