My Second Style Model/ Source Material Part 1

For my second style model, I have chosen the film adaption of the Michael Morpurgo book 'War Horse' directed by Steven Spielberg. This is the first of two scenes which particularly caught my eye for various reasons explained below and in the next post.

 

Pg 85 War Horse Film Script- (visual directions/description)

 

This is an extract from the script of the film 'War Horse' which was originally a book written by Michael Morpurgo. The extract below is a section of visual directions that describes the scene and I chose to use it because I think that it paints a very clear image and manages to build suspense well. This section of the film is where Joey, the horse, escapes the German's hold and runs away into the thick of the war, on no-man's-land.

'He is suddenly in the thick of battle. A shell explodes next to him, and he leaps entirely over a trench. Another explosion sends him leaping, but not far enough – he finds himself crashing downwards, and into a trench - and he races through it - and finds himself charging towards a German company. Both sides are equally startled – Joey charging through a thin trench lined with German soldiers - the soldiers, finding a live horse careering through them. In desperation, Joey scrambles out of the trench - and once again, rushes away from the fighting...

But now it is very dark indeed - he is stumbling as he runs - there is blood mixed with the mud on his legs. Now it is total night - fog - confusion - he jumps again. And now everywhere there are potholes - the land is massively uneven - shells are exploding all around. And suddenly sees in front of him barbed wire. He crashes through it - more - he bursts through again - now dragging barriers behind him - the barriers tangle, pulling him up short - he flips and lands amongst even more barbed wire. He pulls and turns to release himself but it is impossible. The more he pulls, the more firmly he is trapped. He rises up, wild, magnificent, a beast fighting for his life. He is completely trapped. He cannot move. He cannot see. He is in pain. He falls. It feels like an end.'

 

 

Imagery is the most important part of this extract for me. The vast detail in descriptions and clear images produced make the scene so much more shocking than simply watching the movie alone. It is so easy to miss the instrumental details when you are just watching whereas in this description of the scene, you experience the pain, the adrenaline and the fear experienced by Joey, even though he is just a horse. Another feature that I really like about this extract is the sentence structure and use of simple word order and grammar. I know that these are just directions and not actual dialogue and therefore there was no need for it to be linguistically beautiful with sophisticated vocabulary etc. However, I feel that the simplicity of the language is more effective anyway in making the reader focus entirely on the scene being created instead of trying to make sense of what the writer has said. With the simple structure and language, the text can be read at a pace that accommodates the adrenaline and tension being created, allowing the reader to speed up and slowdown as they see fit. Another important reason why I have chosen this scene as one of my source materials is for it's information value. This allows me to envision what the atmosphere was like at the time and create more realistic images and scenes in my own piece of writing. This writing is very straight-forward and irect becaus eit is stating exactly what can be seen on screen. That said, it does make the extract more powerful because of it's use of repetition and onomatopeoia. Becasue this piece of writing is not supposed to be read and it is jsut written to describe the visual, it is quite impersonal and narrative.