Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Found Footage
Premise: A group of storm chasers hoping to catch an elusive F5 tornado on camera catch something way more dangerous.
About: This script was written all the way back in 2010. It comes from screenwriters Chris Rossi and Gabriel Scott. Rossi penned a maudlin drama a few years ago called Meadowland that starred Olivia Wilde and was directed by one of the now rising female directors on the scene, Reed Moreno (whose name has been in the hat for a Star Wars project). It looks like the film ultimately fell victim to the competing found footage storm movie WB made, “Into the Storm.”
Writers: Chris Rossi & Gabriel Scott
Details: 101 pages
No.
More.
Black.
List.
For.
At least.
One.
Day.
Good Lord has that list become insufferable. And obvious. And boring. And it’s only getting worse. They’ve telegraphed so clearly what they celebrate that everyone just keeps writing the same scripts.
There’s this thing in baseball that’s occurred recently which many people are predicting will kill the sport. It’s called “the shift.” What some smarty pants MIT graduates realized was that the vast majority of the time, a hitter is going to hit the ball to the side of the field that matches his batting side. So if he’s a right hander, he’s going to hit 80% of his balls to left field. If he’s a left-hander, he’s going to hit 80% to right field.
These nerds, who now work for baseball teams, posed the question to their bosses, “Tell me again why we put our fielders on the side of the field that the hitters never hit to?” This is what led to “the shift.” They began shifting all the infielders over to the side of the field that the hit would probably go to, leaving the other side completely bare. So now what happens is everybody hits directly into the shift and gets thrown out. This has led to way fewer hits and an increasingly boring sport.
In this analogy, the Black List is only allowing you to hit to one part of the field. And that’s led to a ton of mildly entertaining glorified wikipedia entries. It’s maddening. For as long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never encountered a trend that’s lasted this long that’s been this bad for the craft. It’s soooooo freaking boring.
And that’s why I’m going BACK IN TIME for today’s script. How far back? Found-footage back! That’s right. I’m so sick of the Boring List that I’m actually reviewing a found footage screenplay. But maybe there’s some educational value to today’s review. One of the best ways to stand out is to zig when everyone else is zagging. I’m not banking on found footage becoming hot again tomorrow. But I’d encourage screenwriters to embrace going 180 degrees the other direction of what the Boring List is promoting. Because if you write something different and you nail the execution? You’ll be heralded as the next big thing.
Sean is the leader of a group of storm chasers. Nick, who’s got the connection to the money, is the driver. Kat is the meteorologist. Matt is our tech geek. Finally, Paul is our cameraman, and therefore, since this is a found footage movie, our perspective. This crew is getting ready to take on Northern Oklahoma, otherwise known as “Tornado Country.”
Just before they leave, Sean informs his little brother, Jeff, that he won’t be joining them on the chase. He doesn’t have enough experience and would therefore be in danger. Jeff is angry so Sean informs him he can hang back in the “follow vehicle.” I’m not sure how putting Jeff in a rinky dinky pickup while the five of them are in a tornado-proof tank makes Jeff safer but, hey, it’s a found footage movie so let’s roll with it.
The crew picks up a couple of F4’s on their radar and starts heading towards them. If two F4’s come together, that equals an F5 in tornado math. And if they can get a close-up of an F5, their investors are going to be really happy. While chasing one of these F4s, it turns abruptly and runs right through them. They survive but their tornado tank is toast. Sean is afraid that something might have happened to Jeff and convinces the team to walk back to where he last signed off.
Once at Jeff’s truck, they see that not only is Jeff gone, but something tore the truck apart. And it doesn’t look like a tornado. They find the dashcam footage, rewind it, and see as something attacks Jeff’s truck with him in it. In one of the final frames, a giant weird eye looks down into the camera. Whatever they’re dealing with is not related to a high pressure system if you know what I’m talking about.
Jeff appears to still be alive so they continue looking for him, getting deeper into the affected area. Soon they find an entire army blockade that’s been wiped out. As night settles in, they find the monster, which is traveling through the nearby woods and killing everything it sees. What is this thing? Where did it come from? And how are they going to escape it along with the new F5 that’s coming their way? That’s a darn good question. And the answer is they probably won’t.
I’m such a sucker for sci-fi titles with numbers in them. No matter how many times you give me a bad sci-fi number title movie, I will always be excited for the next one. I just have to know what that number references! Which is ironic in the case of Day 38 since they never tell us.
But that’s not such a bad thing. The script makes the dangerous conceptual decision to combine two big ideas into the same movie. A storm chasing storyline. An escaped monster storyline. When this is done badly, you get readers asking, “What is your movie about? Is it about Thing A or Thing B?” But when it’s done well, you get this elevated crossover genre film that’s fun as all get-up.
That’s the category I would place Day 38 in. It’s a fun script. It’s not perfect by any means. It encounters some of the classic mistakes found footage movies run into, such as repetitive scenarios. Let’s look over here. Oh, there’s a glimpse of a monster. Let’s go over there. Another glimpse. Oh, what’s that? It’s a bunch of dead people. Oh, and there’s the monster again. But not all of him!
And yet the idea is so fun that you could totally see it working onscreen. I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of trying to fight off a monster with a looming F5 tornado bearing down on my characters. Action movies are all about putting your characters into situations that are impossible to get out of. That’s when the audience is most invested. Unfortunately, the scenarios we encounter in these movies are the same old ones we’ve always seen. So when you can create something like this, that’s different, you have a leg up.
One of the reasons found footage died is that the reasoning behind why our characters were still filming became impossible to believe. Audiences sensed that and the suspension of disbelief wasn’t just broken for a few films, it was broken for the entire genre. But Day 38 gets this right. It makes total sense that Sean would want to go deeper into trouble to save his brother. And it’s established by Nick early how important it is to get great footage for their bosses. When it’s pitched to him that capturing this thing on camera would be the story of the century, we believe wholly that the camera would keep rolling.
The script just needs a couple of passes to make things less repetitive and more original. The structure feels way too similar to Cloverfield. And matching common story beats is something we’re all guilty of because it’s easier to write lazy than to do the hard work. “Okay, Cloverfield did this here so we’ll do that same beat in our script.” You can do that but your script loses street cred every time you do so. If you want to stand out, you have to create your own original plot beats. So this would need to figure that out.
But if I were Netflix, I would jump on this in a heartbeat. You don’t even need the found footage stuff. You could shoot it as a regular movie. Storms and a monster? Count me in. This is like a producer’s dream project. And the execution of the script is almost there. Worth the read for sure.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful of “what’s that!?” writing. “What’s that?” writing is an over-reliance on distraction-based plotting. Where something happens off screen and, “What’s that?” and then they’re off to check it out. And then something else happens over there. “What’s that?” Off they go again. And the plot is a series of your characters being dragged along by a bunch of “What’s thats?” You can have some “What’s thats,” but make sure your characters are dominating the narrative with plans and activity as opposed to being reactive robots.
Genre: Biopic/True Story
Premise: Based on a true story, a failed New York model transitions into the lucrative world of weed-dealing.
About: Today’s script comes from Elyse Hollander, who you may remember as the writer of 2016’s #1 Black List script, Blonde Ambition, about Madonna’s early days in New York. I refused to read that one for two years because a movie about Madonna sounded boring, but it ended up being great. Unfortunately, the movie will never get made. It makes Madonna look bad. Maybe that’s why Elyse wrote another script, so she can actually get something produced. This one finished with 13 votes on last year’s Black List, which barely got it into the top 20. — For those of you who read my newsletter, I told you last month to seek out a good article to adapt. Well, today, we have another example of what happens when you do that. Queens of the Stoned Age was adapted from a GQ article.
Writer: Elyse Hollander (based on the article written by Suketu Mehta)
Details: 114 pages
So far, nearly everything outside the top 10 of the 2018 Black List has been mediocre. That’s not a surprise. There are usually 5-6 really good scripts a year and everything else lands between “just good enough to get votes” and “mildly entertaining.”
We’ve had some intense debates in previous Black List threads about how arbitrary landing on the Black List is. One of our popular commenters says there isn’t a single script in history that hasn’t made the Black List that deserved to. That in all cases, the scripts that made the Black List are better than every single amateur screenplay. I tend to take a more fluid approach to the argument. I believe that 85-90% of the scripts that make the Black List are better than any amateur scripts out there. But that the last 10-15% could easily be replaced by some of the better amateur scripts floating around town.
So what do those 90% do that you’re not doing? They typically do one thing really well and everything else is at least above average. So they have a really great plot, or they’re good with character, or they’re really good with dialogue, or they have a strong voice. And then there’s nothing else that’s terrible in them. Because that’s what I find dooms a lot of amateur scripts. They’ll do something well, but then the dialogue will be abysmal. Or the characters are so boring. Or the plot is embarrassingly static.
This is why I tell everyone to learn the basics. You can’t cheat that. If you try and skip over something, it’ll come back to haunt you. And you won’t know because you can’t identify a mistake if you’ve never been taught that it’s a mistake. I see this with character writing all the time. The characters are soooooo boring because the writer never learned what you have to do to write impactful characters (conflict within the character, a strong introduction, active, a personality that pops, interesting conflict-filled relationships, making sure they arc over the course of a story).
This is why you should never stop learning. There’s always stuff to get better at, and if you do that long enough, you won’t have any weaknesses. From there, all you need to do is find a great concept and write at least one great character, and you’re in.
So what does Elyse Hollander do better than most writers? Let’s find out.
Honey is a model on the wrong side of her early-20s. She ain’t been booking gigs lately. And she actually owes her modeling agency a ton of money for sponsoring her. If Honey doesn’t come up with a plan quick, she’ll be one of the many failed girls who come to New York and leave two years later with their tail between their legs.
But Honey is different. She’s got a plan. She figures she can start selling weed to people in her friend’s club. Her advantage over other dealers? Guys like buying weed from hot chicks better than smelly fat dudes. Honey’s plan is so successful, she’s soon hiring fellow failed-model friends to help her. When the club closes down for tax evasion, the girls take their racket to the streets, or more accurately, direct delivery.
Soon the operation gets big enough that Honey needs to buy more product, which means dealing with bigger people. This is when she meets Rich, a trust fund son who likes to dabble on the wrong side of the law. This guy, Rich, starts selling Honey her product, but not without expecting something in return. Honey does everything in her power to rebuff Rich’s advances, but at a certain point, it’s give in or bail out. She chooses to bail. And that makes Rich an angry man.
Honey goes to another dealer, Dell, but is forced to buy the product on credit. This turns out to be a horrible choice, as Rich steals all of it in an act of revenge. Dell then comes to Honey and tells her that if she doesn’t pay him back within 48 hours, her friends are going to end up in a New Jersey landfill. Honey will have to use all her wits to defeat the psychopathic Rich, save her friends, and continue to be the Queen of the New York weed scene.
Is it possible to hear someone’s head fall in a script review?
If so, then yes, that was my head falling.
Sigh.
I can’t take it anymore. These people who watch a Scorsese flick then immediately run to their computer to write their screenplay.
The voice over. The tough protagonist who lets you know how the operation works. More voice over. The something bad happens in the first scene. The flashback to “two years earlier.” The voice over. The Scorsese formula is already stale for Scorsese. How are you going to make the imitation crab version tasty?
One of the things that drives me crazy about the Scorsese Formula is that there aren’t any scenes in the first 50 pages of the script. It’s just one long voice over. I like scenes. I like to be in situations. I don’t like someone chirping over my shoulder like a narrator in a World War 2 propaganda film.
I was seriously about to give up on the script.
But then something happened.
Rich.
If this script taught me anything, it’s that a great antagonist can save a screenplay. Ideally, the best character in your script is the hero. But if your hero isn’t up to snuff, you can still land the plane with a killer villain. And Rich the Villain was killer.
He was slimy. He was scary. Every scene he was in, you leaned in closer. There was never point in this script where I had to see Honey succeed. But there were plenty of points where I had to see Rich fail. I hated this rat so much, I kept reading to make sure he got his comeuppance.
A lot of people ask me, what makes a great villain?
The answer is complicated because it’s a mix of ingredients. It’s never one thing. But I will say this: If your villain is only evil to be evil, he’s boring. At the very least, give your villain a REASON to act the way he does. So here, Rich likes Honey. And he’s rich, so he’s used to getting what he wants. When Honey then rejects him, he’s furious. And he will stop at nothing to regain the pride he lost by getting rejected by her. In other words, THERE IS A REASON THAT HE IS ACTING THIS WAY. It’s not just because you need a bad guy doing bad things.
As is always the case with these Scorsese Formula movies, after the endless voice over stops and the movie starts telling an actual story, everything picks up. I was sleepwalking through the first 50 pages. But as soon as Narrator Nate shut up, I became engaged. I liked the scenes. And I thought the drama between Honey, Dell, and Rich was top-shelf.
That’s what I would say gets Hollander on the Black List above the typical amateur screenwriter. She wrote a great character. And despite the annoying Scorsese thing (which is more of a personal annoyance), like I said, she doesn’t do anything poorly. Everything else is either average or above.
If this script were a horse in the Kentucky Derby, it would’ve been last for the first 75% of the race. But it kicked it into gear and slipped into third place at the finish line. So I’d say it’s worth a read.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: One of my biggest pet peeves is when your characters get stopped by the police when they have something in their car that could incriminate them, and instead of cleverly getting out of the situation themselves, the cops just let them go. Please, if you ever write one of these scenes, have your characters outsmart the cops. Characters should earn every break they get in a story. Nothing should EVER be handed to them. If that happens, you’re cheating.
What I learned 2: A writer must always ask themselves, “Is there anything about my hero(es) that might turn an audience off?” Here you have people blessed to be in the top .000001% of beauty in the world. Will we root for these people? Curious to hear your thoughts.
Genre: TV/One-hour Drama
Premise: A low-level MI5 operative is tasked with looking into a murder orchestrated by a female assassin.
About: Today’s show has an unexpected Star Wars connection. It was created by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who many people know as the voice of the doomed L3-37, Lando’s favorite droid, in the movie, “Solo.” Killing Eve has become one of the few shows to rise above the tens of millions of shows being produced, and I plan to find out why. The show has been such a hit that it landed Waller-Bridge a rewrite gig on, get this, the latest Bond film! How many female writers can say they’ve written a Bond film? My guess is not a lot. The second season of Killing Eve debuted a couple of weeks ago. But because I’m behind the times, I’ll be reviewing the pilot episode for the series.
Writer: Phoebe Waller-Bridge
Who knows what TV is anymore??
I don’t.
Mini-series, short seasons, limited engagements, anthologies.
The format seems to be getting less defined by the day.
For awhile, that was exciting. And yet with more TV show choices than ever before, I can’t find a single show to watch.
I stopped watching Game of Thrones a few seasons ago. One too many serious talking scenes in small rooms for my taste. Although I enjoyed looking at the pretty costumes.
While a couple of shows have caught my interest since then, The Bodyguard and Escape at Dannemora being the two most memorable, I lost interest during the second episodes. The prospect of settling in for an endless second act felt more like an exercise in masochism than entertainment.
The last two shows I watched where I genuinely had to see the next episode as soon as the current episode was over, were 13 Reasons Why and The Karate Kid. That’s a whole year without a show to get hooked on!
What’s going on? Has spreading the TV writing industry so thin destroyed any chance at getting quality written episodes anymore? You figure that has to play a part in at least some of this.
The only TV series I’m looking forward to at the moment is The Mandalorian. And that has less to do with how the show looks than it does it being Star Wars.
One show that keeps needling me to watch it is Killing Eve. I gave it a shot a few months back but I fell asleep during the pilot. Not a good sign. But there’s no denying the show has become a legitimate hit. And there’s one particular screenwriting lesson Killing Eve teaches that’s so important, I decided to watch it again, if only to share this lesson with you! We’ll cover that in a minute. But first, let’s break down the plot for the pilot.
Eve is a low-level American MI5 agent working in London whose loosey-goosey approach to her job doesn’t jibe well with her uptight British counterparts. During an important meeting about an assassination in Vienna, Eve offers her opinion on the situation without being asked. Her take is that whoever killed this dude must’ve been a woman because she was able to get close without him suspecting anything. Their response: Thanks but we got this covered.
Eve, convinced she’s right, seeks to talk with the only witness to the murder, the victim’s Polish girlfriend. Unfortunately, because the woman is Polish, she’s wasted, and therefore unintelligible. Meanwhile, we meet Villanelle, the assassin who took out the dude in Vienna. After she kills a poor old man in Italy who I’m assuming did something bad, her handler informs her that the Vienna assassination witness (the girlfriend) could cause trouble down the line. So Villanelle must kill her, too.
Back to Eve, who’s informed by her co-workers that they screwed up. New evidence proves it WAS a woman, and that she’ll probably come after the Polish girlfriend, who’s currently in the hospital. So Eve goes to watch over her, but while she’s in the bathroom, Villanelle comes out of one of the stalls in a nurse’s outfit! She has no idea this is the killer and watches as she leaves. Minutes later, when she returns to the girlfriend’s room, she, along with several other hospital workers, have been brutally murdered! Game on!
So what is this mythical screenwriting lesson you cannot succeed without?
It’s something we’ve talked about before. And yet, there probably isn’t a more commonly made mistake in screenwriting.
Are you ready?
WHAT ARE YOU BRINGING TO YOUR CONCEPT THAT IS DIFFERENT FROM WHAT WE’VE SEEN BEFORE?
That’s it. That question can save you years of heartache. I see so many writers, especially young writers, make this mistake over and over again, even after I’ve brought it to their attention. I suspect part of it isn’t their fault. When you’re young, you haven’t watched as many movies and shows. So you’re not even aware when you’re giving us something familiar.
But it’s getting harder to use that defense. We live in a time when you can easily look up if someone has written a movie/show similar to your idea.
Assuming a writer does their due diligence, knows their film history, has researched to make sure no one else has done their idea (at least not how they plan to do it), yet their idea STILL isn’t fresh, it’s an issue of not understanding how to tweak ideas to bring something new to them. Their “something new” is too lateral. It needs to be elevated.
For example, if you’d just seen John Wick and you went and wrote a screenplay about a hitman who takes down a Russian mob cell… but unlike John Wick, your hero was more of a joke-cracker, like John McClane, would that be enough of a change to warrant a “fresh” stamp? I would say no.
With that said, the line where “stale” ends and “fresh” begins is admittedly hard to nail down. If it were clear, we’d all be millionaires. There is an art to finding that line. Ideally, you want to be just far enough over where what you’ve given us is familiar, but not so far that it’s inaccessible. Sense 8, the Wachowski show on Netflix, was certainly unique. But it was so far over that comfort line that general audiences didn’t know what to do with it.
Killing Eve gives us the familiar, a tag-team assassin vs. agent concept, but places two women in the lead roles. Normally, I don’t think gender-swapping roles is enough. But in this case, it’s clever in that both parts have been given to women in an arena that has never seen that before. Like, ever. We’ve had female assassins and female agents, but never as the principle characters in the same show. A big reason I became curious about the show is that I saw a poster with both of them on it and instantly thought, “I haven’t seen that before.”
I admit there’s no way to measure exactly where that conceptual sweet spot lies. But just by asking yourself the question, you are a million times more likely to create something fresh. Because the large majority of writers out there are rewriting their favorite shows/movies and slapping a new title on them.
Obviously, getting the concept right is only half battle. You still have to execute it. And this is where Killing Eve really shines.
Waller-Bridge gets all the important things right. When we meet our characters, they perform actions that immediately tell us who they are. If you’re not doing this in a TV show, stop writing and go read a screenwriting book. This is Screenwriting 101 here, folks. When we meet Villanelle, she’s in an ice cream shop, she smiles at a little 10 year old girl who’s eating ice cream across from her, and then, when she leaves, she discreetly slaps the bowl of ice cream onto the girl’s lap. We know who Villanelle is within 90 seconds.
Ditto with Eve. One of the easiest ways to convey who someone is quickly, is to contrast their actions with other characters in the scene. So Eve comes to a meeting. Everyone is uptight and methodically going through the day’s schedule. Meanwhile, Eve is leaned back, loudly unpacking a croissant from a bag that she then chows down on.
Some writers frown upon this over-the-top introduction of characters but, I’m telling you, if you try to be too clever and subtle, we’re not going to know who your characters are. I’ll prove this to you once and for all. Think about your favorite characters of all time in movies or TV shows. The ones that left a huge impact. Got it? Okay, now go back to their introductory scene in that movie/show. I’m betting they did something pretty powerful right away that established them as a memorable character, right?
Another key thing you want to do, especially in TV shows, is create contrast between your main pairing. If your two leads are too alike, you’re screwed. You’re better off leaning towards polar opposites than slightly different. Villanelle is an icy sociopath. Eve is a goofy ball of fun. The only time I’ve ever seen the “too alike” thing work was in the sitcom, Frasier. Frasier and Niles were very similar. So I guess it can be done. But I wouldn’t go there.
I liked Killing Eve. I don’t know if it impressed me enough to seek out a paid second episode. I would probably keep watching if it was on Netflix though. Maybe that should be a new selection in my rating options. “Would keep watching if it was on Netflix.” Anyway, if you’ve seen the show, be sure to share your thoughts!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the watch
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I think it’s important in TV to establish right away that you’re willing to go to places other shows aren’t. The worst thing you can do is create a comfortable story. Comfortable is boring. So by throwing something harsh at the reader right away, you let them know that things aren’t going to be business as usual. At the beginning of Killing Eve, Villanelle slaps a bowl of ice cream on a little girl. It’s jarring. It’s unexpected. It puts us on notice that the unexpected could happen at any moment in the next hour. That makes us want to keep watching.
Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa
Whoa whoa whoawhoawhoa whoa
Whoa whoa whoa whoawhoa whoa whoa
What did I just watch?
I’m trying to process this. Lots of internal whoa-ness happing.
Happing? Happening? What’s the difference at this point?
Why is JJ shooting this in 3.75 to 1 aspect ratio? Did Tarantino get to him???
Was that the best thing I’ve ever seen or am I mistaken that a snowy lair from an excised Harry Potter motive made its way into the Episode 9 trailer.
I LOVE BB-1. Or whoever BB-8’s new best friend is. I will have six BB-1s of varying sizes as soon as they come out. We all need a BB-1 in our lives.
I LOOOOOOOOOVE the fixing of the helmet. I love this story beneath the story of JJ fixing Rian’s mess. What a great metaphor, JJ. I love you.
I have no idea what the heck was going on in that opening shot but I’ll say this. Starting in the desert on a close-up of one of the principles was JJ saying, “We’re going back to Force Awakens territory here,” since Finn popping up in a desert close-up was the very first look we had of this new trilogy in that famous Thanksgiving teaser.
JJ seems to like smashed broken big things. He had a bunch of Star Destroyers smashed up in Episode 7. Now a smashed Death Star in Ep 9.
I absolutely LOVE Lando being back. The great thing about Lando is that it’s exciting for Billy Dee to be back in Star Wars. For Harrison it was more of a job. So I think we’re going to see someone who really brings love and excitement to the hole that Han Solo left. It looks like they de-aged him a little too.
I LOVE shots of everyone together again, like Chewbacca and R2 and Threepio. JJ knows how to make us feel good.
But the biggest takeaway from this BY FAR is Luke saying we’re never really gone and the movie being titled The Rise of Skywalker. If JJ brings Luke back so he can finally have his big wipe out 25 AT-ATs with the flip of his wrist moment, I will legally change my last name to JJ.
No idea what’s going on with the Emperor stuff. I don’t know if I want him back or not because I’m not sure he brings anything relevant to the table. But Luke? Yeah, bring Luke back.
Signing off. In JJ we trust.
Hail BB-1.
We are reaching an epidemic in bad set-piece writing. For those of you who don’t know what set pieces are, they’re the big featured action scenes in a script, your Indiana Jones runs through a cave, your airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, that scene in every Mission Impossible movie where Tom Cruise races a motorcycle through a city at 200 miles per hour. The term “set piece” refers to the olden days when the scene was such a major part of the movie, it needed its own special set. Over time, the term “set piece” has evolved to include any featured extended scene in a movie. A group of survivors in a zombie apocalypse walking into a creepy “vacant” supermarket is a set piece, for example.
We used to have tons of great set pieces in movies. You can count a half-dozen in Raiders of the Lost Ark alone. But over time, something funny happened. In the pursuit to one-up the past, writers and directors erroneously believed that bigger was better. I blame the Lord of the Rings trilogy for this. Those movies had some solid set-pieces. But the war scenes kept getting bigger and more cumbersome with each passing film, until at a certain point you had no idea what was happening onscreen. The person who drove the set-piece off a cliff, though, was Michael Bay. Don’t get me wrong. Michael Bay is a great action director, but his set-piece writing sucks. It’s a bunch of outlandish craziness thrown at you from every angle. Of the five Transformers movies, can you name two memorable set-pieces? I can’t.
The thing is, directors have good intentions. You can’t give the audience the same thing they’ve always had. You need something new. But this notion that bigger is better is plain wrong. Bigger is what got us into this mess. There’s a scene in Valerian where Luc Besson has our hero running through a virtual world as well as the real world at the same time that’s so confusing, we can’t enjoy a second of it. Which is too bad because you can tell he was trying to do something innovative. Even the best overly-complex set-piece I’ve seen this decade – the Captain America: Civil War airport battle – is one I barely remember. I don’t remember why they were fighting, why it had to be at an airport, what the ultimate objective was. It was cool to watch but ultimately empty. Just like everything in screenwriting, the answer is rarely to be more complex. Rather, you want to simplify. And today, I want to give you a formula for achieving that.
I call it: TSDD
And here’s what it stands for…
Time
Space
Distance
Directive
Let’s start with the simplest one, time. A good set piece has urgency. A character has to do something within an uncomfortable amount of time. In Spider Man 2 (the Toby Maguire version), that famous runaway train set piece is made all the more exciting by the fact that he’s running out of time to save the train. Very simple rule to follow. This is the easiest way to turbocharge a set piece.
Next we have space. Space, in this context, refers to the overall space involved in the set piece. The better defined your space is, the more focus your set piece will have. The best way to explain the power of space is in highly contained set pieces. The trash-compacter scene in Star Wars. Or the elevator fight in Captain America: Winter Soldier. But it’s not only getting locked in rooms. It’s any situation where there’s structure to the space. Shazam running over and trying to save a bus that’s about to fall off a bridge. The whole scene takes place inside 80 square feet. Neo and Agent Smith fighting in an underground subway stop. John Wick stalking his prey through an active nightclub. The reason you don’t want the space to be vague is that it’s unclear where characters are, where they can escape to, and what the rules of the environment are. This is what Michael Bay is so guilty of in his Transformers movies. We don’t know where the set starts and where it ends. So it’s just a bunch of characters crashing into each other randomly out of nowhere without purpose.
Moving on, we have distance. Distance refers mainly to chase or running scenes. And, like space, it requires you to let us know what the distance is that the character is attempting to travel. The clearer we are on that, the more invested we’ll be. I’m going to use Raiders because it’s one everyone knows. That opening scene has the best use of distance in any set piece ever. We’ve just traveled down that same straight path into the cave, so we know the exact distance (as well as all the little traps along the way) Indiana must run through in order to get out alive. The climax to Star Wars is another great use of distance. We set up that trench and how long you need to fly down it in order to launch your torpedoes at the exhaust pipe. At the end of The Martian, Matt Damon has to go the distance of the ground up to the ship that’s come to rescue him.
The important thing with distance is that we know where we’re going. If you have a group of characters in a zombie apocalypse movie and they’re minutes away from the zombies breaking into their house, and so they have to make a run for it, it’s always better if they say, “We have to make it to the bell tower” – and we know that the bell tower is 5 blocks away – than if they’re like, “Just run.” It might seem like the chaotic nature of “just run” is better, but I’m telling you, we’re more invested if we know where the destination is. An injured girl stumbling through the woods being pursued by a serial killer is a million times better scene if we know her car is parked on the road just up the trail. If she can only get to that car, she’ll survive!
Finally, we have directive. The cool thing about this one is that even if you’re not strictly following the time/space/distance rule-set, you can still manage to write a good set piece AS LONG AS THE DIRECTIVE IS SUPER STRONG. Directive supersedes time, space, and distance because we’re so focused on the character achieving his directive that we’ll go anywhere with him. “Directive” refers to the directive of the principle character(s) in the scene. So in Pulp Fiction, when Mia’s heart stops, the directive is clear: THE OTHER CHARACTERS NEED TO SAVE HER! So the set piece is kind of all over the place with them driving around and then crashing into the drug dealer’s place who pulls out the famous adrenaline needle and plunges it in her heart. But it works because the directive of saving Mia is so strong.
A couple of final things. You can use ALL of these in a single set piece, or you can pick and choose. The Star Wars trench run uses all of them. Time, space, distance, and directive are incredibly clear. Coincidence it’s considered the best action climax ever? You decide. Also, it’s different writing a set piece on spec than it is writing one for a greenlit movie. If a movie is already being made, the director and writer can visualize a set piece in more of an abstract fashion since the concept doesn’t have to make sense to a reader. But with a spec script, your set piece needs to be clear on paper – all the more reason to go with TSDD.
And that’s it. Now go out and write some killer set pieces. Good luck!
