Major Project: Pre-Writing - Script Research 'Legend'

Brian Helgeland is an American screenwriter, director and producer.

Brian has written a variety of drama and action film scripts. He's written many screenplays including, 'Legend' (2015), 'A Knight's Tale' (2001) and 'Robin Hood' (2010).

 

One of Brian's script that I looked at was 'Legend', as it was a drama based in the time of the Kray's which was the early 1960's, similar to the time period I'm writing for in my script.

In the screenshot above, is the opening scene to the script. The first sentence describes what we as an audience would see on the screen, in this case the city streets of East end London. When it came to reading this script for research, I struggled to start off the script and was looking for ways to come up with something that sounded visually appealing as well as was short and sweet. For me as I was setting this script in Italy, I wanted the opening scene to be of a scenery of something that we would relate to Italy, in this case that was farmers working on a vineyard. 

The way Brian wrote the opening scene for Legend, was done cleverly as he was able to give an idea of what we would see on screen but without detailing everything; which was a common problem that I did. From this example I was able to come up with this opening scene for my script, 'Panning down from a clear sky and blaring sun onto a vineyard, dotted with a field of workers.' 

When writing scripts, it's always best to look at other film examples that you can watch on the screen to see how the writing is portrayed on screen. However depending on the director will depend on the camera angle, the lighting, and other creative aspects, but with still getting what is said in the script across onto screen.