After actually experiencing writing the script, I can say, without a doubt, that it is largely different from writing a playscript. Writing a screenplay was closer to writing a book or a short story than a theater script, which is fine by me.
For the most part, it was a very pleasant experience. I enjoy imaginative writing in general, so this was basically another short story project.
Doubling as the director and scriptwriter was a great move for our film in general. The director’s main job is to control a film’s artistic and dramatic aspects and visualize the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. What better way to direct a film’s aspects and visualize the screenplay than to make the screenplay themselves? This not only reduced any confusion or complicated discussion about what the film opening should look like, but it also allowed me to provide a full visual image of how the sequence might play out
This is evident in Get Out (you know, the one I’ve referenced about 20 times already), where the director, Jordan Peele, also wrote the screenplay for the film (which he wrote in less than two months!).
This was necessary as the idea for Get Out was Peele’s, meaning he needed to write it himself. Had he gone to another person to write the script, certain elements that he had imagined might not have come out the way he wanted. He needed to layout his vision completely for the crew and actors to see when they read the script.
To write my group’s script I took inspiration from Moonrise Kindgom by Quentin Tarantino and, surprise surprise, Get Out (beware, the script for Get Out contains multiple swear words.)
The script for Moonrise Kingdom was especially helpful because of the lack of dialogue in the first few minutes of the film. As my group’s title sequence is also planned to have very little dialogue included in it, I felt that looking at screenplay that also followed this trend would be beneficial to look at. In doing so, I found that, in lieu of dialogue, a screenplay will input descriptions and details about the setting and character actions to help readers view what is planned to appear onscreen. I used this method in our script.
However, our script did have a small amount of dialogue planned. The screenplay for Moonrise Kingdom did have dialogue in later pages of the script, but I also wanted a second example by which to format our own. Since I knew Get Out had back and forth dialogue over a phone in its opening, which I planned to implement in our screenplay, I felt it would be helpful to look at the beginning of that script as well.
The format of the dialogue was helpful to look at, as I was able to learn that small sentences in between the dialogue is useful in helping further the audiences’ understanding of the actions of the characters onscreen as the dialogue is occurring. This was also seen in Moonrise Kingdom’s script. I also utilized this in our screenplay.
The last thing I was able to notice in both screenplays was that the vocabulary, sentence structure and such rhetorical devices used within the writing was also important. Rhetorical devices are techniques that an author or speaker uses to convey meaning to the listener or reader, such as to persuade them. In order to better portray the tone of the film through the words of the screenplay to the readers, it is best to utilize these. (My English teacher would be proud).
This is most evident in the script for Moonrise Kingdom, whose screenplay reads more like a book that a script. This can be seen when the scriptwriter uses sentences like “the sea is almost invisible in the misting rain, and the mainland is a shadow across the sound.” Not only does the sentence use a metaphor, but the vocabulary used (misting, shadow) imparts a gloomy tone and a sense of mystery onto the writing. I tried my best to add this to our screenplay.
Overall, the process for creating the script was greatly enjoyable. It allowed me to be creative and spend some time visualizing the opening and how our group might go about filming it. I will post the finished script in a later post.
Sources
Lucid Elucidation's Explanations 