Welcome to the very first Scream Writing, your one stop shop for advice on writing the horror screenplay. Today we’re going to be talking about 2015’s, filmed in Canada, The Blackcoat’s Daughter (original: February); directed and, more importantly, written by Oz Perkins. The film has been called “a self-contained tale of evil that knows exactly what it’s doing” and, though it has been a decisive film with viewers, the opinion of critics has lead it into being “certified fresh” on the review aggregator website RottenTomatoes. Stephen Danay wrote in their review of The Blackcoat’s Daughter that “Perkins excels at using music and sound design to unnerve the audience in a way that goes beyond stings timed to jump scares” and it’s precisely the way that Perkins utilizes this sound design at the screenplay level that we can learn from.
FADE IN:
Those are the words that are supposed to begin every screenplay. At least, if you are following the advice that everyone seems to keep giving. “The Very first item on the first page” (emphasis added) says The Writers Store in an article that, while I have found much use learning from, has never been updated since the year I first found it. However, within the horror genre we find examples of highly regarded films disregarding this advice and opening their screenplays in a series of inventive ways:
- Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2016) opens with a cast of characters and a history lesson to help the reader make sense of the viewpoints through which the characters of the era lived.
- Phil Hay & Matt Manfredi’s the invitation (2015) begins first with DARKNESS and then, much like we’ll see with The Blackcoat’s Daughter, brings in sound. However, in contrast with Perkins film, the invitation follows the sounds of the pool party we’ve been listening to in the darkness with shots of the empty backyard from which it took place; thus, it uses its opening to hint at backstory and it represses the memory of what happened like it’s characters attempt to do.
- James Wong and Glen Morgan’s Final Destination (2000) begins by reminding us all of our impending death and suggests death as a hidden omnipresence by informing the reader that ”The BLACK SILENT SCREEN senses this moment” before beginning the film.
The Blackcoat’s Daughter refuses the long held “wisdom” of the FADE IN:. Instead, it chooses to begin with:
CLICK CLACK. CLICK CLACK. CLICK CLACK.
The sound of heeled shoes on hard floor, chattering like overlapping voices.
A sound we become very familiar with as Perkins next presents us with various areas within The Bramford School for Girls. All empty. Still asleep in the first pale light of morning. No sign of anyone moving around anywhere. But yet, before we leave each scene for a new heading we are reminded of the CLICK CLACK of heeled shoes. Closer now. The sound preceding the image primes us, even while reading, to pay as much attention to the sonic scape being presented to us as we are the visual. The repetition of our desynchronized or invisible walker further provokes curiosity as it draws us deeper into our “inner ear.”
When we’re writing a screenplay (or, if not writing then editing), it’s important to try to keep the audience in mind. The first CLICK CLACK announces that the film proper has started while it also foreshadows the coming images. What’s more, we come to learn that we are in either a dream, vision, or nightmare of temptation that climaxes with the understanding that one of our lead character’s parents are dead. When we leave the dream we also leave behind, for the time being, the sound of the walking. Instead, we now are presented with the HISSING of the radiator. Beginning the script as Perkins does serves to make us pay attention to the sonic scape of the film but it also teaches the observient reader that sound foreshadows violence in the same way that it foreshadowed the image.
Later on in the script we are given a piece of foreshadowing that points towards events that will come to pass:
Rose yanks open a clunky old kitchen drawer and silverware clangs around inside, JANGLING metal on metal.
Spoons and forks. And knives. Some longer and sharper than others.
Rose takes out four large spoons and closes the drawer. JANGLING metal on metal.
Did you catch it? “And knives. Some longer and sharper than others.” seems about as on the nose as you can get if you’ve seen the movie before. But what separates this line from being a piece of atmosphere building is the focus, and repetition, of the sound effects the moment evokes. We have just seen food being poured, people handling dishes, but it is in this shot of the silverware drawer that Perkins directs our attention to and isolates sonically among all the rest; as we’ve come to learn, sound brings change in The Blackcoat’s Daughter and that change is often violent.
By choosing to disregard the “time honoured advice” of beginning with FADE IN:, Perkins manages not only to begin his story with a strong sense of mood and foreboding but also primes the readers to the importance of sound effects which not only convey foreshadowing information but also engage the reader through another of their primary senses other than visual. Perkins made a choice with how to start his screenplay, as every screenwriter must do, but by following what was right for the story rather than what traditional wisdom has chosen to engrain, he created an altogether phenomenal script that built the foundation of a profoundly powerful story about loss wrapped inside of a possession narrative.
