Brainstorming the first Indy flick - a transcript

The "Raiders" story conference

Just scanning through these '10 screenwriting lessons' derived from Lucas et al's 5 day brainstorm. Not sure I'll ever plug through the whole thing, but this is a tasty little insight in its own right

*EDIT* Here are the transcripts.

(And for the record, I totally did read them all in the end Really fascinating stuff, and the cinephilia on display is just immense!)

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Virtual Reality chatter on a movie site? Got endless amounts of it here. Reviews over here

Hmm, thought this might cause more of a flutter.

No opinions on Indy being a pedophile?

Thought some of the interesting lessons the commentator draws out are:

• Exposition through Excitement - Exposition is a killer, so often laid out in staid & unconvincing fashion. Gotta love how they fashioned the 'poisoned date' scene to get our pulses racing (allowing the exposition about the Staff of Ra to get digested in the amongst the tension)
  
  
• Creating tension by backtracking from big payoff ideas - IE the way they eventually built up the giant stone ball payoff etc.
  
  
• Less need for story arcs if you're following 'The Big Bang Theory' of ever-increasing explosive payoffs (the characters are more likely to be stable 'archetypes' as well in these kind of 'fantasy' trappings)
  
  
• “You always start with too many ideas.”

(I've skimmed some of the early stuff from the full transcript - there's some nice bits in there on the evolution of the opening scenes - betrayals, traps etc. Still doubt i'll go through it all tho )

Sorry, I missed this before. Great link. The Indy/Marion stuff is kinda weird, and I'm glad they left it ambiguous.

I'm gonna have to think about reading the entire transcript, but the Cliff's Notes version on that blog is riveting, fascinating stuff. I hope we see more stuff like this about other classic films.

Oh cool! I am very interested in this. Thanks Tom!

Hope all is well, good sir!

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It is funny to look back on that quick exchange they had in that light isn't it - it's all there, and the lines are all memorable (what with it being such an oft-watched film and that) - 'I was in love with you' 'You knew what you were doing' etc. Hmmmm.

Yet like they say, from a scriptwriting point of view, it gives both of them instant backstory, defining their characters and colouring some of their current actions really efficiently etc. Natural, dramatic 'exposition'. Interesting what they say about bad guy actions only being truly picked up on and held against the character if they happen on screen. Not entirely sure about that, but makes a kind of sense. We don't always judge on hearsay - we wait and see if people live up to their reputation etc

The transcript itself is kinda fun - the only really trying bit is you know how it ends . Fun to see the distinct style of Lucas & Spielberg - GL chuntering away like mad, with Spiely constructively spiking his bubble, or determinedly muscling in when he's on topics he's pre-thought about.

Cool, thought you might like (All's good. Stuffed for cash, so getting a lot of home-movies in )

This was so interesting to read! I'm glad they didn't take the Early romance part of it any further than they did in the film too. I think what they are discussing here would've been too much. It's so cool to see what they were thinking when they created these awesome characters. Thanks for the post!!

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Just bumping this because the initial link is all kindsa awesome

Reading the blog post now, really interesting so far. Can someone upload the transcript PDF to http://mediafire.com/ , the one it's currently hosted on is blocked by my Uni internet

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I think the file is down. I've got it somewhere, will stick it up in a bit.

Cheers, I have read the full article on there and it's great. Looking through his other stuff now too, how have I never seen this blog before, it's brilliant.

Thanks, that was tremendous fun to read.

Cool, glad you guys enjoyed it . It's a great blog too - defunct now, but well worth scooting through the archives.

Here's the transcripts.

Sorry to be a pain but 4shared doesn't work for me either, damn Uni internet - mediafire is the only one that seems to, anyone willing to upload there for me?

Ach go on then. Passion should be rewarded

Linkage

Haha, awesome, thanks a lot man. I've read through quite a few of the articles on that guys website now, and as someone who is kind of interested in script writing, some of the stuff is really interesting.

Here you go.

I'm bored at work. Can you tell?

EDIT: Too late. hehe

Just bumping this because it’s still ace