While there were definitely positives during my script consultation with the Santa Barbara Screenplay Competition, there were also negatives. And there were a lot more of the latter.
I had alluded to the judge’s comment that the title conjured up thoughts that this story was about an archeological dig. Considering there’s no archeology of any kind in the story, it wasn’t especially great to hear that my title could potentially lead to genre confusion.
This was really minor compared to some of the other notes I’d gotten during the meeting. I don’t recall the exact order they came in, but the rest of this post will cover the major ones that were brought up at some point during the consultation over the coming posts, because some of these I’d need to go in depth with.
One was that there were too many flashbacks. I had counted out the number of flashbacks in preparation for the meeting, so I did have an exact amount. This number was in the teens, so its not exactly unfounded, and that means there were more flashbacks in the script than there were in the book. So while I don’t disagree about the number of flashbacks, I can explain why I had so many, and added more for the adaptation.
Anyone who’s read Dig Down knows about the way I structured that story. I’ve said numerous times that I had the idea for eight or nine years before I actually wrote it, and trying to tell the story in chronological order was one of the reasons. It just didn’t work, as it revealed details before they could be their most impactful. In fact, structuring the story the way I did led to shaping Vicky’s character into what it was for the book.
I stand by this decision for the book, but in doing so, there were these long scenes of Rob and Preston just talking on a couch together. I added some flashbacks to break up this scenes that while throwing emotional haymakers were relatively stagnant shots. Doing this also allowed me to add a few more scenes of Axel, someone who is crucial in setting the story in motion, but doesn’t actually appear much in the script. It also allowed me to have a scene with the Senators, a group that I reference in the book, but due to the point of view, weren’t really in it. This quick scene also allowed me to hint at the power dynamics among them, something that was established in one of the short stories I wrote for Dig Down Accessories, and that I thought would be a treat for those that had read it, to see these relationships on the screen, as well as something new for those who hadn’t read the short story, to see the world fleshed out a bit.
The judge had given me some examples to read of scripts that had used flashbacks effectively, but these were all scripts where the entire movie was essentially a flashback–think Saving Private Ryan, and this too wasn’t the right structure for Dig Down. I don’t think their message was that movies that are essentially all flashbacks are the only correct way to use them, but I wish the examples they had given had at least one that was more in line with my script’s structure.
The judge also said that this amount of flashbacks was confusing. I did disagree with that. Everything, Everywhere All at Once had won Best Picture earlier in the year, and not only does that film have a number of cutaways to flashbacks, they’re telling the story through countless different dimensions, and the story can still be followed even with this combination. While I can understand that it can be an extra challenge to follow flashbacks on the page, its something that I think could be followed along with ease visually.
I’ll get into another major criticism next time.
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