Buried (2010) is a thriller film starring
Ryan Reynolds about an American civilian truck driver based in Iraq, who after
being attacked, finds himself buried in a wooden coffin.
Buried is a great and strong storyline, and
a beneficial read for research from a scriptwriter’s point of view, as the
entire film takes place in one location, inside the coffin. As a scriptwriter
this must have been quite challenging, only writing for one location, and
having that location so confined with very few options to choose from. I choose
to look into the script for Buried due to The Cell primarily taking place all
in one location as well. If I can see how Buried was wrote and structured, it
may give me a better understanding of how to complete my script for The Cell.
The script is very heavy on words and
description as so much of the film is actions. The main character has very
little opportunity to speak that so much of the script is describing what he’s
doing instead of dialogue. In many ways, the script reads like a novel, and I
know you don’t ever want to have so much writing on a page for a script but
when it’s a case such as this one, your options are limited and it’s
interesting to see how a professional scriptwriter has approached this
challenge. Later on throughout the script, the story opens up more and the
writer has given the character more room for dialogue and discussion with
introducing a phone for him to contact people on. Something along the lines of
this would work well for The Cell, so the main character is not completely
alone.
Reading through the script for Buried has
been very beneficial for me and for the script for The Cell. To understand the
writing structure for a script set only in one location, and with very minimal
characters, gives me a better understanding of how to restructure and approach
the latest draft of The Cell. I can now make additions to the script that will
help move the story along faster, and also new characters that should give our
main character more interaction with.
Birdman
(2014) is a black comedy film starring Michael Keaton about a faded Hollywood
actor struggling to break away from his previous work and mount a Broadway
adaptation of a short story by Raymond Carver.
Birdman is a critically acclaimed film and
winner of the Academy Awards Best Picture, but perhaps most well known for how
it appears to be filmed as a single shot. With Birdman looking like its been
filmed as a single shot, there are many challenges that the writer had to
overcome to keep the audience entertained. There’s no cutting away to action or
to a new scene, the writer had to be smart about what would happen next and
which characters would interact at different times. This is something I’m
interested in researching in the hopes it can help me develop my own writing style
and maybe result in smarter writing and story structure for my script The Cell.
The structure and layout of the script is
all continuous so everything leads into each other. Every time there’s a new
scene it’s where the cut will hide for the filmmakers, but the story is still
continuing. The script is very heavy on dialogue and interaction with other
characters. There is rarely a page where there is no dialogue at all, and in
fact the conversations are what drives the film throughout. With our main character
being stuck in a cell for the majority of the film, it would be good to have
some of the film be driven with dialogue and conversations he’s having with
other characters. If I could maybe dot realizations or hidden meanings within
conversations with characters, this could make our film more intriguing and
give the characters on screen more of something to do, instead of actions.
Although show don’t tell is a major part of how we want our reveal, it would be
better for people to connect the dots if they heard something that they can
call back to later on if it gets brought back up again.
Reading through the script to Birdman has
been a real insight because now the script for The Cell can now maybe expand.
With new interesting interactions, and giving the flow of the film more of a
smooth ride and not staggered, I can develop a script that should translate
well onto the screen, and look interesting and fun, and not having pauses or
moments that bore the audience.
Birdman Script: http://d97a3ad6c1b09e180027-5c35be6f174b10f62347680d094e609a.r46.cf2.rackcdn.com/film_scripts/FSP3823_BiRDMAN_MINI_SCRIPT_BOOK_C5.pdf
Ex
Machina (2015) is a science fiction psychological thriller starring Alicia
Vikander about an intelligent humanoid robot that goes through the Turing test.
Ex Machina is very well critically
acclaimed and loved upon it’s audience which may wander into cult status in the
years to come. The script for Ex Machina is a must to research as The Cell is
inspired by parts of the concept from the film. The script has to deal with the
interaction of a human and a robot and needs to give a detailed display of how
they are similar and how they are different. This is something the script for
The Cell could benefit from, as our main character is robotic artificial
intelligence but the audience doesn’t know this till the end. This gives room
for teasing and laying the ground work down so the reveal is so much more
realistic when it comes to the closing.
To find a balance between my human
characters and robotic characters will have a profound effect on the script and
story, as the audience will pick certain aspects up as it goes along and start
to understand what separates them from the humans. The script for Ex Machina is
very fast paced and wastes no time when it comes to getting to the story. The
introduction to the robot Ava in the script is very clever at making her seem
mysterious and gives the audience something to question and find odd before
smoothly adjusting into giving her emotions and sympathy.
The characters in the film that are human
are quite different from each other. The main character is coming from a point
of view of that of the audience, who is always questioning and trying to find
out answers, trying to understand what the situation is. The other human is
quite mysterious also, always seeming like he’s in the know and has all the
power, which slowly makes him an enemy to the audience.
Reading through the script to Ex Machina
has been real helpful in understanding how to write smart and really translate
the technology side of the script to the screen. To give a real understanding
of how to differentiate between human and robotic characters, and give me a few
ideas of how maybe to hide certain facts that we don’t want the audience to
know just yet in The Cell.
Ex Machina Script: http://www.slguardian.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ex-Machina.pdf
