After communicating with the people who were personally involved in the news investigation and reviewing most of the materials, Murphy began to write the outline of the script for "Spotlight", which was completely different from the previous ones, and it was very different from "The Dark City", everything in the script was basically not exaggerated, everything had to be in line with the facts, and it could withstand the investigation of any person or organization. Pen | fun | pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

While there is always a proper amount of artistic exaggeration in the film, and Murphy has directed films based on real people in the past, those themes are nowhere near as serious as this one.

You know, the villain mask in the movie is the Catholic Church today! If there is a false situation in the future film, it will inevitably become a laughing stock in the attack of Catholicism!

This was not what Murphy wanted.

Therefore, in the process of writing the script, Murphy always adhered to a principle and was objective enough.

Murphy's script is like a feature report on the activities of the "Spotlight" feature group back then, leading people to the truth step by step.

The content is a complete reproduction of the situation of the past, such as the fact that the reporters did not encounter difficulties in the course of the investigation: the public relations department specifically warned to be careful not to anger the Catholic subscribers who make up 53 percent of the Boston Globe; The Church is powerful, and the upper classes are unwilling to tear off the veil of hypocrisy and make it too unseemly; The wavering of the reporter's personal beliefs, confronting the heavy depression of the pain of many others, and the impact of busy work on marriage; There is even the cruelty of journalism itself - the team caught up with the "9/11" of 2001 in the final stages of its investigation and evidence collection, and the "bigger" news forced reporters to take a break from reporting more "important" news, while explaining and apologizing to the victims they contacted, and at the same time beware of being sniffed out by their peers and stealing the opportunity to report......

Sensationalism is definitely not suitable for this film, and it is also more powerful to reveal the facts that existed back then from an objective standpoint.

If there is no objectively existing content, it is called slander, not counterattack!

In the entire outline of the script, Murphy almost eliminated the drama, completely flat and straightforward, without deliberately scandalizing the priests who committed crimes, and there was no exciting picture of crime.

For example, when he was writing a scene in the script, the female reporter Sasha visited the priests involved in the case one by one, ate a lot of closed doors, and met an old priest with a charitable face, who admitted unguardedly that he had molested boys, and calmly said, "I have never felt happy in this matter myself." ”

In reality, all the clergy are secretive about this matter, only this one named Ronald? Father Paquin, who openly confessed what he had done, was raped by a Catholic priest himself, as he recounts in the script.

These are not sensational, let alone critical, but objectively displayed in front of the audience.

In the face of such a serious situation, without a script at all, without a director, and without a conclusion in the final film, the audience is enough to judge good and evil, right and wrong!

Similarly, Murphy doesn't need to preach heroism, let alone the intrigues and dangers that are usually found in commercial films of the same theme; Even if someone questioned why the information was not done at the time when the materials were sent to the newspaper a few years ago? Nor is it a possible reversal: Robbie Robinson, the editor of the Focus group, turned out to find that it was his own negligence that left out the source and delayed the possible story by seven years—a true representation that even good journalists make mistakes.

The biggest conflict he uses in the script is that the journalist Mike finds the most crucial evidence and eagerly asks for a press release from the team leader, who suppresses his impulse to get justice: the bigger truth is behind, the in-depth reporting can't just cause an uproar, and if the church apologizes in a few cases, it won't bring about a real change in society, and their journalistic ambition is to "deal with the whole system".

After a month-long effort to finalize the script outline, Murphy once again recruited the screenwriting team at Stanton Studios into the project, continuing to work collectively to flesh out the script.

Even a film with such a very serious subject matter can't get rid of the fate of the Hollywood assembly line in the end.

In terms of the concept of an assembly line factory, the production process of a film needs to go through multiple "assembly line" procedures, including screenwriters, directors, actors, photographers, sound recordings, props, costumes and other departments, and each department is more finely divided.

For example, the screenwriting department has various special parts such as "proposing intentions", "structuring the main plot", "adding secondary plots", "writing dialogues", "adding gimmicks", etc., all of which are presided over by people with sufficient special personnel; The director department has a "main director" and an "assistant director" section dedicated to various types of scenes; The actor department has specialists who are responsible for discovering actors, and actors are divided into different types. Other departments also have a fine division of labor and employ a variety of experts to perform their duties.

This 'streamline' process, like the production lines of other enterprises, is a product of the era of highly developed large-scale machine production.

Although movies are an entertaining spiritual product, Hollywood has materialized and industrialized it based on the needs of the market.

The results of this fine division of labor have their advantages and disadvantages.

On the one hand, every detail of the film production, such as set design, scene performance, character dialogue, etc., will be very excellent and exquisite because of the control of quite proficient professionals; On the other hand, when every detail professional wants to express his or her own creative personality, many personalities will collide with each other and fail to grasp the overall situation, and eventually be drowned in the noise of the crowd, becoming an appendage of production procedures and standardization.

Despite such a paradoxical relationship, for the current Hollywood film industry, the refined and modern professional division of labor is still an important "joint" to improve the quality of products and industries.

The script was handed over to the screenwriting team to flesh out the facts, and Murphy considered a specific shooting plan, first of all, the production concept.

The final film must be as objective and calm as the script.

In terms of basic narrative, Murphy is ready to use the common narrative routine of the confrontation between good and evil, but it is an uncommon way not to deliberately exaggerate tension and conflict and opposition, he does not need to create the adventure of digging out the truth in the film, let alone exaggerate the threats and blows from the church, nor does he need the villain's covert sabotage, and he is not even prepared to use too many of the protagonist's inner struggles and emotional transformations.

In his plan, the film is just a simple and plain show of how these journalists fulfill their responsibilities and use the power of public opinion and power to contend with power.

In some ways, it is not so much the confrontation between the two sides in the film as the insistence on the professional ethics of the journalist and the laissez-faire of going with the flow.

In addition to fighting back against the Catholic Church, this can also win the maximum support of media public opinion!

In today's society, no one can underestimate the power of media public opinion!

There is no heroism and dramatization of the charge, but only trivial and small work, but for the press in pursuit of the truth, it is in such a step-by-step trivial matter that the power to change the status quo is accumulated.

That's what Murphy asked for the film to reflect on journalists.

In addition, in the case of the Catholic scandal, Murphy intends to focus the film on the behind-the-scenes work before the famous story is published, hiding the focus of the case, the priest, behind the narrative, not only to give the film more space to show the spirit of the real main character journalists, but more importantly, to avoid crude value judgments and angry accusations.

Obviously, the actions of the criminal priest should be flogged, but this is not Murphy's job, his film will state the process of revealing the truth itself, and the attitude towards the truth, as he first thought, is left to the audience to choose for themselves - the audience is more perceptive and disgusting than imagined in this kind of matter that directly concerns the next generation, and is far from being guided and led.

In fact, this non-comment on the outcome is not Murphy's deliberate choice to avoid the question.

On the contrary, in too many similar films, the director or screenwriter implants his own strong judgment into the film, presenting a piece of video text on the screen of the theater.

Of course, such a choice is far from wrong, but in such a serious and sensitive film involving such a huge power of Catholicism, a calm and restrained attitude can finally give the film a thicker texture.

In this real case involving sensitive topics such as religion, children, and legal justice, how to show the truth objectively and sincerely, and how not to become a farce of playing gimmicks and revealing people's scars is the part that really tests Murphy, the director and screenwriter.

Although he is indeed not a good person, and by the standards of many people, he can be planned to be among the ranks of villains, but Murphy still has his own understanding of justice.

Justice is not only about punishing evil, but also about protecting the innocent!

In the absence of visual stimulation and tense plot in the film, Murphy believes that only this kind of calmness and restraint can bring the unique temperament of a serious film.

Another point is that this film is fundamentally a film noir, both in terms of theme and content, it has the characteristics of this type of film, and Murphy will also choose gray tones in his choice of painting style, just like the winter sky in Boston.

By October, all the script creation was complete, and Murphy had come up with a full project plan, based on the many successful collaborations in the past, the big sale of "Dark City", and the counterattack against the attack on the Catholic Church, Twentieth Century Fox also gave the project the green light, saying that the investment of $40 million and participating in the Venice Film Festival were not a problem at all.

Murphy then gathered all of the Stanton party together to discuss the actor.