Script To Screen: “Short Term 12”

Sometimes you can say it… not show it.

Short Term 12 was just about my favorite movie in 2013. Written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, and produced with a reported budget of just $400K, it is an utterly compelling drama with incredible performances all down the line, led by a phenomenal turn by Brie Larson as the story’s Protagonist Grace.

Plot Summary: A 20-something supervising staff member of a residential treatment facility navigates the troubled waters of that world alongside her co-worker and longtime boyfriend.

In this scene, Grace deals with Jayden, a troubled youth in the facility, just after a disturbing altercation.

Here is the scene from the movie:

There’s the old saying about movies, “Show it, don’t say it,” but here is a scene where telling a story instead of showing it really works. I asked Destin about this in an interview I did with him the year the movie was released:

Scott: There’s another instance which you use a similar device to convey exposition when Jaden shows a story she wrote to Grace about an octopus who develops a relationship with a shark. Do you remember what inspired you to write that story?

Destin: I don’t, really. It was just another one of those scenes that I struggled with for so long. I knew that this character did communicate through art. A lot of her drawings and things was one of her outlets. That story was one of those moments where it just feels like it came from somewhere else. I took a walk around the block at the coffee shop where I was writing and I was stressing out about it and trying to figure out how to get this character to talk that didn’t want to talk.

That story actually brought me to tears. I had fallen in love with that Jaden character so much.

Compare the script to the film version. The dialogue is quite close, but there are subtle directing choices Cretton made that take what’s on the page and make it even more powerful on screen.

If you haven’t seen Short Term 12, do yourself a huge favor: Watch it. I believe it’s streaming on Netflix now. There is literally not one person I know in the business who has seen this movie and not loved it.

For my interview with Cretton, go here.

And check it! Discovered this 30-minute roundtable with Cretton and key actors from the movie:

Watch Short Term 12!

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 Script To Screen articles, go here.

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