Script To Screen: “Dead Poets Society”
The ending scene of the movie Dead Poets Society, written by Tom Schulman.
The ending scene of the movie Dead Poets Society, written by Tom Schulman.
Setup: The schoolboy’s teacher Keating has been fired for deviating from “proper” teaching techniques.
Here is the scene from the movie:
This is one of those scenes where it’s shot almost exactly as specified in the script, a testament to the writer nailing this pivotal moment in the movie.
I’ll see you in comments for a discussion of this terrific scene from Dead Poets Society.
One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, a Go Into The Story series where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.
For more articles in the Script to Screen series, go here.