Like the phone call exchange in Scream, the conversation slowly changes in tone, starting off with faux casualness and ending with a burst of violence, and Lander’s cunning and ruthlessness is firmly established.
Considered by many to be Quentin Tarantino’s greatest opening, Inglorious Basterds introduces us to SS officer Hans Lander as he interrogates a French farmer. Ghostface’s method is established and again we learn what the other characters have in store for them.Īlthough primarily used in thriller/horrors, other genres have likewise employed “establish the threat” openings. The opening of the original Scream employs a similar technique, but slyly stretches it out, starting off with a character having a seemingly innocuous phone call that increasingly becomes scarier and more threatening. Think of classic thrillers like Jaws or the original Halloween: both openings are shocking set pieces in which a character is attacked on screen, and by doing so, it’s made clear what the other characters have in store for them. If this is going to be a story with “life or death” stakes, it’s best to establish this out of the gate. Generally speaking, the higher the stakes in the script, the more you have to set up those stakes in the opening. If we’re dropped into a lived-in world in which the protagonist is in the throes of an exciting situation, the reader is already sharing a journey with them and is more likely to keep reading. The openings of Thief and Drive are both high-adrenaline set pieces in which the respective protagonists pull off a big heist in spectacular fashion.
The Indiana Jones, Mission: Impossible, and Fast and Furious films all took a clear cue from the Bond films and likewise open with action set pieces.Įven if you’re writing a more grounded crime drama, an opening set piece might still be the way to go. The most recent Bond film, Never Say Die, has a pre-credit sequence that’s a whopping 23 minutes and 45 seconds in length (and manages to encompass all five of my opening tips). Over the decades, Bond openings have become such an important part of the films, they keep increasing in length and scope. Perhaps the template for this approach are the James Bond films. If you’re writing in this genre, you should definitely consider opening with an action set piece. This is especially the case with an action/adventure script. Perhaps the most effective opening is one that hits the ground running.
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Even produced films and television series place a lot of emphasis on grabbing the viewer’s attention and compelling them to keep watching (this is why TV shows have teasers/cold openings).īelow are 5 tips to writing a great opening for your script: If you don’t grab them right away, they’ll most likely stop reading and move to the next script. These are busy people who are constantly being bombarded with scripts and they simply don’t have the time to see where you might be taking things. Whether it’s a feature screenplay or a television pilot, most managers, agents and producers will make their decision to keep reading based on the opening. In my article 5 Clich é s to Avoid in the Opening of Your Script, I stressed the importance of grabbing industry professionals in the first couple pages of your spec script.
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