The script deals with today's big scene as such:
EXT. BLUE WHALE BAR - NIGHT
Carolyn leaves the Blue Whale and starts down the sidewalk. Ground fog willows around her feet as she cuts down the cobbled street. As she walks, CUT TO:
A DISTORTED, NIGHT-VISION POV.
Weird, over-exposed, it' s the intense, night-acclimated vision of the VAMPIRE as he hunts in the darkness, following Carolyn down the street.
OUT OF THE POV, Carolyn suddenly turns, as if sensing something. As she passes a wooden fence, a
FROTHING DOG
suddenly jams against the slats, spittle flying as it BARKS ferociously. Carolyn JUMPS as the air fills with other ANIMAL CRIES. Freaked, Carolyn picks up the pace, spotting
GRIFFIN'S GARAGE.
A late-model Mercedes is parked out front under the branches of a large tree that also shades the garage itself. Seeing the car, Carolyn hurries forward...
THE VAMPIRE'S NIGHT-VISION POV
continues to follow her, moving up on Carolyn as she nears the car, closer, almost on top of her... As the POV ENDS,
CAROLYN
spins, but sees NOTHING. Unnervingly, however, all the animal noises STOP. Scared, Carolyn does a complete 360, but the streets are empty. She relaxes for a moment...It's at this moment that Carolyn delivers today's quote -
Page 26 - Carolyn: 'Looks like Halloween's over.'
- then the script continues with:
She's about to slide her key into the car door when.
POWERFUL HANDS
suddenly reach DOWN from the dark tree. The Vampire GRABS CAROLYN around the throat and using superhuman strength,
LIFTS HER BODILY,
kicking helplessly, her SCREAM strangled off as she disappears into the dark tree. Between the branches, we
catch quick FLASHES of action...
A GLIMMER of blood-red eyes. Carolyn's eyes, WIDE and TERRIFIED. Then a sudden, violent SLASH of WHITE FANGS. All at once, the RUSTLING stops.
INT. GRIFFIN'S GARAGE - NIGHT
A repair bay, crowded with tools. Looking up from the floor, there's a glass SKYLIGHT with a view of the tree overhead. In EERIE SLOW-MOTION,
CAROLYN'S UNCONSCIOUS BODY
falls out of the darkness, CRASHING THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT to the floor below. OFF CAROLYN'S BLOODIED BODY, sprawled on the floor amidst glistening shards of glass...However, there are differences in the actual pilot.
For one, Carolyn doesn't leave the Blue Whale because the Blue Whale scene was never shot - we simply see her on streets in Collinsport (like similar sequences were shot with Daphne in the pilot for the '91 DS). And because the Blue Whale scene was never shot, I suspect that's why they decided to move the scene between Carolyn and Joe so that things would flow more smoothly to Carolyn out on the streets.
For another, Carolyn doesn't encounter any frothing dog (sorry, frothing dog fans).
I don't recall any vampire night-vision POV effect (but I left it on the chart in the pilot's section just in case it is there or somehow alluded to as an effect to be added later).
Also, I don't recall any sounds as Carolyn walks along other than crickets - and I don't recall the sounds of the crickets coming to a stop (though that may be because the score replaces them).
I'm thinking Carolyn simply becomes nervous, as if she's being followed, but after she looks around and sees nothing, relieved, she makes her Halloween remark and then continues on - she barely has a clue of what's about to happen to her until it's much, much too late.
What actually happens in the pilot, and what is really quite effectively done to build suspense, is that at first Carolyn sees a few leaves falling from a nearby tree. She looks up and sees nothing - but the audience soon sees a figure stealthily stalk across one of the tree's branches. Carolyn then sees a larger group of leaves fall. She looks up again, and this time she sees the withered (but now recognizable to those who know Alec Newman) face of Barnabas with fangs bared. He swoops down, grabs her, and carries the screaming girl up into the tree to feast upon. (After having seen the attack on Kelly and then watching this sequence, basically everyone at the screening I was at in '05 was going, "Whoa - this is amazing!!" And thankfully so unlike anything we've ever seen before in any version of DS.)
And finally, unlike the script, in the pilot there is no scene inside Griffin's Garage in which we see Carolyn fall through the skylight. Though Griffin's Garage does play a part in things, as we'll learn in an upcoming scene when Joe explains how Carolyn was found.
And just to give you a bit of an idea of how Barnabas looked up in the tree, here's a production drawing:
Though he looked different in the pilot (for one, we already know his clothes are different) - and I honestly suspect his face in the pilot was created with a CGI effect rather than makeup. But we'll get into why I suspect that when we get into tomorrow's scene...