Chapter 396.The two halves
“We can’t do that no matter what.”
Olio said as he shook his head. He looked very hell bent on this and even his tone was a bit more strict this time, daunting like nothing could make him change his decision.
“Why? I really feel like this is the way to go.” Aiden said and knowing this could tick Olio off the wrong way, he added. “Obviously your opinion matters the most here but I’m very interested to know why you are against this. It looks like you have played around with this idea.”
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Olio, as a seasoned filmmaker, knew that the best way to do [Hex] was in the form of multiple movies or a long 50 episode series. It was that long. If he was ten years younger, then he would have selected a very young cast and make it a yearly franchise with 7-8 movies in ten years for the whole saga.
But age wasn’t on his side.
He was getting old and that’s why he wrote the script keeping in mind that he won’t be able to do a lot of movies in the same universe as [Hex].
“What is stopping you from modifying it into a two part movie?” Aiden asked, very curious on the specifics.
“The boring first half.” He said without even thinking. “The first half of the movie pretty much is the exposition of the world and the characters. There are a few scenes that might make the audience exclaim but they are few. You can’t take risks with the audience these days who come to the theatre for adrenaline.”
Realisation struck Aiden’s face when he heard that.
They have divided [Hex] into two parts during filming with the first half titled ‘Blaze’s beginning’ and the second half titled ‘Blaze’s conclusion’.
If he thought about it, most of the juicy parts were in the second half of the movie when Blaze would finally reach a certain peak of his powers. Then, it was one action scene after another.
Those scenes were bound to elevate the level of the movie and it would be something that a theatre going audience would enjoy.
‘The first half as a standalone movie might have worked a few years back. People don’t have that much patience these days.’
Aiden thought about it clearly.
“I understand your point but what about modifying the first half to be more exciting?”
“How will you do that? We would need to go against the books for that. Fans of it might turn on us because of that.”
Olio said and they started discussing this topic. Maybe because he was so engrossed in it that Olio didn’t call it off for two hours. That completely went against what he had told Aiden at the start about sleeping early.
In the end, he just said, “I understand your concerns. I have them too but I doubt we could make the first half interesting enough to be its own movie. If you have a good idea, we could do something about it but I doubt it will be the case.”
***
After the talk with Olio, Aiden was busy in thoughts.
He wondered what to do. He could just follow up the vision of Olio and not complain. After all, even if they were leaving out a lot of scenes, it’s not like the audience would know of it.
In the eyes of the audience, what they would present would be the only thing they would know and Aiden was sure that the editing and everything would be extremely good in the end that even if the audience felt like the movie was slow in the first half, they would enjoy the second half enough to recommend it to others.
He was very confident in Olio’s capability.
The only reason he was worried was because he felt like it was a pity that a lot of the scenes would just go wasted. There won’t be much attention given to them.
He thought and thought about it and took out the script of [Hex]. It was easily the thickest screenplay he had read. It had taken him almost twice the time of a normal screenplay to read it even if he didn’t take any breaks in between.
He read through it again and stopped at the end of the first half. He could see the bad points in it easily. Anyone with a good sense of story would.
After all, there was a lot of exposition in it for the neutral audience who might not read the books. The neutral audience makes or breaks a movie, so they have to keep them in mind.
The first half was an introduction of Blaze, a bit of mystery as he approaches his new job and then more exposition on the world before ending it with a big case that Blaze tries to take. The case was going to connect in the second half, making it look like everything had come in a full circle.
The second half also carried the major fight scenes.
‘Even the first two volumes of the series were pretty mediocre.’
He recalled that <Hex> was a novel that had only been picked up in the third volume and the first two were considered the weakest parts in the series. It had blown up on the fourth volume but the third volume was the one that was touted to be the best.
‘I can make it better but how?’
Aiden sighed thinking about it. As a writer himself, he could make some modifications. Add a few fight scenes, make the conversations a bit different. Obviously, he can’t change a whole lot as a lot of the shooting was done in the first half but he could do a few things.
Though Olio would not allow it currently.
The man was very firm about what he wanted and how he wanted the things to be. Aiden didn’t even have a concrete plan.
But he knew that he had to do something.
‘I need to try. Going by my talk with Olio, even he thought about this. I’m pretty sure he himself doesn’t like a lot of his scenes being edited out. After all, he’s a director.’
He thought in his mind. If nothing came out of it, it was fine. He won’t feel bad as in the end, he knew everything was on Olio.
First, he started off by listing down the bad points of the first half. In a way, it was almost like a movie of its own already with its own plot in set. There was even a villain in it and enough things that connect to the prophecy that was the core of the movie.
But the slow plot and not so interesting characters that are there just for the purpose of explaining the power system and world building hampers the first half a lot. It was only in the second half that the characters got way better.
So, the first thing would have been to make the characters more lifelike. Maybe, give them more scenes that are a little personal.
These types of things could easily be handled.
The main problem that Aiden noticed was the lack of exciting parts in the first half. The action set pieces weren’t that good. They were very basic. Moreover, even the side characters were very lacklustre even though they have cool powers.
‘I need to give them a better fighting style. That will need more budget and other things but let’s not worry about that right now.’
He thought as he wrote down a few things.
Then, he typed out new scenes to add in his laptop and added them in the screenplay. He did it for two hours and only then a few good scenes were written. Aiden was going to modify them more tomorrow.
As for the action scenes, he also had ideas about them. His idea was basically taken from the action movies of industries other than Hollywood.
These industries follow their own systems and types of cinema, so they were unique in what they did and didn’t have the burden of being Global cinema. Once, he had watched an action movie from his home country where the action was very basic but it had such impeccable cinematography that it was very exciting to watch.
It almost looked like there were a lot of things happening in the scene when it was just punches clashing with a few kicks here and there. The most basic things pumped up by great cinematography and final editing.
Aiden wondered if they could do that with [Hex], especially because it was a fantasy, meaning they could be very creative with different powers involved.
Though, in the end, there was still one thing.
‘Climax.’
There was no climax in the first half. They needed a climate that could make people watch the second part. A climax that starts discussions around the movie as people wonder what would happen in the second part.