When studying screenwriting and directing, it's useful to develop a solid understanding of how a script is turned into a film - that is, how the scenes described by the writer are produced, including how they are staged, performed, shot, and edited.

One great way to learn that is to work on a film, of course. Another way is to reverse-engineer films that have already been made. One of the best ways to do this is to get the film, get a copy of the shooting script, and compare them. It's also helpful to get copies of earlier drafts of the script to see how they change.

Another approach is to analyze the final film, and effectively create storyboards for what ended up on film. Timed storyboards on video are called an "animatic," so you could call this process one of creating a reverse animatic.

Here's an example based on Raiders of the Lost Ark by Lawrence Kasdan. Raiders begins with a movie-within-a-movie; the first fifteen minutes are an action sequence which is a pretty complete serial adventure segment. For this project, I set myself the task of storyboarding these first fifteen minutes. I wanted to capture every shot and every camera motion that I deemed significant; clearly I exercised a lot of subjective judgment, but I erred on the conservative side: when I was done, I had over 800 drawings. That's almost one per second, except of course some drawings spanned many seconds, and others were spaced only frames apart (particularly when there was fast action). I then digitized these pictures and timed them to the soundtrack, effectively creating an animatic (or Leica reel) which contained my drawings instead of the film.

Here I've taken just a few of those hundreds of drawings that I felt captured something interesting that was happening onscreen. Remember that these are just rough schematics; there was no attempt to create polished artwork, but just to have enough on the page to catch what was important in the shot. My storyboards (in two big sketchbooks) have a lot of written details in the margins about focus, depth of field, lighting changes, and so on, that were impractical to catch in the drawings. In my discussions of these shots, I assume you've seen the film! If you haven't, I suggest you go out and rent the film before proceeding.

Early in the movie, Barranca (one of Indy's assistants) betrays our hero by trying to shoot him. Indy hears Barranca cock the gun (shown here), and spins around to whip the gun out of Barranca's hand. Time goes crazy in this sequence, stretching, dilating, and overlapping, but we buy it because the excellent sound design and editing keep the sequence of action crystal-clear.

Poor Forrestal - he stepped into the light. When Indy and Satipo are walking into the cave, Indy stops suddenly and warns Satipo not to step into a shaft of light coming from a hole in the roof. Standing to one side, Indy waves his hand in the light, triggering an explosive release of poison arrows; apparently Forrestal didn't notice the trap. This great action sequence resulting from Indy springing the trap involves nine different shots over just a few seconds - several shots last only eight or ten frames (about a third of a second). In order, immediately after Indy waves his hand, we see 1) the arrows exploding towards us, 2) Forrestal's head exploding towards us from the other wall, 3) an arrow shooting past us in front of Indy, 4) Forrestals's head swings around in extreme close-up, 5) Satipo's horrified reaction, 6) Indy rising up to view the skull, 7) the skull turning to Indy (shown here), 8) another take of frightened Satipo (shown here), and finally 9) Indy calmly regarding the skull, saying only "Forrestal...".

The moment when Indy starts walking towards the idol is beautiful. The temple set isn't really that big, but we get the feeling of immense size. This comes from watching Indy's feet, then panning past the walls, and particularly from these long shots and dramatic lighting.

When Indy prepares to grab the idol, we're treated to a wonderfully matched pair of camera moves - in this case, zooms. This is the most important moment for Indy; he's overcome betrayal by an assistant, deadly traps that killed colleagues, and who knows what else to reach this point. It's important that we feel the tension and the peril at this moment. The filmmakers wisely went for the personal touch, getting us close to Indy as he feels and thinks his way through this moment. They could have cut right to a close-up, but then we might not bring to the moment all our awareness of this strange and dangerous environment. So instead we start with a view of the temple and the stone idols guarding the stage (at the left and right of the shot), and zoom in on the idol as Indy crouches down to examine it. By coming in on Indy we're carried along, traveling down a funnel where all the tension is pushed tighter and tighter until it all lands on Indy, right in front of us. As Indy ponders, we cut to Satipo, who is waiting anxiously, and in a brilliant touch we continue the zoom in to his worried face.

Continuing the scene, we cut back to Indy who is still examining the Idol intently. He seems to make up his mind, and then we begin to pull back, returning to the same medium-long shot of Indy and the long view down the temple, back to the entrance. Indy reaches for his bag of sand and begins to let some sand run through his fingers onto the ground. This pull back concludes the matched pair of shots, balancing the two zooms in on Indy and Satipo. The result of this lovely camera work is that we have had a private moment with Indy in his most intense concentration. The hero is ready to slay the dragon, and what a treat it is to be right next to him, intimately experiencing what he is thinking and feeling. These matched zooms give us just that private moment, while losing none of the knife's-edge tension that's been building.

Whoops - the ball! A wonderful action sequence where Indy runs like mad towards the camera, just ahead of the marauding ball. It was shot by action director Mickey Mantle. The framing in almost every shot looks down at the ball, so as Indy runs he's running towards us, and we feel the ball bearing down on us as well. This is much more engaging than watching the events from the side or behind. The shots are framed so we're completely surrounded by the tunnel; we feel just as trapped as Indy. When I see this scene I want to turn from the screen and run, but I don't want to look away, and that tension helps make the scene even more tense.

After escaping the ball, Indy rolls down the hill only to be confronted by the waiting (and armed) Hovitos. Almost all the lines in this shot converge on the (off-screen) Indy. Our overhead view lets us see just what a predicament he's in, and all those diagonals give the shot a lot of tension.

When Indy runs off, the Hovitos look up from their heads-down prayer. There's a quick succssion of three shots that show the Hovitos reacting. First, we see one person (slightly blocked by someone else in front) who looks up, as shown here. Then we see another person look up, and then a shot of the whole crowd looking up. The timing of the performances and the editing is perfect - it's like a drum suddenly pounding in a steady rhythm, full of peril.

This is a great chase scene. We've already seen that Indy is running, and that he's being followed, so this shot is just to heighten our fear for him. We begin with an empty field and the sound of running and shouting - but we don't know from where. Suddenly Indy runs past the camera and away, only to be immediately followed by Hovitos. They stop momentarily (how convenient for Indy!) to fire some arrows at him, and then they give chase, followed by the rest of the hunting party. We've gone from peace to crowd scene, in a shot with lots of symmetry. I really like the balanced composition here; it's asymmetrical enough to stay interesting.