1st 10 pages special edition: A little ELF for the season

Last year I posted the 1st 10 breakdown of the holiday classic IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, this year I decided to go with a cult classic ELF.

I’ll keep the breakdown brief as a gift to you all, and to all a good night!

The script is long for a comedy (120 pages!), but the pacing never drags and the production tightened up the shots so that the runtime comes in a 97 minutes. Most of those cuts were in dialogue because the action is very economic in words and aided by Will Farrel’s terrific schtick.

Pg one:

Notice how simply the world is set up. The tone is immediately set, with sound effects such as the music SCRATCHES off and the FREEZE frame is a nice punctuation to emphasize the catalyst that is the arrival of our hero crawls onto the scene.

I don’t recommend the practice of…