For nearly 15 years, I've had a 126-page Raiders of the Lost Ark story conference transcript in my possession. And it opens with a corker of insight from George Lucas whose scriptwriting tactic here has always held special appeal to me:
"In the end I want to end up with a list of scenes. And the way I work generally is I figure a code, a general measuring stick parameter. I can either come up with thirty scenes or sixty scenes depending on which scale you want to work on. A thirty scene thing means that each scene is going to be around four pages long. A sixty one means that every scene is going to run two pages long... You can move things around, but it generally gives you an idea, assuming that what we really want at the end of all this is a hundred and twenty page script, or less... I have a tendency to work rather mathematically about all this stuff. I found it easier and it does lay things out... We want to keep things interspaced and at the same time build it. As I build this up, you'll see it's done vaguely by the numbers."
I rarely, if ever, encounter screenwriters who apply even a simple metrical approach to their craft but I've found it makes all the difference in helping suffuse a given work with greater cohesion and consistency. With all that shared and said, I am definitely looking forward to Indy's final adventure in Dial of Destiny!
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