Reader Question: What about “establishing shots” and “establishing scenes”?
Phil asks:
Do you always have to have an establishing shot of the outside for the next scene inside? Especially if it’s later in the story and it’s an obvious location, say the Oval Office with the President.
The short answer is “no.” And while we’re here, let’s draw a distinction between an ‘establishing shot’ and an ‘establishing scene.’
If you watch virtually any TV show, even multi-camera sitcoms, you will see establishing shots all the time, a quick 2–3 second shot to transition the viewer from this location to that location.
Movies will do this, too. But for a writer working on a selling script, where we are attempting to lure a reader into our story universe and keep them there by telling a compelling story, we do not have to be so literal. Indeed when you write the equivalent of an establishing shot, it just doesn’t translate that well on the page, so in fact we don’t want to be that literal.
For example, let’s say you’ve just had a sequence taking place on a battlefield somewhere. The next scene takes place in the White House. So you type in a primary slug line:
EXT. WHITE HOUSE — DAY
Now what? Per the ‘rules’ of screenwriting style / format, you’re supposed to provide at least one line of scene description. But what can you do to make the shot cinematic?
EXT. WHITE HOUSE — DAY
The famed building shimmers in the heat, baked by a scorching August sun.
No matter how you gussy it up, essentially what you’re writing is this:
EXT. WHITE HOUSE — DAY
It’s the… you know… White House.
I think that’s one reason why I read fewer and fewer scripts by professional screenwriters where they use the equivalent of establishing shots. Rather they just cut right to the action:
INT. WHITE HOUSE — OVAL OFFICE — DAY
President Lincoln slams his fist on the desk —
LINCOLN
God damn General McCelland! He has less
backbone than a slug.
Lincoln eyes the room full of advisors. Secretary of State Seward grunts —
SEWARD
And slower to act than one as well.
In most cases, readers don’t need an establishing shot, they can make the jump with you straight into the action. Action = entertaining. Establishing shots = boring.
Re an establishing scene: These are different. This is not only about establishing a location, but also a sense of the feel and tone of the place. Here is the establishing scene in the Coen brothers’ screenplay for True Grit:
White letters on a black screen:
The wicked flee when none pursueth.
The quotation fades.
A woman’s voice:
Voice-Over
People do not give it credence that a young girl could leave
home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s
blood, but it did happen.
The street of a western town, night. The street is deserted. Snow falls.
We track slowly forward.
I was just fourteen years of age when a coward by the name
of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith,
Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and two
California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.
A shape lies in the street below the busted-out porch railing of a two-story building. A
sign identifies the building as the Monarch Boarding House.
Papa was a Cumberland Presbyterian and a Mason. He’d
hired Chaney — for paid wages, not on shares — when Chaney
was “down on his luck.” If Papa had a failing it was his
kindly disposition; I did not get my mean streak from him.
The crumpled shape is a body. We hear the thunder of approaching hooves.
He had taken Chaney up to Fort Smith to help lead back a
string of mustang ponies heíd just bought from a stock trader
named Stonehill. In town, Chaney had fallen to drink and
cards, and lost all his money. He got it into his head heíd
been cheated and went back to the boarding house for his
Henry rifle. Papa remonstrated, and Chaney shot him in the
breast.
A galloping horse enters frame and recedes, whipped on by a bareback rider. A long-
barreled rifle is tied across the rider’s back with a sash cord.
He disappears into the falling snow.
Chaney fled. He could have taken the time to saddle the
horse — or hitched up three spans of mules to a Concord
stagecoach and smoked a pipe, as it seems that no one in that
city was inclined to give chase. Chaney had mistaken its
citizens for men.
It establishes the place. And a basic sense of time (old West). But equally as important, it conveys a tone — this is a drama. And through the dialogue also provides some key exposition.
Here is scene description from another establishing scene, when John McClane arrives in Los Angeles and first takes in the city from the vantage point of his limo:
Convertibles with Christmas trees in their back seats,
Time/Temperature signs which reads: 69 degrees, palm trees
trimmed in Christmas lights, intermittent West side token
“Happy Chanukahs”…it is clear that Christmas L.A. style has
its own unique style.
A good establishing scene not only transitions a reader into a specific place and time, it also conveys a sense of the story’s tone and provides some entertainment to boot.
Tomorrow’s question: Can you break down writer’s residuals?