In the final part of this series on “Beginnings, Part 1”, we’re going to take a look at the script — essentially the blueprint for all the actors and artists once we move into the production phase.
Once the outline is written and we’ve received notes from Bryan and the network, I usually go over the notes with the writer before they head off to write the first draft. When I write a script, I also have all my other executive producer meetings to do, so often I’ll write for an hour here and there, sometimes at night, or whenever I have a spare moment. This isn’t my ideal way to write, but I make it work.
Because we’ve thoroughly worked through all the story beats in the premise and outline phases, the script writing is more focused on nailing down dialogue and describing the action in a clear, visual way. I find it’s really helpful to have to only focus on those parts, without simultaneously trying to figure out the plot as well. It’s like if you tried to build a house while also drawing the blueprints at the same time — there would be a lot of wasted effort going back and forth between the two.
One technique our writers Josh and Tim taught me is to take the outline and copy it into Final Draft (the scriptwriting program we use). Then you simply format the dialogue and action paragraphs and in no time at all, you have something that resembles a script. It’s much less daunting to start that way than with a blank page (and saves you from retyping things from the outline you may want to use). From there, I go through scene by scene, improving on and adding to the dialogue and action descriptions.
One tip when writing action descriptions, especially for animation (though this would apply to live-action as well): because an artist needs to draw what is written on the page, the action descriptions must be a specific as possible. Good writing always conjures images in the readers imagination, but there is little room (or need) to get flowery in a screenplay, so I make sure to use action verbs and keep the language very concrete. Very rarely do I use adjectives, unless it’s important to the way a character will be animated. Otherwise, adjectives don’t add to the clarity of the description. Here’s an example from the script.Wan shoots wild blasts of fire at the Chous and the guards, but their numbers overwhelm him. Little Chou closes the gap and jumps on Wan’s back. Wan spins around with his arm extended, trying to hit Little Chou, but instead he creates a ring of fire around them. Little Chou falls off Wan’s back, pulling off Wan’s mask in the process. Wan raises his fist. Little Chou cowers and closes his eyes.
There is one adjective in there — “wild” — to describe the way Wan is using fire. In this case I think it’s helpful for the storyboard artists to know how Wan is firebending. Since he’s still unskilled at this point, I went with “wild blasts”.
After about three weeks, the writer turns in the first draft. Usually, it comes in a few pages long, which is fine at this point. We’d rather have more to work with than less. Before we turn it into the network for notes, we once again gather in the writer’s room and do an internal punch up session. As a group, we project the script on a screen, and go through it page by page. We pitch alternate versions of lines and try to make the dialogue as good as we can. We also trim out any lines or action that aren’t strong or critical to the plot, with the aim of getting the page count shorter. Once we are all happy with the rewrite, we then turn it into the network for notes.
Once we get the notes back, we do one last punch up session (which is usually a lot quicker than the first), addressing anything that needs to be tweaked. We look for more cuts at this point as well. The goal is to finish with a 26-28 page script. Shows with a lot of action (like finale episodes) are usually even shorter, around 21 or 22 pages.
We call this script the Record Draft, and this is the version we use to record the actors and which the storyboard artists use to begin visualizing the story. You’ll see numbers next to each dialogue line — these are used to keep track of each line as we record.
Roughly eight weeks later, Bryan, the writers, the supervising producers, the director and assistant director, network executives, and I gather and watch the animatic. The animatic gives us an idea of how the story and action flows. We also get to see how long the episode is. We ship shows to Studio Mir at 23 minutes (for Books 1 & 2) and 22 minutes (for Books 2 & 3).*
Aye-Aye stands guard. Wan, (covered completely in mud, twigs, and leaves) walks up to the spirit. Aye-Aye looks suspicious.
Sometimes animatics run long. Like really long. Like 25 or 26 minutes long. Those are always the toughest because we have to find a way to cut them down without compromising the story. Usually it’s a combination of cutting (or speeding up) some of the action and cutting dialogue. I’m always surprised just how much we can trim out without breaking the story. This episode came in at around 24 minutes, about a minute too long. We make these cuts in yet another group writing session and turn in the Animatic Draft, which the directors use to finalize the storyboards before sending the episode to Studio Mir.
For this episode, the first sequence with Korra and the sage became shorter and shorter with each stage of the writing, until only the essential elements were left. Since this was Wan’s story, it made sense to get to him as quickly as possible. There’s also a scene on page 4 during the chase montage, where Wan is disguised as a woman. It was the least funny of the beats and I don’t miss it at all. It was a good cut. There’s also a short spirit wilds montage scene on page 15 that was cut out — again, it didn’t really add anything to the story, so we got rid of it. The Record draft is 28 pages, but the final version we sent to Studio Mir was 26 pages. And sometimes we have to trim out a little bit more when we edit the final episode.
By breaking down the story into the premise, outline, and script phases, it makes the story writing process much more manageable. It’s similar to the animation process. You can’t start with the final, cleaned up animation. You begin with very rough storyboards and build from there. Likewise with the script. It just wouldn’t work to sit down with a blank script page and start writing some dialogue, hoping the story will gel in the process. Working through the premise and outline helps you as the writer figure out what the story will be. And if you want to make any big changes along the way, it’s much easier (and less demoralizing) to rewrite a few paragraphs of description than an entire script.
Here’s the Record Draft of “Beginnings, Part 1”: K207_RECORD_DRAFT_1.16.12
*Due to Nickelodeon shortening our air times, the length of the shows decreased by a minute for Books 3 & 4. At first, I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to fit all the story we wanted into the shorter length, but it ended up working out fine.
If you missed part 1 or 2 of this series you can find them here: