I'm realizing I am using every trick I learned writing for syndicated action hours and The Flash to try and deliver spectacle on a...shall we say constricted budget for this script.
Zack's spectacle on a budget tips.
1: It's all a game of Jenga. Do all the VFX shots you like in the first draft, then see how many you can get rid of & still tell the story.
2: Play stuff on displays & characters' reactions wherever possible.
3: Do one big shot, then go tight.
1: It's all a game of Jenga. Do all the VFX shots you like in the first draft, then see how many you can get rid of & still tell the story.
2: Play stuff on displays & characters' reactions wherever possible.
3: Do one big shot, then go tight.
4: Look at how Jaws & Jurassic Park handled their monsters-- a few hero shots & a lot of great, cheap things that suggested the monster without showing it--water rippling in a glass, barrels floating to the surface, etc.
Here's a fun game. Watch the episodes of Buffy that @joss directed, & count the number of times you see a vampire get "dusted" on camera. Joss would almost always show the dusting the first time, then play the other ones off-camera. He was saving VFX money for other things!
And Whedon fundamentally understood that once the audience saw that vampires turned to dust when Buffy killed them, they didn't need to see the $10K VFX shot every time-- a sound effect off-camera was just as good as far as they were concerned. Use that money elsewhere!
I was just reminded that @GreggHurwitz and I coined the term "Spielberg pass" for this kind of VFX-heavy writing--look at all your spectacle and make sure it's all grounded in the characters' emotional reactions to what's happening onscreen.
Watch the iconic "portal scene" from Endgame. Even in the middle of the expensive spectacle of the dead heroes returning, the @Russo_Brothers brilliantly keep things focused on the reactions of Cap- "thank God I have backup" & Thanos-"Uh-oh, I'm fucked!"
Maybe my favorite sequence in the Lord of the Rings films (it's not in Tolkien but it still rules) is the elves' arrival at Helms Deep, and what makes it is...the reactions of random Rohan extras, realizing that they're no longer alone in the fight.
Peter Jackson in the commentary to Two Towers said that they had literally hours of footage of stuntmen fighting each other in Helm's Deep, but realized that they needed to keep cutting to the main characters every few shots or the audience would become emotionally disconnected.
