A short time later, Tanis was consumed by the desert in a sandstorm that lasted a year.īut before that, the Pharoah had the Ark hidden away in a secret chamber called the Well of the Souls. The chest the Hebrews used to carry around the Ten Commandments.Īn Egyptian pharoah stole the Ark from Jerusalem and took it back to the city of Tanis. It all has to do with the Ark of the Covenant. Over the last two years the Nazis have had teams of archeologists running around the world looking for all kinds of religious artifacts. Here’s just one chunk of that scene from the Raiders of the Lost Ark screenplay: It’s 100% pure exposition, and sets up nearly everything we need to know about Indy’s quest to follow, but it takes up a lot of space, as far as screenplay pages. It’s done deftly on screen, but the text of the scene in the original screenplay draft stretches to 5-1/2 pages. In that big, talky scene, Indy gives us what amounts to nothing less than a massive data dump: Hitler’s after the Lost Ark, the ark makes any army invincible, the Staff of Ra, the headpiece to the Staff of Ra, the Well of the Souls, etc. Weighing the sand in the bag before taking the idol, using his whip to cross the chasm, dusting the tarantulas off of Satipo’s back- these are also little moments of exposition that add up in a way that tells us a lot about Indy’s character.īut perhaps the most “classic” example of exposition in Raiders is the dialogue between Indy and the government men, at Indy’s college. That would be an example of a small moment of exposition, which sets up Indy’s fear of snakes, and pays it off by raising the stakes towards the end of Act 2 when he opens the Well of Souls and discovers that it’s literally crawling with hundreds of snakes. In the plane with Jock, having just escaped a murderous army of Peruvian indians, we learn Indiana Jones has a immense fear of snakes, as he freaks out over Jock’s pet Reggie who happens to be sharing a seat with Indy. Let’s take a few examples of screenplay exposition from one of the greatest movies of all time, Raiders of the Lost Ark. Exposition can be a small moment, or it can be a series of small moments, or it can be a long list of things. It’s what your audience needs to know about the characters or situation, in order for the events that take place in the story to have any meaning or impact. So what is screenplay exposition? Put simply, it’s setup. Heck, writing anything with brevity and clarity is actually a difficult task, even for experienced wordsmiths. Writing exposition in a screenplay, and writing is well, is not always easy, especially for first-time screenwriters.
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