Script To Screen: “The Wizard of Oz”
From the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley & Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf, adaptation by Noel Langley from the book by L. Frank Baum.
Setup: The Wicked Witch has Dorothy, Scarecrow, Tin Man and Lion cornered.
Here is the script version of the scene:
Here is the scene from the movie:
The movie aligns closely to the script although there is an added line of dialogue at the beginning of the scene in which the Wicked Witch says, “The last to go will see the first three go before her.” It’s a clunky line — the redundant use of the word “go” — but it frames her plan as opposed to just going directly after Scarecrow with the flaming broomstick.
But the main thing, notice how radically different scripts were back in 1939 compared to today, including all the action clumped together in long paragraphs and camera shot after camera shot.
Here’s a list of commonly used camera shot abbreviations:
- POV Point of view
- OTS Over the shoulder
- FG Foreground
- BG Background
- ELS Extreme long shot
- LS Long shot
- FS Full shot
- MS Medium shot
- CU Close-up
- MCU Medium close-up
- ECU Extreme close-up
While live-action screenplays rarely feature camera shots, a production draft of animation scripts can be broken down shot by shot.
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 Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.
