3031
Current Talk '24 I / Re: Happy 50th Anniversary, Night of Dark Shadows
« on: September 08, 2023, 02:12:24 PM »
Revisiting how Scenes 41 through 45 are scripted:
...
DISSOLVE TO:
41 EXT - FRONT OF COLLINWOOD - NIGHT - WIDE ANGLE 41
It is much later. The house is completely dark.
The only sound is the GENTLE MOANING OF THE WIND.
Suddenly the strange light we saw in the opening
sequence begins to emanate from the Tower Room.
CAMERA starts a SLOW ZOOM IN
42 INT - MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT 42
Quentin and Tracy are asleep. The curtains billow
gently at the windows. CAMERA STARTS A SLOW TRUCK
IN on Quentin as he begins to stir restlessly in
his sleep. Finally he rolls over on his back. His
eyes are wide open and he seems to be listening
intently to some unheard sound. Slowly he starts
to rise from the bed as CAMERA TRUCKS back revealing
Tracy still sound asleep. Quentin, now out of the
bed and moving as if in a trance, puts on his robe
and quietly EXITS the room.
43 INT - CORRIDOR - OUTSIDE MASTER BEDROOM - LOW 43
ANGLE
as Quentin ENTERS the shot PAN with him as he
starts toward the stairway to the third floor.
44 EXT - COLLINWOOD - NIGHT 44
SHOT favors the windows of the Tower Room, they
still glow faintly from the light within.
HOLD on this for a moment as Quentin suddenly
appears near the windows and then moves out of
44 CONTD CONTD 44
sight toward another part of the room. RACK
FOCUS to EXTREME CLOSE-UP of Gerard, who has
been standing there watching, his eyes blazing
with hatred.
DISSOLVE TO:
45 INT - MASTER BEDROOM - NIGHT 45
Tracy, alone in the bed, stirs, half awake. She
reaches out for Quentin, awakens a little more,
sees he is gone. Then she falls back to sleep.
End of scene - though not end of sequence as it will pick up in tomorrow's post with the morning after...
And there are still no differences between the way DC's and Grayson Hall's scripts are written up to this point - but there is a notations in DC's script that we'll get into below...
...
...unlike how the script indicates that the end of Scene 40 dissolves into the beginning of Scene 41, in the film it's actually a simple cut to a shot -
- of the front of Collinwood - and the shot does not show any light in the tower room, nor does the shot zoom in - however, in one of the trailers for the film there is a shot of the back Collinwood that zooms in to a light moving in the tower room -
- so it's quite possible that is the shot that was originally intended to be Scene 41 - and DC has a notation on his script that he wanted Scene 45 to come before the section of Scene 44 that deals with Gerard.
And as we know, Scenes 42 through 45 do not appear in the film as it stands. Due to MGM's demanded cuts, they are replaced by a dream sequence that's made up of Scene 126 (though audio only from some of the dialogue from that scene), Scene 145 & 146, and Scenes 101 through 103 (though in Grayson's script part of Scene 101 was originally Scene 67 before a 3/31 rewrite - but more on that when we get to that part of the script).