Dr. Grant vs. The Movie We hover above a smattering of as-yet-unrevealed paleontologists unearthing a prehistoric skeleton as titles onscreen reveal we’re in (you guessed it!) Montana. Someone offscreen shouts: OFFSCREEN GUY Dr. Grant, Dr. Sattler…we’re ready to try again! Our leading man stands up into frame and introduces himself: GRANT I hate co

Imagine if Hammond had invited Alan and Ellie to a restaurant and made his proposal there. Sure, we could have them explain how much their work means to them and why it’s important for their dig to have funding. We could possibly even have a scene where some kid bumps into Grant, giving us our first taste of his kid-phobia. But a lot of its impact

In short: mythological tales from around the world have a strikingly similar basic framework—hence the term Monomyth.

And ever in the service of the story above all else, this scene communicates new information to us while reaffirming what it’s already established: Hammond wants experts, and the experts want the means to keep expert-ing.

As the scene stands in the movie, it conveys everything the audience needs to know about the characters and then some. Part of it emerges in dialogue, just as much (if not more) emerges from the staging of the scene and organic interaction amongst everyone involved. And we’re not even 15 minutes into the movie.

benchmark, even for you mystery writers out there. So, we’ve now reached the first milestone of the movie, and we have the basic marching orders of who is involved and why. But beneath that lies a tension sustained by what we don’t know. We know there’s something dangerous about the park (re: minor inciting incident) and we know that Hammond’s mora

OK, we get it: Dr. Grant and technology? Not good bedfellows! Is that it? Not even close. Immediately after his computer gaffe, he solicits some polite laughter for the suggestion that dinosaurs are more closely related to birds than reptiles. While it’s since become more widely accepted, at the time of Jurassic Park’s release this was a fairly new

It doesn’t always take long-winded speeches or epic drama to showcase your characters and their qualities. Something as simple as how they put on a seatbelt can tell the audience almost everything they need to know about

And the audience should be up to speed on those objectives by the time we reach the inciting incident so that everyone’s involvement makes sense. How this can be achieved will vary widely from film to film, of course. For example in an espionage thriller or mystery, there’s a little more room for ambiguity given the confines of the genre. But Juras