Beating The Beat Sheet!
What’s up family? As promised we are doing our beat sheet for the ACT I! A beat sheet is when you outline your script by page and important scenes. You’ll know exactly where you’re supposed to be in your story if you follow your beat sheet.
I learned this tactic from Scott King’s Finish The Script! Otherwise, I would never...finish...my...scripts…….
Anyways, here’s a tip for writing your first act: If your first scene isn’t good, if it doesn’t grab attention then the rest of the movie is meaningless (Remember, attention spans are getting shorter). Now this doesn’t mean it has to be a grand action scene like John Wick always being half dead at the start of every movie, but it’s got to make me want to keep reading or watching. If you need more tips, Film Courage has some amazing videos on writing your screenplay!
Now let's get started!
ACT I
Opening -
Project IN Movie opens with The 800, a FBI field ops stealth group, infiltrating the Institute of Innovative Mind’s annual innovation fair, where they show the student’s creations to the general public. As The 800 breaches the door, Agent Blaese disappears; however, the group doesn’t notice and continues to move covertly through the building to the innovation floor where the room is near completely empty, only man is sitting on a table waiting for them, Dr. Daniel Hill.
At the same time, Blaese is alone without any weapons moving and all communications severed working silently through the building and onto the innovation floor where it’s crowded, full of color, and futuristic tech like the world has never seen. He moves through the crowd without making a scene looking for Dr. Hill. He doesn’t find him so he swallows his pride and leaves, but not before taking images of tech blueprints at the fair. The 800 secure Dr. Hill.
Page 3 -
The interrogation of Dr. Hill has ended. During which, Dr. Hill released information that only certain people can enter the school. The FBI realizes Agent Blease is the only one who can enter so they decide to send him to infiltrate the school from the inside.
Pages 3 to 10 -
Blease’s flaw is that he puts the mission over any other murals and he is overly confident in completion of the mission, without a hitch. We show this through telling the audience that he sent his son to the school for a better education. We will introduce supporting FBI agents and his family. Our main supporting cast consist of Blaese’s captain, wife, and son.
Page 10 - Training him to be a STEM professor at the Institute
By this point we’ve established the mission is his priority at any risk and he has every intention of completing it, he places his application to the Institute. His training begins.
Page 30 - Infiltration
Agent Blaese interviews for the job! However in this scene we see Dr. Hill asks very loaded questions but Agent Blaese answers comfortably. We’ll show this by portraying both characters as relaxed however, challenging each other by leaning in and holding eye contact for long periods of time.
The ACT I endpoint -
Agent Blaese gets the job at the school and tells his family about it. He believes it was a cinch.
Thanks for reading! I can’t wait to start my script! But first we have to finish the rest of our beats, which I HOPE to finish by Friday. Next we will be setting our script timeline so that we can start submitting to script contests. See you then!
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