Nevertheless, science fiction has become my first love in literature. After breaking up with her for many years, Jiang Fengnan's story brought me back to her. Jiang Fengnan belongs to a "rare animal". His novels are indescribable. They are both intellectually exciting and emotionally touching. Using a set of theoretical physics, he could put me on the sofa, sinking into the cushion and weeping. His works have a purely literary nature. When I planned to adapt this story, I basically did not consider the "cinematic nature" of the novel materials. I am more concerned about how the novel touches me emotionally.
"The Story of Your Life" keeps me from letting go for a long time. I am covered in its shadow during the day, and even sleep at night makes me dream. I know I want to adapt it into a movie, but I don't know how to proceed, and I don't know who to do it. The only thing I know is that I have to think about it.
In my career, until then, I have created 13 scripts (non-employed, untrusted scripts), six of which are science fiction scripts. I have only written the only horror film script, but it is also the only one sold, so I quickly discovered that it is only this kind of script that people are willing to write and trust me to write. Every time I show the story of Jiang Fengnan to the producers, they will show obvious suspicion, "This thing is scratching your head, what I want is the story of Stephen King!"
After years of experience After searching and writing a lot of non-horror scripts, I finally met the producers who supported the project of "Advent". They were Dan Levin and Dan Cohen of the "21st Circle" company. The two of them fell in love with "The Story of Your Life" just like me. For many years, I have kept Jiang Fengnan's book in my car, and the corners of the book have been rolled up. Now this project finally has a new look. I formally wrote my idea into a summary, and lobbied around for venture capital.
But my idea failed to sell. Not a word was sold.
People reject it, the most common reason is "too dependent on the results of the implementation." Well, seriously, what movie is not dependent on the execution result? This sentence is actually to say euphemistically: "We don't think you can write this story well."
At that time, I had designed a non-linear narrative structure. I saw many possibilities for expansion in Jiang Fengnan's core themes and thoughts, so I couldn't stop. It's like you put on the best running shoes, your feet are on the starting blocks, your knuckles are on the track, but the starting gun never fires. So I went to ask Jiang Fengnan to allow me to write the script before I got the investment promise, which is to ask him to extend the authorization period for the adaptation. I tried my best to tell him what I thought, as if I was saying: "I borrow your car to drive. I might give you extra surprises when I come back. Maybe I will spray new paint all over my body. Please trust me."
He really believed. Up me. For the next whole year, I was wondering why the scripts of science fiction movies were not easy to write well. Here are some of the things this script taught me.
1. Sometimes ordinary truths are more interesting than beautiful lies.
Embrace your movie story, what it should be like, and you will spontaneously approach it. If it is an action movie, then the characters and the story will unfold in the structure of the fighting bridge. If it is a musical, the subtext will be all in the song. Our film is about a process-deciphering a new language while also imparting our own language.
For the convenience of those who haven't watched the trailer or read the original, I will repeat the story: Twelve alien spaceships have arrived at several places in the world. The US military has recruited two scientists to help communicate with the aliens, one is the linguist Louis Banks and the other is the theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly. Their mission is unique: extraterrestrial life has no recognizable language (they have seven limbs and are called "heptapods"), humans cannot understand them, and maybe they cannot understand humans either. Various countries at the alien landing sites sent teams to try to figure out the purpose of these spacecraft hovering on the earth, which resulted in global tensions. Everyone realizes that it is easy to misunderstand and even make big mistakes when communicating with a real outsider.
In my first draft, I asked Louis to teach the heptapods the most basic vocabulary. During this process, I designed a set of montage shots, where Louis took language class and taught aliens the concepts of verbs, nouns, subjects, and predicates.
Several producers immediately overturned the design of the scene. "It's not sexy. Why not use more specific words?" These guys are very keen, and they are right. I nodded while taking notes. Going back and re-examining the process, I suddenly realized that basic kindergarten-level vocabulary is absolutely necessary.
When I met you again, I wrote all the core questions that humans want aliens to answer on a piece of paper. I broke down the problem, word by word, focusing on the most basic problems. I understand that it sounds ridiculous: I am here to explain the behavior of a woman who wants to teach extraterrestrials the details of life terms, such as "eat", "go", and "home." But isn't this movie about the process? I am really obsessed with fully presenting these processes of Louis.
In 2012, I took the following picture of the paper (I even misspelled the word "orrery" as "orrerry"):
After I talked about the idea with them, the two producers looked at me with wide eyes and said, "I just wanted all of them, they were all written into the script. In fact, most of your montage paragraphs can be replaced with these chats. Nagging things." They were right again this time. So I sorted out my gibberish and wrote them into the language of Louis. In the movie, when the colonel tried to understand her thinking process, she said these words that I wrote:
Louis walked to a larger whiteboard nearby and wrote the ultimate question "What is your purpose in coming to Earth?"
Louis: Okay, this is our goal, right? Figure out this problem.
Colonel Weber: Yes, this is more important than anything else.
Louis: In order to reach this goal, we must first let them understand what a "question" means, and understand what it means to ask information and getting a reply in essence, and then clarify the difference between a single "you" and a full name "you" . What we want to ask is not why the alien "John" came here, but why all of your alien spacecraft descended on the earth.
She hurriedly wrote between the columns of words, marking the relationship with each other with arrows. Her voice grew louder and she became more confident. After all, this is her area of expertise.
Louis (continued): To understand purpose, you need to understand intent. This means that we have to figure out whether they made the decision consciously or if they were only driven by unknown motives, so that they could not understand the reason question beginning with "why" at all. Even worse, we need to learn their vocabulary as much as possible so that we can understand their answers.
2. Let smart people do smart things.
To describe characters who are smarter than me, this task is difficult enough for me, but I have encountered something more challenging than this: I have to describe the biggest in my life that characters who are far smarter than me have encountered Intellectual challenge.
In response to such challenges, I ran to make friends with linguists and physicists. I spend a lot of time with people with extremely smart brains, observing how they talk. No matter whether they are going to work or leaving get off work, they use a lot of industry terminology and use a variety of well-known allusions in the industry. I can't keep up with them, but it doesn't matter, this is their normal mental state anyway. If I ask them to clarify some concepts or theories, they will also be happy to answer patiently, but usually they think that these are well-known in their circles.
So, what topic can make the eyes of neurosurgeons shine? What can make rocket experts feel that a day has not been wasted? It is to share a new thought with your peers. These people are accustomed to theoretical ecstasy, just like most of us are talking about a new movie or a new game. This means to me that I have to accept the explanatory paragraphs. Smart people are usually good teachers. I have to give up the important screenwriting rule I learned: don't let the characters pause to explain or define things. Sometimes such explanations and definitions are needed.
In an early script, Louis realized for the first time that the graphic text of aliens appeared directly on the screen, and she could not see the process of writing it out. When she discovered that the heptapod was using several limbs to create a circular symbol, the scene unfolded like this:
Louis: God! This is a non-linear writing system!
Ian understood what she was talking about.
Ian: So, their thinking is also non-linear.
Louis picked up a tablet that was synchronized with the big screen, and drew a picture of the heptapod on it. She only used one hand, but she did a great job.
Colonel Weber (via the intercom system): Explain.
She drew her character drawings while explaining to Weber.
Louis: Imagine you want to write a long sentence, with both hands at the same time, from both ends to the middle at the same time. In order to do this, you have to know every word you will write, and also know how big the whole sentence will occupy.
Ian struggled to find a recognizable reference figure on the character map.
Ian: This is—what are you writing?
At this time she finished drawing a gorgeous character drawing.
Louis: I asked them about predictability. I asked them if they knew the concept of "before" and "after", or if they had no idea what it meant.
That's it, I let the film's characters use the term "non-linear writing system". If the term fails to enter the final cut version, my attempt will completely fail.
3. If in doubt, go back to the source material.
The work of scriptwriting for feature films is a lonely and even futile way of being. Each script is like a new set of questions. I often encounter insurmountable walls in my narrative, or write myself into a dead end just as I write. Whenever I feel very helpless, I think of someone who has done pioneering work, and that is the original author.
The corners of the old book containing "The Story of Your Life" are all rolled up. During the time I was writing, it was kept on my desk. I refer to it from time to time like a pastor reads the Bible. Even though the scene I wrote does not exist in the original story, I still You can find feelings and inspirations through Jiang Fengnan's words and sentences, and sometimes they remind me of the hidden purpose behind writing this scene. This is the great advantage of the adaptor: you are not fighting alone. Of course, the original is also the scariest monster in the room. It always reminds you that you are just trying to imitate the greatness of the original in a new medium. I can totally confess that sometimes I will cover this book with a dinner plate, otherwise I will feel it quietly examining me there (let me confess again: my tricks have never really worked.)
4. Don't be trapped by your own limitations. Come up with creativity.
After writing down the first draft in depth, I was very frustrated that I couldn't describe the language. I have used some modifiers excessively, so my self-criticism machine started to ridicule my incompetence, and it was poor in describing the real language.
One day I went out for dinner with my wife (she is also a writer, producer, and director). When I talked about the difficulties encountered in writing, she asked me to give an example, so I drew on a piece of paper. I drew a sketch of an alien character map.
"Why don't you use it directly in the script?" I was shocked.
"What did you say, insert graphics in the script?"
"Yes. Let the graphics explain for you."
As soon as I went back that night, I opened the screenwriting software, plucked up the courage, and scanned the sketches of several alien phrases I drew. Only then did I realize that there is no screenwriting software that can use graphics. There is no "insert image" option. I had to add a lot of spaces in the script, save it as a PDF format, open it in another editing program, and manually paste the image to the corresponding position in the script. This is the only feasible method.
Using this method means that I have to repeat this process every time I revise a draft. The workload has increased ridiculously, all because I believe that maybe a small visual cue of mine can bring greater impact than plain text?
Another example is not even a character map, but a scene. Colonel Webber and scientist Ian Donnelly were worried about Louis’ mental state and went to her together because she translated some heptapods in real time without borrowing any reference images or software. People language. At this time, the audience learned about the Sapir-Wolf hypothesis, and also learned that immersion in the language environment of aliens may reconstruct our brain thinking.
A page of that scene is like this:
This abnormal writing method (referring to the circle in the screenshot above) cannot be used frequently, otherwise it will lose its effect. I stopped using graphics to try to add color to the script later-partly because the more you use visual aids, the more you can't do without it. I had to repeat the PDF process a lot. In the end, I only used five or six PNG image files, and for a while, I could even casually say the exact page numbers where the images are.
Will I do this in other scripts in the future? Probably not. People always act according to the situation, and the system you build is the system needed for the current problem, no matter whether the tools you design can still be used for other purposes.
5. Reason is very important, emotion is more important.
In the process of adapting this film, I spent the most time from beginning to end to solve the intellectual and political setting problems of the story. However, the main line of the story is Louis's personal emotional journey. That line runs through the film. Once something else affects it, the whole story collapses. Therefore, any other scenes can be sacrificed—modified, removed, or reduced to the bones. Fortunately, the director Dennis Villeneuve and I found the most important steps in Louis's personal emotional development, and this has become the holy mountain we must defend. Dennis has a talent for visual presentation. He is good at using visual images to appeal to emotions to tell stories. At the same time, he can also combine the intellectual challenges faced by the characters. Sometimes he can even see his ability to integrate rationality and emotion in a dialogue or a picture. This makes the movie come alive, so that we can truly "feel" the story-in the final analysis, the story of Jiang Fengnan attracts me the most, is the feeling it brings me, and our ultimate goal is to make this feeling Communicate to the audience, communicate and share with the audience.
Heysel's summary of answering questions from Reddit netizens:
"Adaptation is like falling into Alice's rabbit hole. I read a lot of non-fiction works, especially when it comes to linguistics or Fermat's law."
"I also watched Christopher Nolan's early short film "Following" (Following) carefully. I wanted to see how much non-linear narrative can convey."
"Louis' personality and sharp thinking remind me of my wife. A large part of my first draft of the script was written when she was out to shoot her own films. Occasionally I would go to visit classes, but when she was away from home. , Writing this script has become the way I miss her. She actually doesn’t know this."
"The line in Mandarin Chinese that Dennis forced me to write was very difficult. It took me several weeks to polish it. He was satisfied, but the guy ran away like this. There was no subtitle for that scene! I guess he wanted to express a certain essence of language! I love Dennis! But he is indeed a cunning fox. "
Regarding alien languages, I did a lot of sketch design early on, and even inserted my graphics directly into the script. I know clearly that what I want to talk about is a non-linear writing system, which has a ring The structure of the shape. Later, several conceptual artists who knew a little about linguistics took my sketches and developed a real language with about a hundred symbols. Reality is so cool."
"The core theme of the movie , It involves the clarity and accuracy of communication, that is, people should not rely on instincts to cause misunderstandings. I spent a lot of time consulting a linguist. Later, during the pre-production and filming period, Jesse of McGill University Ms. Kar Kuhn has been with us all the time (she is a Mayan linguist, the chairperson of the Canadian Syntax and Aboriginal Language Research Association). Let’s put it this way, Louis’s role is set as: she is a famous American language and human evolution research expert A student of Dan Everett. Dan has just published the book "The Dark Matter of the Human Brain." In order to preserve all the linguistic details in the story, I spent a lot of talk with the producer, and all the efforts are worth it. "
The ways in which governments respond to aliens shown in the movie are just what we see here. It is not an accurate and objective description. It has been filtered by our military and intelligence systems. Each has its own characteristics. Therefore, if you see a foreign power in the movie that has been discredited (we try to minimize such situations), it reflects that the United States has misunderstood the intentions of other countries, rather than reflecting the internal decisions of other countries. In addition, I would also like to say that every country has its own heroes and villains. I don’t know if this aspect can be found in the first time I watch a movie. There are still a lot of descriptions of the internal struggle."
Author: Eric Hessel
Compilation: Xixia
Reprinted from: Eight Lights Culture
Original link: http://thetalkhouse.com/how-i-wrote-arrival/
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