Hell Hole Movie Script

By Donald Firesmith

The movie script for the full-length feature film, Hell Hole, based on the book Hell Holes: What Lurks Below. When a strange hole opens up in the Arctic and ravenous demons emerge, a scientist, his ex-wife, and a member of an ancient secret order must team up to close the hole and save humanity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald Firesmith
• Release date: Apr 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370152926

Donald Firesmith

Donald Firesmith is a multi-award-winning author of speculative fiction including science fiction (alien invasion), fantasy (magical wands), and modern urban paranormal novels.Prior to recently retiring to devote himself full-time to his novels, Donald Firesmith earned an international reputation as a distinguished engineer, authoring seven system/software engineering books based on his 40+ years spent developing large, complex software-intensive systems.He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his wife Becky, his son Dane, and varying numbers of dogs and cats.You can learn more about the author by visiting his personal website:http://sites.google.com/a/firesmith.net/donald-firesmith/His magical wands and autographed copies of his books are also available from the Firesmith’s Wand Shoppe at: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FiresmithWandShop

Book preview

Preface

Genesis of the Script

Quite a few people, who have reviewed the books in my Hell Holes series, have said that they thought it would make a good movie. I have to admit, I’ve often thought so too. So, when I had the opportunity in April 2017 to pitch my novel, Hell Holes: What Lurks Below, to Hollywood producer, Michael Chamoy, I took it. A few days later, Mike and Hollywood producer, Nat Mundel, phoned me. I was happy and not a little surprised when they told me they wanted to produce a full-length science fiction feature film based on my book.

A couple of days later and after quite a bit of thought and discussion, I granted Mike and Nat one year’s shopping rights to the book. That essentially means that I granted them the exclusive right for one year to find a studio and investors to buy, or at least option, the rights to the movie. Part of that agreement stated that they would have a movie script written and that I would own that script.

Approximately one month later, Mike hired Leland Anderson to write an initial spec script for the movie based on the book. After discussing the movie with Mike and me, Leland created an outline for the movie. After Mike and I reviewed the outline, the three of us reached a consensus on changes Leland would make to the script, and Leland got to work. He produced a first draft of the script, and once again, Mike and I reviewed the script and we reached a consensus on additional changes to make. Leland delivered the final script was delivered on February 26th.

As you can see, producing the movie script has been a long process, taking nearly a year to complete. I consider myself to be fortunate to have been involved in the reviewing all three work products, and Mike and Leland accepted and incorporated all of my major recommendations.

Accepting Another Writer’s Vision

It’s been very interesting to see how someone else could take my premise, plot, and characters and tell a different, though similar, story. Some things have been improved, such as the prologue and the resulting changed relationship between Dr. Jack Oswald and his wife, Dr. Angela Menendez. The script also introduces a major antagonist, which is understandable because every good protagonist needs an antagonist to embody the opposition. Some characters have been added, and some original characters have been deleted. All in all, I can definitely see the resulting script turned into a movie I would be proud of. Besides, IF (and it’s still a big if) the movie does eventually get made, I am sure that the script will be rewritten by another script writer, and that the actors and especially the director, will also make significant changes.

My Rewrite of the Script

Once the initial script was finished, Mike also produced a movie treatment that described the script, outlined its strengths and weaknesses, and listed several ways the producers might market it. A few weeks later, I was in Los Angeles and had the pleasure of having lunch with Mike. We spent a very pleasant hour and a half discussing the script as well as many other topics including Mike’s experience working on movies and TV series. Most importantly, we also discussed several additional changes that could improve the marketability of the script.

Once we had developed a list of potential improvements, I decided to do my own rewrite of Leland script. Over the course of a month, I made the following changes to his script:

I removed unnecessary camera and sound directions that made the script less readable for the story analyst and didn’t belong in a spec script.

I removed unnecessary differences between the script and the book series (especially with regard to the demons and their alien tech).

I lowered the age of two main characters needed to better attract a younger audience.

I gave the central character, Jack Oswald, a bigger part in the final struggle.

I provided more explanation of the character, Aileen O’Shannon, and gave her a bigger part in the movie.

I allowed the character, Kathryn Neuhausen, to survive because she’s such a kick-as female character and Mark Starr’s love interest.

I filled out the implicit underlying emotional stories to increase audience empathy with the characters.

I made some improvements in the dialog and action descriptions.

I delivered my updated version of Leland’s script to the producers the first week of April 2018, and that is the version published in this book.

Movie Scripts

A movie script is quite different than a book. Perhaps the three most important and obvious of these differences are:

Content. A movie consists of only what you can see and hear. It therefore emphasizes action (what you see) and dialog (what you hear). Unlike in a novel, a character’s thoughts and emotional state can only be conveyed through his actions and speech.

Format. The most obvious difference is the script’s extremely standardized structure and format. For example, a script is always printed in Courier font, in which each letter and digit has the same width. This is why scripts look like they are written on a typewriter rather than a computer or laptop. The different components of a script (for example, action and dialog) must be justified at specific distances from the left and right margins. One advantage of this standardized format is that one page of script equates to roughly one minute of screen time.

Length. While books come in a wide range of page counts, a movie must fit within a fairly standard timeslot. This, combined with the one minute per page heuristic, is the reason why movie scripts typically run from 100 to 120 pages. Most books are considerably longer, both in terms of page count as well as the number of words per page. Thus, adapting a book into a movie involves a great deal of condensation and deletion.

Reading Movie Scripts

The Hell Hole script is a spec script, which that is produced prior to obtaining funding on the speculation that it will eventually be produced. Unlike a production script, a spec script is primarily used to sell the movie. It is intended to be easy to read and therefore the simplest form of script. For example, it avoids camera directions and indications of sound effects that are typically added later by a director.

To read the Hell Hole script, it definitely helps if you understand the different components of the script. As indicated in the following figure, a spec script primarily consists of the following parts:

Scene Heading. A scene heading marks the beginning of a scene, whereby a scene is a continuous part of the movie that is filmed in a single location. A scene heading is left justified and written in all caps. It also consists of three parts:

INT./EXT., which denotes whether the scene is to be filmed inside a building or a vehicle (designated by INT for interior), filmed outdoors (designated by EXT for exterior), or both.

Location, which is the location where the scene takes place.

Time, which is when the scene takes place. Common examples of time include DAY, NIGHT, CONTINUOUS, LATER, MOMENTS LATER

Action. Action describes everything important that is taking place on the screen including what characters are doing and sounds other than dialog. The name of a character is in all caps the first time that character is introduced. Underlining is used to emphasize the underlined word.

Character. A character is the name or role that is played by an actor. A character is printed in all caps starting in a specific location near the center of the page. If dialog from the same character is separated by action, (CONT.) is added to indicate the character’s dialog is continued. Finally, (O.S.) is used to indicate that the character speaking is local but not visible, where as (V.O.) is used to signify that the character speaking is not local (e.g., on the phone) or not moving her mouth (e.g., speaking by telepathy).

Parenthetical. A parenthetical tells an actor how to deliver the following dialog. It often tells the actor to whom to speak or with what emotion. A parenthetical consists of the direction in parentheses and is located immediately below