Action Scenes

December 13, 2010

I've decided that the hardest thing to write (at least for me) is an action scene.

I'm about 80 pages into this script I've been hired to write and, yesterday, I finished a major action sequence that took me 3-4 days to complete.  At times, it was like pulling teeth, yet, on screen, the whole thing will probably run a mere 2-4 minutes.

Despite the fact that I can, in fact, write a pretty good action scene, my problem with these kinds of sequences is that they are more choreography than storytelling.  Thanks to CGI, directors have a field day with them and I'm sure that whoever directs this script will enhance what I've written, even to the point of its becoming ridiculous.  That's what movies and their makers do today.

Actually, they used to do the same thing "yesterday". 

I recall the late producer Henry Blanke telling me that for The Adventures of Robin Hood, which starred Errol Flynn, there was a direction in the script that read, "Robin fights his way out of the castle."  Director Michael Curtiz took three days to shoot that sequence, and it is one of the highlights of the picture.

I wish that, in my script, I could simply write a direction like, "The good guys escape the bad guys," but the producers today want these sequences spelled out, blow-by-blow...even if they know the director is going to change everything around to make it his own.

Me, the writer, just wants to tell the story and, as I said, action is more choreography than storytelling.

You have a creative day.

Michael