The Reality Test

                Your Script, The Reality Test

        One of the biggest problems that I have noticed in most horror and or action films is that they by pass the basic act of establishing reality. The art of the horror movie is to subvert reality. Or in other words you have to construct a real world before you can de-construct it. I have seen too many movies lately
where the screenwriter hurried passed the basics to get to what they believed to be the heart of the story.

    Let’s talk about the opening of the movie the descent. We get introduced to the lead characters in the opening scene. We are shown not told that they go on adventures together. We get a glimpse into the dominate relationship in the movie, Juno and Sarah.  We see the lead character lose her husband and child in a horrible car accident. We see all the friends gather together at the hospital to check on the one who has survived. We see them a year later. Time for another adventure that they hope will help heal their still damaged friend. We see all of this in the first fifteen minutes of the film and if not for all of this real world business what happens beneath the earth in those caves would not nearly have the same impact.

The  Descent

    Getting to know the characters and the world that they live in can only make the horror more intense when we watch that world being picked apart. The movie that did this better than any other was of course The Exorcist. We get almost a half an hour of real world before we are slowly let in on the fact that something supernatural is happening.

    I am going to agree with Neil Marshall on the fact that Deliverance is sort of a horror movie. Call it a thriller if you wish, but it does follow the rule of establishing reality. Then watch that reality get torn apart by men who see life and death in a completely different way.


    The problem with the majority of horror films being written today is that logic and reason are thrown out the window. Shock and gory replaces real suspense and what are you left with? A film that is seen once, then laughed at and soon forgotten. I want more And I believe that so do you. If you did not you would not be reading this blog.

    Here is what I am going to suggest. You can write your script anyway that you wish, but when you rewrite it I want you to keep your eye on reality.

Does my script occupy a recognizable world?

    But I am writing a walking dead film.

    Really?

    Let’s time travel back to the first one and see if George Romero established the real world first. A brother and sister visiting a grave. The brother is picking on his sister. Real world as can be until the dead guy walks up and then their world and the world of horror films is forever changed.

    Last movie to look at is The Sixth Sense. This film is as well written as any movie ever written. The opening scenes with Bruce Willis and the wife are the scenes that make the rest of the movie possible. It shows you a world that is so familiar and easy to relate to that we never question the reality that his character brings with him until the very end of the film.

    You do not have to do it that well, but well enough so that we know the world that the characters are fighting to get back to. That we can relate to the world that has fallen apart, it is easy to relate to it: after all it looks a whole lot like our own.

Beyond The Writing

                More than Writing is Involved

    We spend so much time and effort on how to write a quality screenplay and not much if any time on why we are writing this screenplay.

    At the end of the day the question that has to be asked is do you love what you are doing? If you don’t and you are doing it only because you have to that is okay. I am not going to tell you that unless you love what you are doing you will do a ass backwards job at it. The purest in the room will say that you will, but some of the best scripts ever written have been jobs rather than labors of love.

    If you are a producer or director and you are the only one that you can afford to hire to write your script then I am here to say that you can do a great job of it. If you are like me, someone whom has been writing most of their lives and love it, you can write a great script.

    The argument that I am working towards is the concept of the business person vs. the artist. If we were here about screenplays in general I would not be doing this, but this blog is about ultra low to no budget screen writing. You have a story that the artist believes demands certain things and you have this voice always whispering that is going to kill the budget. You can not put that in the script, it will cost to much and get cut out later. My response is put it in the script. Get through the first draft by any means necessary and then if that amazing part of the script that also cost far to much to be included has to be cut out, then do it. Cut it out. Find a way to save some of it or to rework it at a lower cost and put it back in later.

    The business person would never include that part of the script, but the writer/artist can not help his or herself. Maybe someday you can or will become both. The greatest filmmaker of all time was Hitchcock, one day he decided to make at the time a ultra low budget film. He founded a story and hired a writer named Joe. Together they crafted a screenplay that had limited cast, limited locations, limited setups, limited need for special effects or even makeup effects. He hired a tv crew instead of his film crew to shoot this movie. He shoot it in black and white instead of color. The name of the movie was Psycho. Some believe that it was his best movie (I think it was Shadow of a Doubt) and he did it will low budget considerations in mind. He did not have to, Hitchcock chose to and with those restrictions came greatness. Limiting location and sets and cast does not limit the possibility of creating something great.

    You can be artist and writer and business person and do something remarkable.Good luck and write everyday.