Write On: 'Shadow Force' Director/Co-Writer Joe Carnahan and Co-Writer Leon Chills

“For me, I don’t know how you could not make [a script] personal.
I think drama allows you to hide how personal it is. I think
that’s kind of what I like about writing in the genre space. On
the outside looking in, it just looks like a big action movie. It
doesn’t look like a personal story. But there are personal
elements like my mom was a working mom as well. And so that’s why
you have Kyra in the movie who has to come back to her son
because she’s been working to protect him. That’s a very personal
thing… but you would never assume that it’s a personal story
because it’s wrapped up in the action,” says Leon Chills,
co-writer of the new film Shadow Force, about writing action from
a very personal point of view. 


On today’s episode, we talk with director/co-writer Joe Carnahan
and co-writer Leon Chills about the new action flick Shadow Force
that puts a family at the center of the action. With a bounty on
their heads, Kyra (Kerry Washington) and Isaac (Omar Sy) must go
on the run with their young son (Jahleel Kamara) to avoid their
former employer, a unit of shadow ops that has been sent to kill
them.


Carnahan and Chills talk about the challenges of writing action
set pieces and the power of giving the story emotional weight. We
also discuss trying to push the boundaries of the action genre to
invent set pieces that are fresh and inventive, and writing
action scenes on the page that are compact and concise. 


“As an older writer and doing it as long as I have, I’ll tell
screenwriters, if I see four or five lines of scene description,
I’m telling you, do it in two. Do it in one. Let people spend 40
minutes reading your script. No more. You know what I mean? Get
through it with that kind of economy. If you’ve ever read M.
Night Shyamalan’s Sixth Sense script – it’s an absolute
masterclass in how to do that. Just so sparse and beautiful and
pitch perfect the way that things are written,” says
Carnahan. 


 


To learn more about action writing and hear more advice, listen
to the podcast.