As long as we are putting a spotlight on great opening sequences this week, here’s another: The beginning of the 1984 film The Terminator [written by James Cameron & Gale Anne Hurd].
Setup: It’s late at night when…
1 EXT. SCHOOLYARD - NIGHT 1 Silence. Gradually the sound of distant traffic becomes audible. A LOW ANGLE bounded on one side by a chain-link fence and on the other by the one-story public school build- ings. Spray-can hieroglyphics and distant streetlight sha- dows. This is a Los Angeles public school in a blue collar neighborhood. ANGLE BETWEEN SCHOOL BUILDINGS, where a trash dumpster looms in a LOW ANGLE, part of the clutter behind the gymnasium. A CAT enters FRAME. CAMERA DOLLIES FORWARD, prowling with him through the landscape of trash receptacles and shadows. CLOSE ON CAT, which freezes, alert, sensing something just beyond human perception. A sourceless wind rises, and with it a keening WHINE. Papers blow across the pavement. The cat YOWLS and hides under the dumpster. Windows rattle in their frames. The WHINE intensifies, accompanied now by a wash of frigid PURPLE LIGHT. A CONCUSSION like a thunderclap right over- head blows in all the windows facing the yard. C.U. - CAT, its eyes are wide as the glare dies. 1A/FX ANGLE - DUMPSTER 1A/FX ELECTRICAL DISCHARGES arc from the dumpster to a water faucet and climb a drain pipe like a Jacob's Ladder. CUT TO: 2 EXT. SCHOOLYARD - NIGHT 2 SLOW PAN as the sound of stray electrical CRACKLING subsides. FRAME comes to rest on the figure of a NAKED MAN kneeling, faced away, in the previously empty yard. He stands, slowly. The man is in his late thirties, tall and powerfully built, moving with graceful precision. C.U. - MAN, his facial features reiterate the power of his body and are dominated by the eyes, which are intense, blue and depthless. His hair is military short. This man is the TERMINATOR. He glances down, taking calm inventory of himself, and notices that a fine white ash covers his skin. He brushes at it unconcernedly as he walks toward the fence, scanning his surroundings. CUT TO: 2A/FX CRANE SHOT - SCHOOLYARD/CITY - NIGHT 2A/FX CAMERA MOVES UP as Terminator approaches the schoolyard fence beyond which is an embankment rolling down in darkness to the cityscape below. The school is perched at the edge of a pro- montory offering a respectable view of the urban sprawl teem- ing and glistening under a sullen sky. The night clouds are shot through with occasional flashes of LIGHTNING, presaging a thunderstorm. Terminator stands, hands on hips in prefect symmetry, gazing down at the city as the CAMERA REACHES FULL HEIGHT. CUT TO: 3 EXT. PLAYGROUND - NIGHT 3 A beer bottle SMASHES on the ground. PULL BACK to include its ex-owner and his two compatriots, YOUTH GANG MEMBERS, lounging on the jungle gym of a deserted playground. They sport nondescript PUNK REGALIA...torn T-shirts, fatigue pants, combat boots or high-top sneakers, leather jackets. The leader notices something and sits up. LEADER (pointing) Hey, hey...what's wrong with this picture? ANGLE - REVERSE, seen past the lounging toughs, Terminator walks naked into a pool of streetlight, striding purpose- fully toward them. ANGLE - OVER TERMINATOR'S SHOULDER, as he approaches them. They slide from their perches and drop easily to the ground liquid shadows. LEADER Nice night for a walk, eh? Terminator stops right in front of them. TERMINATOR (without inflec- tion) Nice night for a walk. They surround him, all swagger and malign good humor. SECOND PUNK Washday tomorrow, huh? Nothing clean, right? Terminator eyes them without expression, unhurried. Reptilian. TERMINATOR Nothing clean. Right. LEADER This guy's a couple bricks short. Terminator turn to the second punk, ignoring the others. TERMINATOR Your clothes. Give them to me. The punks exchange glances, dismayed. TERMINATOR (coldly) Now. SECOND PUNK (bracing) Fuck you, asshole. Without warning Terminator hammer-punches him in the temple with blinding speed. The blow flings him with a CLANG into the jungle gym. He drops to the ground in a still heap, eyes open, twitching. The leader whips out his SWITCHBLADE and slashes in one motion. Terminator ducks back and catches the knife- wielder's wrist in an inhuman grip. Then he punches the leader with piledriver force just below the breastbone. ANGLE - PAVEMENT, as the knife clatters down. The punk's combat boots are on tiptoe, barely touching the ground. ANGLE - TWO SHOT, Terminator and the leader are close together as if dancing, but motionless. Their bodies are in total shadow. The punk's eyes are wide, his veins distended with an agonizing pressure. Terminator jerks his fist back with a WET SOUND and the other drops OUT OF FRAME. The last tough is stumbling away, gaping with terror. He backs into a chainlink fence, turns to run along it, finds he is in a corner. Terminator takes a step toward him, his gaze ominous. The punk begins shakily stripping off his clothes. Thunder peals overhead. CUT TO:
Now the scene in the movie:
The excerpt comes from what is referred to as the 4th draft of the script, dated about a year before production, so there are some changes in what ends up on screen.
Questions to ask to analyze the scene:
* What elements in the movie scene are the same as the script?
* What elements in the movie scene are different than the script?
* Regarding the differences, put yourself in the mindset of the filmmakers and speculate: Why did they make the changes they did?
* How did the changes improve the scene?
* Alternatively are there elements in the script, not present in the movie, that are better than the final version of the scene?
* Note each camera shot in the movie version. Which of them does the script suggest via sluglines or scene description?
* How does the script convey a sense of the scene’s tone, feel, and pace through scene description and dialogue?
* What ‘magic’ exists in the movie that is not indicated in the words of the script? How do you suppose that magic emerged?
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this scene from The Terminator.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a weekly series on GITS where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
There’s a lot of detail written into the first part of the scene. From where the clip starts, it’s not evident if there was a cat there or not (and it’s been a long time since I’ve seen the movie).
We do get a person in the early part, the dump-truck driver, who gives an appropriate reaction to what’s going on which is probably a heck of a lot easier to film than a cat.
There is also no lightning storm across the city, something that would have been hard to predict. The following scene with the punks may have come into question as a result: I don’t know if too many people who hang around outside when a storm’s brewing.
In the storm’s place, the punks are using a telescope. This makes me wonder if the shooting location ended up dictating the elements in the scene. As such, they wouldn’t have been using said telescope had their been a storm (they’re not THAT stupid, are they?).
A subtle difference once we see the Terminator is he’s sort of like the honey badger in that he doesn’t give a shit – so the part of him surveying and dusting himself off was changed. There is no vanity in Terminators!
There’s some additional dialogue when we first see the punks, more or less characterizing them (punks will be punks) and giving a hint of unpredictability to them.
“A couple of bricks short” has been changed to make it more relevant, perhaps, to their drinking… but a couple of bricks short of what anyway?
The punks draw their knives when threatened because, well, that’s what punks do, right? Again, I think it goes to show them as being a bit menacing themselves. It’s a good comparison to the intro of Once Upon a Time in the West: the scene and subsequent encounters don’t have the impact if there’s no suspense and having an air of unpredictability and malice help create this in both instances. If the punks weren’t badass punks and the outlaws weren’t badass outlaws, the tension and suspense within the scene wouldn’t be anywhere near as strong.
One of the punks also manages to strike the honey badger, er, Terminator, who just doesn’t care. It’s another way of demonstrating his otherworldliness and gives us something to hang tension of future encounters of off.
As we all know, Terminator goes through one heck of a ride in the film, ending up a scrap heap. The knifing here is just a prelude of things to come.
The major difference is the change in location. Instead of a school, the scene takes place at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles (of Rebel Without a Cause fame), which is perfect because it overlooks the city exactly as the script demands.
As The Bark Bites Back noted, there is a truck driver instead of a cat. In fact, it’s a dump truck instead of a dumpster in the scene. And as noted, having the first reaction of the lightening storm of the Terminator’s arrival come from a person is better than coming from a cat.
To me, one of the most important reasons to reads scripts is to see how other writers describe things, and add those words and phrases you wouldn’t normally use to your lexicon.
Here are some of descriptions that I wouldn’t have thought to use:
like a Jacob’s Ladder
embankment
promontory
malign good humor
hammer-punches
piledriver force