Unveiling Dark Secrets: A Riveting Scene-by-Scene Dive into "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

• We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.
• By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.
• A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

Today: Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017). You may download the movie script here.

Written by Martin McDonagh.

IMDb plot summary: A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter’s murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Scene by Scene Breakdown
By Halil Akgündüz|
Gointothestory.blcklst.com

Page 1–2: Our protagonist, MILDRED HAYES sees the billboards. (We are right down in the business, like our protagonist MILDRED.)

RED WELBY, advertising man. His office window looking onto the main street and town’s POLICE STATION. (set up)

MILDRED wants to rent the billboards from him.

“You wanna pay for three billboards on a road no-one goes down unless they got lost or they’re retards, for a year?”

She gives him the five thousand for the first month.

WELBY reads the index cards. She is ANGELA HAYES’s mother.