How the Writers of "A Quiet Place" Broke Almost Every Screenwriting Convention
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFFKUt5Kn8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bFFKUt5Kn8
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How the Writers of "A Quiet Place" Broke Almost Every Screenwriting Convention
- Thread starter ThinkStory
- Start date
The problem is that professional studios or agents won't accept your script if you have a script like that, but it would be nice if that "cold" screenplay format change. Images, bold, underlined, font size, if used properly can add deeper understanding of the plot. But again, if you need such tricks to convey the meaning.. Pfff.. I don't know..
"Writing a silent movie isn’t easy. You can’t use dialogue as a crutch. And you can’t bore the reader with blocks of description. We hit our heads against the wall trying to break the story and silence the voices of everyone who said this idea wouldn’t work. Immediately we determined the script must feel as cinematic as the best version of the final film. This process forced us to take an unorthodox approach to screenwriting, in which we threw formatting styles to the wind. An example: for the monopoly scene (as seen in the trailer), we photoshopped our own Monopoly board into a script page. Other times, a single word surrounded by white graced an entire page to emphasize a loud sound. Each set piece — the corn silo, the pregnancy, the nail, the fireworks, the climax, etc. — became loaded with an abundance of sonic potential.
Our first pass of the script clocked in at 67 pages with only one line of dialogue. Make no mistake; we knew this was a weird screenplay. We had no promise of a script sale. We figured most producers would laugh off the project by the shallow page count. One studio exec outright passed on even reading the script after we pitched the concept over lunch. With failure in mind yet again, we were already brainstorming a production plan to shoot “A Quiet Place” in Iowa, and started scouting a potential farm location near Herbert Hoover’s birthplace.
Yet our agent and manager wanted to give the script a fair shake in Hollywood..."
source
Our first pass of the script clocked in at 67 pages with only one line of dialogue. Make no mistake; we knew this was a weird screenplay. We had no promise of a script sale. We figured most producers would laugh off the project by the shallow page count. One studio exec outright passed on even reading the script after we pitched the concept over lunch. With failure in mind yet again, we were already brainstorming a production plan to shoot “A Quiet Place” in Iowa, and started scouting a potential farm location near Herbert Hoover’s birthplace.
Yet our agent and manager wanted to give the script a fair shake in Hollywood..."
source
I liked the movie, but I haven't read the script, but I would think the script would look much like a normal script, with dialogue blocks and all. It's not like they didn't speak, they just spoke with sign language. So you would need what was being said in sign language to be blocked out as dialogue:
JOE
(signing; subtitled)
Do you know sign language?
or you'd call out at the beginning of the script that all characters are signing subtitled dialogue unless otherwise noted.
JOE
(signing; subtitled)
Do you know sign language?
or you'd call out at the beginning of the script that all characters are signing subtitled dialogue unless otherwise noted.
The script is an interesting read. There are pictures in the script. Action blocks written in pyramid style (ie. Word, next line, word, word, next line, word, word, word, etc.). Lots of unfilmables and lists of things. A few pages were there's literally one line centered that grows in font each page. It's definitely unconventional but at first glance looks like a regular script.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G0EOAOs_FVjq2kJahftq3Pcj8j2hMg3j/view