Wednesday, February 14, 2007

What are the rules of a spec script again?

I like the film ‘Last of the Mohicans’. It has a great opening sequence where nothing much is said at all. I looked up the script on the internet to see how that is portrayed. The following is what I found (do you think this would make it as a spec script from a newbie writer?):

FADE IN

The screen is a microcosm of leaf, crystal drops of precipitation, a stone,
emerald green moss. It's a landscape in miniature. We HEAR the forest. Some
distant birds. Their sound seems to reverberate as if in a cavern. A piece of
sunlight refracts within the drops of water, paints a patch of moss yellow. The
whisper of wind is joined by another sound that mixes with it. A distant
rustling. It gets closer and louder. It's shallow breathing. It gets ominous.
We're interlopers on the floor of the forest and something is coming.

SUDDENLY: A MOCCASINED FOOT

rockets through the frame scaring us and ...
EXTREMELY CLOSE: PART OF AN INDIAN FACE
running hard. His head shaved bald except for a scalp-lock. Tattoos. He's
twenty-five. He seems tall and muscled. Heavy, even breathing. We'll learn later
this man is UNCAS, the last of the Mohicans.

Now don't get me wrong; it is a fantastic film, but I couldn't get away with this in a month of Sundays. It looks like it was lifted right out of a book!

Oh well. One day I'll have enough film credits to write like this :)

Later

C

2 comment(s):

Anonymous said...

write it anyway ha... because it reminds me of an opening idea I have on file somewhere, but it wasn't on the green leaf, more of an animate object

you asked about that gangster horror script you read for me?

Chris - I revamped it, sent it out per a request and had some interest in it, but they passed. We discussed a few things and now I am going to disect it and make two scripts out of it: one strict horror, the other coming of age gangster and not combine the genres so much

Chris Parr (ukscriptwriter) said...

I hope something comes out of it. One of us spec monkeys will make it good some day :)