Yesterday I posted a link to Robert Legato giving a Ted Talk on how he has created the visual effects on specific shots for Apollo 13, Titanic and Hugo. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s the link again:

http://www.ted.com/talks/rob_legato_the_art_of_creating_awe.html

It was an interesting talk, but at first I didn’t think it applied very much to screenwriting. But then something occurred to me as he was speaking about the shots that he created on Hugo. They wanted to create a sprawling shot through the labyrinth of the train station in order to show how the character of Hugo was the master of his domain, and the best way to do that was a single trucking shot, similar to the famous shot in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta’s character, Henry, is entering the nightclub. You can watch the talk to get the details on how they managed to create the shot, and it’s a fascinating process. What struck me, however, was how integral that moment was and how necessary VFX became in the effective telling of the story.

As writers, we quite often look at VFX as the enemy of story. And if not the enemy, at least the antithesis. There are a countless number of big budget VFX films that only use the story as a means to get to the next action sequence.  However, there are some filmmakers who have figured out how to integrate dynamic VFX seamlessly with a quality story. Certainly Martin Scorsese did it in Hugo. J.J. Abrams has managed to do it in his films, and Steven Spielberg has been doing it for decades.

As writers, it’s time for us to embrace VFX and be willing to write them into our scripts. Use moments like the one in Hugo, or any others that you create to help craft the story. If a heavy VFX scene starts in the script and is incorporated in to the story at that point, there is a greater chance that it will have a positive affect on the story rather than some cursory adrenaline rush that the vast majority of them produce.

Screenwriters are in a unique position to use cinema’s biggest draw and reclaim what that draw has destroyed. Are you tired of seeing these big-budget spectacles that are nothing more than eye-candy for two and a half interminable hours? Then write them into your script, but make them move the story forward. Make them show depth in your character. Make them show insight into the story. You can do it. You’re a writer.

Let’s take cinema back!