Script Analysis: “Ex Machina” — Part 1: Scene By Scene Breakdown

Reading scripts. Absolutely critical to learn the craft of screenwriting. The focus of this weekly series is a deep structural and thematic analysis of each script we read. Our daily schedule:

Monday: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown
Tuesday: Plot
Wednesday: Characters
Thursday: Themes
Friday: Dialogue
Saturday: Takeaways

Today: Scene-By-Scene Breakdown. Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

* We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.

* By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.

* A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

This week: Ex Machina. You may download a PDF of the script here.

Written by Alex Garland.

IMDb plot summary: A young programmer is selected to participate in a groundbreaking experiment in artificial intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a breathtaking female A.I.

Ex Machina

Scene by Scene Breakdown

By Nick Norman-Butler

GoIntoTheStory.com

1–3 Introduce CALEB, 24, a programmer working in a trendy tech office. As he is surveilled by his computer monitor’s webcam he receives a VIP email which tells him he has won a trip.

3–5 Caleb wakes up onboard a helicopter in flight, over a huge Alaskan wilderness. He has been asleep (drugged asleep?) and therefore has no idea of the flight path. Through Caleb’s conversation with the pilot we learn that Caleb won a week’s visit with the reclusive Mr Bateman, also a programmer, who is very high up in their tech company and lives on a vast private estate that they have been flying over for two hours already.

5–7 the helicopter lands and JAY the pilot drops Caleb in a meadow, saying this is as far to the house as he is allowed. There are some crates with Chinese characters on them but otherwise no man made structures visible.

7–9 Caleb finds the house camouflaged in a wood. The architecture is distinctly high security, high tech and impersonal. The automated security system takes his photo and issues him a photo embossed ID card for access. It’s all very intriguing and foreboding.

9–13 Inside, Caleb follows a thumping sound to find his host, NATHAN BATEMAN, 30, working over a punchbag. Blood trickles down his bruised hands. Nathan tells Caleb he is hung over and so is exercising/ drinking vegetable juice today to try to compensate. Nathan controls the pace and subject of the conversation, allowing awkward silences to exist but also doing his best to welcome Caleb. We are left with no doubt Nathan has higher status and he’s testing his intelligence right from the start. NB testing — definitely one of the themes!

13–16 Nathan takes Caleb to his room and explains the key card system: the card will let him know which rooms are off limits and which are OK for him to enter. On arrival at his room, Nathan points out that the reason the room has no windows is because the house has thousands of miles of fiber optic cables in it. Nathan will explain how this ties into his research but only if Caleb signs a non disclosure agreement, which he does, for fear of otherwise missing out on some implied innovative, secret knowledge.

17–18 Nathan now explains that Caleb will be the human element in a Turing Test, that is, a test of a computer’s intelligence. If Caleb cannot tell when he is interacting with a computer, that means the computer has passed and the creator of the computer has invented Artificial Intelligence. This has never been done before so, if successful both men will be at the center off one of the most significant scientific advances in history.

18–19 We meet AVA, a prototype AI, made in the form of a beautiful girl. Almost all of her looks inorganic except for her face although even her eyes contain a slight blank look. We see that she has an artificial brain. We see her in her living conditions that includes some private areas which allow us to think she is somewhat human but she is also imprisoned. Her voice is that of a girl — no robot inflections — and her movement is smooth and elegant. She is, one could say, beguiling.

19–24 Caleb and Ava have their first conversation. Nathan is not present but judging by the number of CCTV cameras, it’s understood that he is watching their every move. The conversation is a brief introduction: Ava is clearly very advanced: able to self analyze and wonder about how she acquired language, but she does make a few non sequiturs in conversation that betray a possible lack of social sophistication. When Caleb says he will
return to talk again, her face lights up, looking suddenly very pleased and therefore, human.

24- 27 Caleb and Nathan discuss Caleb’s first meeting with Ava. Nathan is drinking again, quite fast and he seems to crave praise for his creation, even embellishing and exaggerating some of Caleb’s earlier comments, comparing himself mistakenly, to a God. Caleb tries to ask how Ava is programmed but Nathan does not answer, instead asking him how he feels about her and Caleb replies — very impressed — that she is fucking amazing. They have another beer.

27–30 Caleb brushes his teeth to go to bed. We see he has long healed scars on his back. At night, he cannot sleep so turns on his TV which only displays CCTV feeds of Ava. Caleb is captivated and admires her beauty. Suddenly there is a power cut and Caleb is unable to exit his room, which now feels like a prison cell. The power comes back on and Caleb exits his room.

30–32 Caleb finds an empty room with a phone inside it. He tries to activate it with his key card but is startled by Nathan who tells him that he does not have access, in case he would call the outside world and tell someone about Ava. Nathan has clearly been drinking since Caleb went to bed and is drunk. They discuss the power cuts and Nathan says in a rather uncommitted way, that he is working on fixing them.

32–34 Morning. Caleb is woken by KYOKO, a female Japanese AI. He goes out to find Caleb exercising some more and they discuss the plan for the day. Caleb suggests redefining the game’s boundaries to put Ava into real life rather than just in a test arena but Nathan wins out and says no: you told me you think she is amazing, the next question is how does she feel about you?

35–41 The second session between Caleb and Ava. Deeper this time. Caleb starts with some patronizing questions about what Ava likes to draw and she turns the tables on him, asking him if he wants to be friends, telling him that friends have real two-way conversations not Q and A. She uses irony and gets Caleb to talk about himself, asking poignantly about his marital status.

He also talks about his family, how they died in a car crash (which would explain the scars on his back) and how he got into programming. Ava wrong foots him when she asks Caleb if he is friends with Nathan and, feeling the CCTV cameras, Nathan mumbles something about it taking time to get to know people when suddenly the power cuts out again. With the cameras down, Ava springs to life and warns Caleb about Nathan, telling him not to trust anything he says. The power quickly comes back on and Ava returns to her passive, lifeless blank robot appearance, pretending for the benefit of the CCTV cameras, that nothing untoward just happened.

41–45 Kyoko prepares sushi for Caleb and Nathan’s dinner and in doing so she knocks over a bottle of red wine. Nathan scolds her, even though it was an accident, explaining that she cannot understand English anyway (although it appears she might). Nathan comments about the power cuts in general, about how pissed off he is about them and how he can’t get anyone out to fix them because of the amount of sensitive, confidential information on site. Caleb and Nathan discuss the second session with Ava and when asked what happened when the power cut out although Caleb does mention the joke Ava made, he does not mention the warning she gave him. Nathan knows Caleb is hiding something but he’s not sure what. Again, Nathan drinks heavily.

45–46 Caleb is in his bedroom and he figures out that the room is wired for cameras, probably operated by Nathan.

46 On the CCTV in his room, Ava charges herself on an induction plate in her quarters and this causes the lights to dim. This is the first hint that Ava is able to cause the power cuts at will.

46–48 Caleb wanders from his room again and finds his way into a new room which overlooks Nathan, working out with the punch bag. Caleb watches this workout, more frenzied than before, which finishes when Nathan splits the punch bag then sexually gropes Kyoko who has been standing next to him, holding his wash towel.

48–49 Caleb dreams of Ava, in which they have swapped places and are becoming closer.

50 A new punchbag swings in place of the split one. This suggests Caleb might have dreamt the scene above, when he saw the punchbag split and Nathan grope Kyoko? Possibly Caleb is losing track of what is real?

51–55 Session 3 between Caleb and Ava. Ava shows him a drawing, a proper one this time, of the view of her enclosed garden area within her quarters. They discuss where she might go if she was permitted to leave (emphasis on her imprisonment) and Ava chooses a generic traffic intersection where she could people watch. Ava also shows Caleb some clothes which she dresses up in. The result is, she looks much more human and much prettier. Ava suggests they could go out on a date, and asks if Caleb is attracted to her. She hopes he is.

55–60 Nathan and Caleb discuss session 3, specifically Ava’s sexuality. Nathan is drinking again. Nathan explains that he gave her a sexuality because this is a part of all human interactions. Moreover, Ava even has a cavity between her legs that has a pleasure receptor so she can have sex and would enjoy it. Nathan wants to know if Caleb is attracted to her and Caleb wants to know if the attraction is real, i.e did Nathan program Ava to flirt with him, to which Nathan replies he only programmed her to be heterosexual. While looking at a Jackson Pollock drip painting, Nathan explains that the challenge is to program an action that feels natural, so that the AI acts of its own accord not to a pre destined plan (as one would when painting automatically)…and for the record, Nathan believes Ava’s attraction to Caleb to be real.

60 Ava flirts with Caleb by undressing for him in front of the CCTV camera, knowing he is watching.

61 Kyoko kills a wild animal, outside in the forest, using the knives she uses to prepare sushi.

61–64 Nathan shows Caleb his lab where he makes the AIs. He explains that he managed to crack the problem of creating a convincing face by hacking into all the cameras on peoples’ iPads, phones etc and using that data. He goes on to show a brain, like that inside Ava, made from structural gel that holds its form for memories but shifts for thoughts. The software for the AIs is ‘blue book’ which is Nathan’s (Google-like) search engine company, that tells the AI how people think — thought patterns, impulsivity etc — more than what they are interested in. Nathan says he wanted to show Caleb all this to remind him that Ava is just a computer, a grey box, with no gender.

65–67 Caleb returns to visit Ava for the 4th time. He tells her in a roundabout way that, although she may know everything about the world in theory, she can only become human when she experiences it for real, first hand, when she leaves/escapes this building. Nathan watches from his study (that has a day bed on it, on which lies the naked Kyoko — clearly she is being used/abused? as a sex-bot now) as Caleb tells Ava the purpose of his trip: to test if she has a consciousness. From a new CCTV angle, that we have not seen before, Ava touches an induction plate out of sight of Caleb and the cameras go dead. Inference: clearly Ava is causing the power cuts and Nathan must know.

68 During the power cut, Ava accuses Caleb of lying: that he does indeed believe Ava has consciousness, she also repeats her (so far unproven) claim that Nathan lies about ‘everything’. And she confesses that she causes the power cuts.

69 Kyoko lies motionless and naked on the bed, dead behind the eyes, like a victim of sexual abuse.

70–71 Nathan and Caleb leave the house and go for a hike. Caleb, struggling to keep up, confronts Nathan about a lie: he was not selected randomly to come on this trip and Nathan admits it, he chose Caleb to come because, he says, he is one of the most talented coders in the company.

71 Caleb spies Nathan and Kyoko having sex in his office. He then goes back inside and, while in the shower, imagines what it would be like to kiss Ava.

72–73 Nathan, while drunk, enters Ava’s room and rips up her latest drawing. Caleb sees this on his TV’s CCTV display.

73–77 Caleb goes looking for Nathan and finds him with Kyoko. He tries to question him about why he tore up the pictures but Nathan, now even more drunk, responds by ‘tearing up the dance floor’ in a surreal scene where he dances with Kyoko under disco lights. He says Kyoko likes to dance although Kyoko does not express an opinion. Nathan collapses drunk and Caleb carries him to bed, using Nathan’s card to enter the room. While there he catches a glimpse of Nathan’s study.

77–82 Caleb and Ava session 5. Ava announces that this time she will be testing Caleb, and she will know if he is lying by his facial micro-expressions, proving her theory supposedly when she corrects him a few times on his favorite color and earliest memory. The questions get increasingly leading and intense, with Ava proceeding to ask Caleb if he thinks he is a good person (he answers yes, Ava does not correct him) and who is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen (Caleb says she is, Ava does not correct him). Ava tells him he passed the test and Caleb says that’s a relief because if there is a test, by definition he supposes one wants to pass it.

This is a loaded and very interesting statement because by now the reader’s mind might wonder what Ava is really up to: we know she knows how Caleb thinks because Nathan told us she can access his search history and we know she is using her sexuality with him. What is her objection, her real test?

Ava goes on to say what will happen to her, if she fails his Turing test? Will she be turned off? She’s playing on his emotions heavily here and even goes so far as to say she wants them to be together but Nathan is keeping them apart. Caleb rises to her challenge by telling Ava he can outsmart Nathan.

82–85 Caleb and Nathan sit down with a beer to discuss Ava. Nathan says he thinks he will essentially turn Ava off, and work on an upgrade that he thinks will be even better. He will digitally lobotomize her and make her into a Kyoko-like house servant/sex slave. Caleb begins his plan, he gets Nathan another beer as he intends to incapacitate him with drink.

Meanwhile Kyoko enters Ava’s quarters for purposes unknown but it is apparent they have not met before…

86–90 Nathan is passed out drunk on the floor. Caleb takes his key card from him and uses it to enter his study/the operations room. He reprograms the power shut down protocols although we are not told how, and also finds a folder called ‘deus ex machina’ which contains video files of all the previous AIs. It appears they have all suffered from the effects of captivity, as they are shown either refusing to charge themselves or arguing with Nathan. Inference: these AIs are sentient and Nathan is cruel.

Furthermore, inside Nathan’s bedroom, while Kyoko lies on the bed naked, the ‘skeletons’ of all of them are inside cupboards.

Kyoko undresses out of her skin, in front of Caleb.

91–92 Nathan comes round and thinks at first that he has lost his key card, before Caleb is able to replace it in his pocket without him noticing.

92–93 Caleb is in his room, losing it. He cuts himself with a razor blade to check he is not one of Nathan’s androids. Blood pours out of the cut. He wipes the blood over the bathroom mirror to obscure the hidden camera and then punches the glass, smashing it. In Nathan’s study, it is now Kyoko who watches him.

94 Nathan punches the bag, fiercer than ever.

94 Caleb visits Ava again and tells her, Nathan was lying, he will deprogram her and he has a plan for them both to escape. He will get Nathan drunk again and reprogram the doors to lock him in.

96–100 (Kyoko is in the room, on house servant duty, listening) Caleb tries to get Nathan to drink a beer but Nathan refuses, says he is on a detox. He asks Caleb whether he thinks Ava has passed the Turing Test and Caleb says yes but Nathan pulls him up: he asks him how can he be sure Ava’s emotions are real, not just simulated, specifically how can he be sure Ava likes him? Maybe she is just pretending, because she sees Caleb as a potential means of escape?

101–105 Nathan shows Caleb a video clip, with audio, of the time when he ripped up Ava’s drawing and explains that he did it to feed Ava’s narrative of hating him, so that she could elicit more sympathy from Caleb. While Ava picked up the pieces of paper, we also see Nathan install a new, battery powered camera in Ava’s room and playing footage from this feed now…we see that Nathan has seen all of the conversations with Ava and is wise to their escape plan.

Nathan turns the tables even further, saying that the real test was for Ava to manipulate Caleb to escape. She would have to use sexuality, imagination, empathy, self awareness etc to do so and, with the proposed escape plan as evidence, she passed and is therefore AI because the situation was real not theoretical.

Moreover, Caleb was selected for this trip from his search history, because he is good person and without girlfriend (Ava’s face is based on his porn search history) therefore malleable in Ava’s eyes.

105–107 The power cuts out and Nathan taunts Caleb, saying it must be time for his escape but, in another reversal, Caleb tells Nathan in fact he has already reprogrammed all the doors to open during a power cut.

This really surprises Nathan. He punches Caleb out, grabs a weapon and exits the study, on his way to hunt down and retrieve Ava.

107–110 Nathan confronts Ava and tells her to go back to her room. She says if I do will you ever let me out but Nathan says yes and Ava knows this is a lie. Ava launches herself at him, they fight and just as Nathan is about to deliver a fatal blow Kyoko stabs him with the kitchen knife. Nathan smashes Kyoko’s head, disabling her, but while he does do Ava recovers enough to stab him once more, fatally.

110–112 Ava finds Caleb and asks him to stay where he is while she goes to Nathan’s bedroom and repairs herself with parts taken from the other AIs in the closets. She now has a full skin covering.

112–114 Ava leaves Caleb behind and locks him in the house, his key card rejected.

114–115 The helicopter lands and as Ava talks to the pilot. She looks like a 20 year old girl and we see her point of view: all facial recognition software and hard data analysis — completely alien. She persuades the pilot to take her away from the house.

116 We see Ava on a pedestrian junction, just for a flash.

Characters

Nathan, a super intelligent mega rich, geek programmer, physically and intellectually very intimidating. He wants to create AI and craves adulation. He has a huge ego, aware that he is on the brink of an enormous scientific discovery and a place in history books. However, his arrogance blindsides him and he underestimates both Nathan and the AIs who all plot against him. He also has a debilitating weakness for alcohol. Nathan is testing Ava’s AI and Caleb’s reception to AI.

Caleb, an intelligent programmer, but not at the same level as Nathan. Much more empathetic than Nathan. Caleb wants to find out about Nathan’s work but his parents died when he was young and he does not have a girlfriend so he craves humanity and love. This makes him susceptible to Ava’s flirtations and he is easily manipulated. Unable to recognize that Ava is a robot, he therefore finds Nathan’s treatment of the AIs abhorrent. He rebels against Nathan and tries to outsmart him to help Ava so they can both runaway together.

Ava, an AI. More intelligent than either Nathan or Caleb, she knows how humans think based on her software which analyses humans’ thought patterns and impulses, based on search engine behavior. Ava has an attractive physical presence, modeled on Caleb’s porn preferences. She is self-aware, sexual, manipulative and craves knowledge of what it is to be human in the real world, finding her imprisonment by Nathan cruel and repressive. She is testing Caleb, trying to manipulate him so he frees her from her cell. Her weakness is she is not fully human and never will be: she only pretends to be.

Themes

Testing each other
Artificial constructs
intelligence
What makes us human is also our flaws: sexuality, (alcohol) addiction, morality, arrogance, cruelty, need for love, empathy.
Manipulation

Writing Exercise: I encourage you to read the script, but short of that, if you’ve seen the movie, go through this scene-by-scene breakdown. What stands out to you about it from a structural standpoint?

Major kudos to Nick Norman-Butler for doing this week’s scene-by-scene breakdown.

To download a PDF of the breakdown, go here.

Tomorrow: We zero in on the major plot elements in Ex Machina.

I am looking for volunteers to read a script and provide a scene-by-scene breakdown for it to be used as part of our weekly series. What do you get? Beyond your name being noted here, my thanks, and some creative juju, hopefully you will learn something about story structure and develop another skill set which is super helpful in learning and practicing the craft.

The latest volunteers:

12 Years a Slave — Georgevine Moss
Beasts of No Nation — Jacob Holmes-Brown
Bridge of Spies — Scott Guinn
Carol — Jillienne Bee
Celeste and Jesse Forever — Ryan Canty
Diary of a Teenage Girl — Cynthia
Ex Machina — Nick Norman-Butler
Frozen — Doc Kane
Inside Out — Katha
Legend — Olivia
Leviathan — Piotr Ryczko
Locke — Megaen Kelly
Macbeth — Trung
Man Up — Kristy Brooks
Monsters University — Liz Correal
Mud — Kevin
Nightcrawler — DJ Summitt
Pawn Sacrifice — Michael Waters
Steve Jobs — Angie Soliman
Straight Outta Compton — Timm Higgins
The End of the Tour — Steve F
The Iron Lady — Leslie
The Way Way Back — The Deuce
Trainwreck — Joni B
Wreck It Ralph — Kenny Crowe

Thanks, all!

To see examples of scene-by-scene breakdowns, go here. Part of the goal is to create a library of breakdowns for writers to have at their disposal for research and learning.

You may see the scripts we can use for the series — free and legal — by going here.

To date, we have analyzed 50 movie scripts, a great resource for screenwriters. To see those analyses, go here.

Thanks to any of you who will rise to the occasion and take on a scene-by-scene breakdown.

And for those of you who have volunteered, please send me your scene-by-scene breakdown as soon as possible!

Circling back to where we started, reading scripts is hugely important. Analyzing them even more so. If you want to work in Hollywood as a writer, you need to develop your critical analytical skills. This is one way to do that.

So seize this opportunity and join in the conversation!

I hope to see you in comments about this week’s script: Ex Machina.

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