A few of you e-mailed me after yesterday’s review asking about this “Noise” thing. What the hell is noise, Carson? Well my dear reader, let me do my best to explain. Because if there’s one thing that drives me INSANE when reading actions scripts, it’s the over-abundance of noise.
In an action movie, your characters will constantly be on the move and engaged in conflict. “Noise” is when that conflict is so generic and formless, that it can be boiled down to noise. Guns shooting. Tires screeching. Men yelling. Robots clashing. There is nothing else going on onscreen other than a lot of noise.
The antithesis of noise is SITUATIONS. Situations have form, they have focus, and they set up a scenario whereby everything from the character goals to the stakes involved are clear to the audience. You may not have been aware of it, but when you’ve seen a great action scene, it was very likely a situation.
The reason why noise is so prevalent in amateur screenwriting is because it creates the illusion of entertainment to the writer. He or she believes that if the script is slowing down, they can put a gun fight in there or a car chase or some vampires attacking zombies, and that that will be entertaining because, technically, some kind of action is happening.
That’s not true, unfortunately. What action fans like are action scenes where the purpose of the scene is clearly laid out, where we understand the rules, and where we know what our characters are trying to achieve.
One of the genres that abuses this mistake the most is drug-action movies. You know how many scenes I’ve read of bad guys and good guys shooting at each other in a warehouse or on “the docks?” Countless. And all it is is shooting. There’s nothing else going on. So let’s look at how someone might craft more of a SITUATION in a drug action film.
One of my favorite scenes of the year is the border-crossing scene in Sicario. In the scene, our FBI agents are coming back out of Mexico after securing some important information. The Cartels don’t like this, and want to take the agents out before they get back to the U.S.
Now you could’ve approached this the “noisy” way. Simply write a scene with our agents on the highway and the Cartels in pursuit of them. They’re shooting at us. We’re shooting back at them. Original right? Haven’t seen that one ever. Sarcasm tag.
Or you can do what writer Tyler Sheridan did. Wait til the traffic jam at the border crossing, where our agents are in their cars, stuck in place, and start to show us, one by one, the armed Cartel members in different cars, surrounding our agents, carefully getting into position to attack. Then show our agents realize the threat and build the tension, build the suspense. Who’s going to act first?
Look at the form in this scene. Instead of aimless noise, you’re using storytelling devices like suspense to lure the reader/viewer in. When I see writers write scenes like this, I know they’re good writers. I know they’re ready. When I see yet another straight-forward car chase shootout, I know I’m dealing with amateurs.
Let’s stay within a single franchise for this next example. What is the scene in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull that best embodies how bad that film was? I’d probably say the Shia LaBeouf swinging on trees with monkeys scene. Wouldn’t you? Now besides it being a dumb moment, the reason that action sequence was so terrible was because it was the embodiment of noise. We weren’t sure what was going on. We didn’t know who wanted what. All we knew was this was a car chase in the woods and nutty wacky things were happening along the way. It was formless. It was unstructured. It was noise.
Now look at one of the most memorable action scenes ever – the opening scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Indy gets the idol in the cave – AND NOW HE MUST GET OUT OF THE CAVE AS IT’S FALLING APART. Do you see how clear that situation is? Even though we only have 8 minutes of movie context to go on, we’re fully invested in this sequence. It’s because it’s a clear situation. Get out of the cave to live. And there’s only one way to go – back the way you came. This allows stuff like the rolling boulder and having to jump over the hole without the whip all the more exciting, because it’s clear to us what needs to happen.
Even if you want to more directly compare action by pitting the monkey swinging chase scene with that famous “Indy getting dragged along by the car” chase scene in the first Raiders, that first Raiders scene had a much clearer situation. The Nazi cars had taken the Ark. So Indy naturally had to get to the cars with the Ark to get it back!
I hope you’re starting to see a theme here. Great action situations are often simple. The simplicity is what makes it easy for the audience to understand what needs to happen, which is what keeps them engaged. When all we see and hear is noise, it’s like being at a fireworks event where they’re shooting off fireworks on all four sides of us. You don’t know where to look. Your job as a writer in action sequences is to show the reader where to look.
That’s not to say you can’t have big action sequences in movies. You can. But you have to make the goal clear, you have to make it big, and you have to keep coming back to it so the audience always knows what we’re doing and doesn’t get lost in the noise. A great example of this is the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. This could’ve easily been noise. But as soon as Spielberg establishes the layout, a goal is introduced. We need to get up to that shooter in that bunker there and take him out. Once we take him out, we can take over the beach. This takes the scene from random noise to a clear situation we can understand and get behind.
In my experience, action scenes come in four flavors.
Pure Noise – These is literally the worst kind of action scene there is. No form. No focus. Just action for the sake of action. Most of the Transformers action scenes fall into this category. Robots are fighting each other but we have no idea why other than they don’t like each other.
Semi-Noise – These are scenes that have the barest amount of form to them, but are still essentially noise. A good example would be yesterday’s script, Unmanned. The characters start off in battle-torn Somalia trying to find a building. There was a goal (find the building), so we kind of understood what was going on, but it was essentially a bunch of soldiers yelling and shooting at the bad guys.
Situation – This is when the writer has sat down and mapped out a scene with clear form, clear goals, clear stakes, where we know all the rules and therefore can play along. Neo and Trinity need to go into the building where the Agents are holding Morpheus and get him back. How easy is that to understand? Go in building, get our friend.
Clever Situation – These are the situations where the writer has come up with something original, offbeat, or adds a twist to the sequence that makes it a truly unforgettable scene. I’d put that border crossing scene in Sicario in this category. I’d put the climax of Back to the Future – trying to time racing a car with a lightning bolt to send our hero back to the future – in that category as well.
The biggest point I want to get across is that when you’re about to write an action sequence, ask yourself if there’s any form to it, or if it’s just a bunch of noise. The more you can build a clear goal and rules around your action scenes, the better it’s going to be. And if you’re stuck, note that a lot of great situations start with a physically closed-in area (stuck in a cave, stuck in a trash compacter, stuck in a traffic jam). Once you have physical boundaries, it’ll be easier to locate the scene’s boundaries. Good luck. Now go write some kick ass actions scenes.
