Unlike pure imagination, writing directly in a real location allows you to draw from its unique details. The settings then become sources of inspiration, facilitating the writing of realistic, cost-effective, and deeply rooted scripts.
Imagining Everything…
When writing a script, you can imagine anything, the wildest, most fantastical things. And then, you’ll strive to bring them to life on screen. Take *Star Wars*, for example, which required months, if not years, to realize George Lucas’s imagination. It’s thrilling to work this way because the community of artists enriches and gives form to the author’s vision. However, it can also lead to disappointment, often due to budget constraints, and you might not be able to translate the images in your head to the screen as fully as you’d hoped.
Or Imagining Better
I propose a counterapproach, almost the opposite yet highly ambitious, which I have successfully experimented with hundreds of times. Instead of imagining, for example, a grand castle where our medieval story will take place, let’s go to an actual castle to write our script. This castle is what we call the setting. The castle we’re in, the setting, holds countless unique features: a spiral staircase in an attic, a grand entrance no one uses because it’s more practical to enter through the back, a hall of mirrors where you see yourself reflected infinitely, and so on. The setting itself will inspire situations—with the mirrors, the staircase, the roof, the ponds, the woods, etc. Thus, instead of writing purely from our minds, if we write within the physical reality we can experience by being there, then a particular bench, a boxwood maze, or a caretaker’s house might, when combined with our inner imagination, spark creativity and ignite great creative fires.
For Better Films
Moreover, scenes written this way can be realistically filmed because these locations already exist. There’s no need to build sets. Of course, this comes with certain constraints. For example, you can’t place cameras absolutely anywhere you want. But these few limitations are far outweighed by the profound connection we can create between the story being told, the characters’ experiences, and the setting itself. Films conceived and written this way carry an exceptional intrinsic strength, and they are also cost-effective to produce while being highly ambitious in terms of settings: castles, streets, boats, apartments, garages, businesses, libraries…
First, this approach provides inspiration. Second, it makes films easier to produce. And third, it significantly enhances the quality of the narratives, which are woven into the treasures of architecture, urbanism, and nature. Of course, it might cost a train ticket to Saint-Malo and a night at a hotel, but this investment is so valuable that it’s truly worth it!
