Having trouble focusing on what the script’s like? How about getting an idea for the story in the first place? Let me propose one possible way to solve some of these issues – watch a film, and try to draw inspiration from it. Yeah, I know, common advice, but to elaborate – have you ever watched a movie and saw one particular scene, and thought to yourself, “that could actually make a neat film on its own!”
Well, there you have it – inspiration. You take a scene, make note of the general feel of it and what works so well about it, and then you expand on that one scene into an entire story that can stand on its own.
I’m going to use an example of how you can go with this method here through a thought experiment involving a particularly weird little A24 film – The Lighthouse.
Nautical Terror!
Let’s pretend for a moment that we don’t know how Robert Eggers came up with the concept of The Lighthouse (spoiler: it started as an adaptation of an Edgar Allen Poe short story). If you were watched that film without any knowledge of how that backstory, imagine: “How did Eggers come up with this? What gave the ‘spark’?”
Let’s try a thought experiment here. Imagine: a young man and an old man are trapped in an enclosed space, out at sea. They’ve got wildly conflicting attitudes. Young guy’s ‘civilized’, someone who knows modern technology and what the kids are saying. The old man’s briny, set in his ways, a drunkard with an almost pirate-y accent. They hate each other’s guts, yet in their entrapment, they drink, swap stories, bond with each other while going a little crazy. And some primeval horror lurks in the depths around them, waiting for the chance to sink its teeth into these drunken men.
I am, of course, referring to the night scene in Jaws (you know the one! “Black eyes, lifeless eyes like a doll’s eyes!”)
And you see? A summary of that scene can also be used as the summary for the entirety of The Lighthouse, albeit with some changes. One scene can be expanded into an entire plot that is just as compelling as the one it originated from.
‘Hey – This Can Be Its Own Thing!’
Now, in the context of this thought experiment, Robert Eggers would have watched Jaws, seen that scene, and quoted the line directly above this sentence. Individual scenes, removed from their context and with a focus put on why the scene itself work, can make for their own awesome stories. One way to spark a new script!