Script To Screen: “The Abyss”

One of the most dramatic scenes from the 1989 movie The Abyss, written by James Cameron.

Logline: A civilian diving team are enlisted to search for a lost nuclear submarine and face danger while encountering an alien aquatic species.

Here is the scene from the movie:

There are few differences, notably additional dialogue. Can you catch them? And note the camera shots. Cameron had this scene blocked out shot by shot in the script.

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.

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For more articles in the Script To Screen series, go here.