Interesting article about the importance of the screenplay, taking “The Hurt Locker” as its example. I’m writing action now and know that dilemma between economy and describing every punch as if it were happening in a novel.
“When he was writing “The Hurt Locker,” screenwriter Mark Boal — who based the script on reporting he had done as a magazine journalist in Iraq — first struggled with perspective: Through what point of view would the story be told? “I finally settled on something that was most like the kind of writing I did for magazines, where you’re bopping between third person and first person, but in a reportorial, New Journalism kind of way.” From there, he said, it was a constant question of adding description and detail to every scene. (Early drafts even included whole paragraphs describing the psychological states of each character.)
Such detail is especially important in scripts for action movies, which at their worst will simply say, “Two men shoot at each other on a deserted street,” and leave it at that. The result is often something as generic and unspecific as the writing. “With Kathryn, we painstakingly fleshed out every nook and cranny of the action sequences in order to make them feel realistic,” says Boal. “In the right context, a detail that normally doesn’t seem suspenseful can be suspenseful, like putting on a bomb suit. . . . You know there’s a reason you’re seeing all this, you’re just not sure why.”"
via Writing Pictures: Ann Hornaday on the Art of the Hollywood Screenplay – washingtonpost.com.
Related posts:
Tags: action writing, features, Mark Boal, screenplays
