Dying is easy...indie film is hard.

It's the last official day of filming and we're shooting my death scene.  And I'm not dying peacefully in my sleep, either.  I'm going face first into the spinning prop of an airplane!

Michael Madsen is surrounded on the Georgia set of 'Outrage' (photo: Chris Soth)

I'm hired to write a screenplay for an independent film, to be entitled Outrage, shooting in Georgia in the spring.  There's a budget for the screenplay AND a budget for the shoot, if a small one.  But even as a produced studio screenwriter, an actual produced movie is rare, and these guys might just be crazy enough to do it!  So I grab the gig and get to work...I'm given this story line: "Two vacationing couples are held hostage in a remote Georgia hunting lodge - they escape into the woods, but are hunted by their captors."

I'm also told, "This is what we have to work with:"

A limousine
2 All-terrain vehicles
One jeep
The hunting lodge
A small propeller plane

All of these belonging to our, or attainable by, our chief investor.  I'm also given these strictures:

An 18-day shooting schedule
A "name actor" for the villain who can only shoot two days
And almost no money to spend

This is the world of independent film.  My writing group is stunned: "This is how ALL movies should be made!"

There will be a jeep and ATV chase, of course.  The lodge will basically house acts one and three.  But I can't stop thinking about that airplane...how many little indie films get to use one of those?  That'll look like money up on the screen.

I sell the director on casting me in a role to save an extra salary and to have the writer on the set during filming.  He goes for it and I start planning a glorious death...

I break the story into Mini-Movies, the "reels" or "sequences" that I originally learned at the University of Southern California and teach through my website, MillionDollarScreenwriting.com.  The biggest challenge:

That lead actor...and such limited screen time for the antagonist.  My solution:

Make the villain a sniper.  In fact, his backstory is reminiscent of the DC Sniper of a few years back, the one that held the nation in a thrall of terror for three weeks one summer.  He'll have escaped from a military prison, using the hunting lodge as his hideout, with three henchman...he's the hunter, the henchmen are his hounds.  He'll use us (I'm playing a henchman!) to hunt down his prey or flush them from the brush so he can take his shot.

This way: The henchmen can stand in as antagonists for Act Two

The Antagonist's presence can be felt at any time, by:

a) a shot ripping in from off-screen with an explosive BANG!
or b) a POV shot of our heroes through a sniper scope matte...

...maybe with some ominous breathing...

Hopefully, with these additions, the villain's presence can be palpable and terrifying... even when he's off-screen.  And yes, this solution saves us tens of thousands of dollars for every day we don't need to shoot:

Michael Madsen...who ends up taking the sniper role.

And these are the economic solutions we have to embrace all the way in both preparation and production.  When I first turn in the airport action sequence, no one thinks it can be done:

"How do we show them dying in the propeller."

Show the propellor.  Show a reaction shot.   Cut to blood splattering on the fuselage.  Like Speilberg did in Raiders.

"We can't afford to have the sniper shoot the airplane's tire, the tire's too expensive."

Cut inside the cockpit...put a BANG on the soundtrack...tilt the camera, and have an actor shout:

"He's shooting out our tires!"

The scene concerns our heroes' one chance at escape...making their way from the hunting lodge to a remote airstrip in an attempt to fly away from their pursuers and get help.  One of the four has already been shot back at the lodge, his wife and another couple race to the plane...

As they reach the cockpit, the henchmen appear at the end of the runway, coming toward them, to stop the take-off.  Our heroine starts the plane, but the wife of the victim back at the lodge is missing...the henchmen get closer...they might be able to block the take-off...

...the victim's wife appears from nowhere, attacking them to revenge her dead husband...and save her friends by allowing them to take off and fly away safely...one of these men nearly raped her earlier...and he's the focus of her attack...

...just when it looks like she may have saved her friends -

BANG.  The presence of the villain is felt again - he shoots out the tire of the plane.  And...

BANG.  The victim's wife becomes a victim herself...she's shot by the sniper.

But with her last breath she grabs two of the henchmen and roots them to that spot - right in the path of the oncoming propeller.  The one who tried to rape her in a sensual embrace...and the other (ME!) dragged behind them into the whirring prop blade by a airplane-chock rope around his ankle...

That's how the script was written.  Here's how it went over two days of shooting:

We arrived at the airport to find two things radically different than I have envisioned them in the writing of the script:

The types of chocks used at the Macon County Airport are not the sort I had in mind, with longer ropes so that the chocks can be pulled out from under airplane tires at a great distance.  Instead, they were two wooden blocks joined by about two feet of rope...and these were the kind that had been made up in foam rubber by our props department for our actress to beat the henchmen up with. 

That rope won't go around my ankle.  And it won't drag me into a propeller.

Luckily, the first unexpected problem is solved by the second unexpected development at the airport:  we're working with a twin prop plane!

I quickly rewrite the scene on the set:  the victim comes onto the airstrip, swinging the chocks, knocking all three henchmen to the ground, the airplane tires are shot out, the victim is shot and she embraces her would-be rapist, kissing him to distract from the approaching propeller...she knows she's doomed, but she'll take him with her!

Then...I regain consciousness just in time to stand up -

-- and be taken out by the OTHER PROP.

I say "rewrite," but what I do is pitch the change to our stunt coordinator, director and cinematographer on the set.  They all agree it's easier and kind of cool, exploiting more about this particular plane.  We shoot the first part early in the schedule...

...and my own scene starring opposite the propeller on the last official day of shooting.

Movies are always a course in problem-solving.  Sometimes you just have to solve them fast and cheap.

Chris Soth is the screenwriter of FIRESTORM and the upcoming OUTRAGE.  He is the founder of the website MillonDollarScreenwriting.com, teaching his own method of sequential structure.  He has also just begun HollywoodByPhone.com, offering weekly conference calls with working Hollywood agents, managers, producers, writers and studio executives.  If you'd like to read the OUTRAGE screenplay, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it