On my first rewrite assignment, I added a 2-1/2 page opening sequence involving only animal characters, so there was no dialogue, except for two brief scenes intercut in the middle of it to introduce two of the human characters.
The studio liked the new scene, but their note was: "Make it shorter." The note was a little vague. Was the scene too violent for a family film so they wanted less of it? Was there a particular part of it they wanted me to cut? Was it too dragged out with the cutaways to the humans? Or did they just arbitrarily feel a need to get to the original beginning by page 2?
Turns out their concern was simply over the appearance of the first two pages, not about the content. They were ready to send it out to talent and were worried agents would open the cover and see a lot of description paragraphs right off the bat and shove the script to the bottom of their pile assuming it was amateur writing.
They wanted to see more white space. So they suggested adding more dialogue in those cutaways, even if there was nothing important for the characters to say in those scenes. Contrary to their initial note ("make it shorter"), this would have made it longer, but it would have made it "look" more like a standard script at first glance. Once I understood what they were looking for, I was able to rewrite the action paragraphs in Shane Black's style of very short single-sentence paragraphs: "The dog SNARLS." "The fox LEAPS at her." And so on. It ended up still being 2-1/2 pages, so it didn't "make it shorter," and it didn't add any pointless dialogue like they had suggested, but it did make the opening exactly how they really wanted it, with more white space.
excerpt from my myspace blog...
On my first rewrite assignment, I added a 2-1/2 page opening sequence involving only animal characters, so there was no dialogue, except for two brief scenes intercut in the middle of it to introduce two of the human characters.
The studio liked the new scene, but their note was: "Make it shorter." The note was a little vague. Was the scene too violent for a family film so they wanted less of it? Was there a particular part of it they wanted me to cut? Was it too dragged out with the cutaways to the humans? Or did they just arbitrarily feel a need to get to the original beginning by page 2?
Turns out their concern was simply over the appearance of the first two pages, not about the content. They were ready to send it out to talent and were worried agents would open the cover and see a lot of description paragraphs right off the bat and shove the script to the bottom of their pile assuming it was amateur writing.
They wanted to see more white space. So they suggested adding more dialogue in those cutaways, even if there was nothing important for the characters to say in those scenes. Contrary to their initial note ("make it shorter"), this would have made it longer, but it would have made it "look" more like a standard script at first glance. Once I understood what they were looking for, I was able to rewrite the action paragraphs in Shane Black's style of very short single-sentence paragraphs: "The dog SNARLS." "The fox LEAPS at her." And so on. It ended up still being 2-1/2 pages, so it didn't "make it shorter," and it didn't add any pointless dialogue like they had suggested, but it did make the opening exactly how they really wanted it, with more white space.