To research how to make our opening scene screenplay, I looked at he scripts for Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th.
Nightmare On Elm Street: http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/nightmare-on-elm-street.html
Friday the 13th: http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/Friday1.txt
Using these two examples as I guide, I will format my screenplay accordingly. By this I mean I will match the font, layout(i.e. chronological order), and general organization pattern(i.e. labeling of dialog, indicate camera angles, different text alignment for different purposes such as title cards, dialog, etc.). Aside from formatting, these screenplays helped me to get a better idea of conventions used in the horror genre, and how they are incorporated, such as sex->death. Another thing I learned was about the disparity between script/screenplay and the movie itself. In both Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street the movie was different from the script, in Friday the 13th’s case, fairly drastically in terms of setting and order of character deaths. This will be important to keep in mind during filming so as to not get too caught up in shooting scenes exactly like the script says. In general, it seems to only function as a guideline for the actual movie rather than precise directions. In terms of detail, they are much less detailed than I would have thought. They only give brief explanations of setting, without going into much sensory detail for specifics. This is great because it helps us to write the screenplay without a specific location in mind, as long as we know they type of location(which we do). Overall, I don’t think this was particularly useful. I already got conventions from watching the openings themselves, and for writing the screenplay itself I already had a good idea of how to do it from studying shakespearean plays. All I really gained was specific formatting like margins and font type/size. Me and Ethan have already started our screenplay, ad will have it done by tomorrow.
Film Project 