Actor Growth

A friend sent me a script today where he fully intends to make it into a mini short film. I had a read over it and it was missing a lot of details such as the fighting sequences as he mentioned before that it would be a main feature of the film.

His reasoning was that he wanted to leave out any of the fighting or stunt work until he found out which actors he will be using and instead this group of people can collaborate and work out the details. In my opinion, I didn’t feel this was a good way to do it as in a sense the actors are playing a heavy role in actually writing the script itself.

If it was simply the technical choreography then of course that is something that can be arranged after the script is written. But I think it is important to know what the vision is supposed to be originally from the writer’s point of view. For example, just saying “They get into a fight” is a little too general.

While I know many times you need to improvise, especially with action sequences like these you really do need basic direction. For example, my definition of a fight could be two guys street fighting it out in a military way and another person’s vision could be some crazy martial arts routine. I did express my concerns though and the great thing is that he opted to re-write it. Let’s see how it goes.