Hi, I’m Michael.
This is Lessons from the Screenplay.
From the first frame of "Searching" to the last,
everything the audience sees happens on a computer or phone screen.
This is the film’s designing principle—
the internal logic that describes how the story will be told:
Tell a conventional thriller story entirely via screens.
While the plot of "Searching" is fairly conventional,
this storytelling approach is used to enhance the mystery
and elevates the film to a nail-biting thriller.
"It could have been a live action movie,
but nobody would have seen it.
There’s nothing special about it.
And us taking this normal story
and putting a very unconventional conceit on it
is what made it work."
To take this constraint and turn it into a compelling film
required the use of many clever techniques—
and the screenwriters, Aneesh Chaganty and Sev Ohanian,
discussed their entire process in great detail when they came on our podcast.
Because—by the way—
Lessons from the Screenplay is launching a podcast...
today!
"Beyond the Screenplay"
And you can hear our entire conversation
with Aneesh and Sev in our episode on "Searching."
I’ll have more details on the podcast at the end of the video,
but for now, I want to dissect how they made the film
emotionally compelling by ensuring
the designing principle, theme, and story were perfectly in sync...
To investigate how they adjusted traditional screenplay format
to convey a plot that takes place entirely on screens...
And explore how they took something as simple as typing a text message
and used it to reveal character.
Let’s take a look at "Searching."
When writing "Searching," it would have been easy
to let the designing principle become a gimmick
by thinking only in terms of what is happening on the computer screens.
But Chaganty and Ohanian wanted to avoid that,
and instead took a different approach.
"It would fail if we were writing the movie that took place on screens.
What we needed to write was the movie...
And our entire process was just a matter of adapting that story to take place on screens."
But it couldn’t be just any story.
The proper cohesion of theme, designing principle, and story
is often what elevates a film.
"If you’re telling a story about something,
every page of your script should be unique to that central core.
If it’s going to be about a father searching for his
teenage daughter by using a computer,
what are the revelations that can come only from that thing?
It can’t just be a phone call that happens to take place on a computer,
but rather the internet has to be wholly complicit in how she went missing."
So as they began writing, they found a theme that resonated with them
and connected to the designing principle.
"It was very early on we realized it's about connectivity.
And in a world where everyone is so connected
with all these devices and all these apps and programs and software,
what's a story about a father and daughter
who live in the same house but are disconnected?"
The film opens with a montage introducing us to the Kim family.
As young Margot grows up,
we see how close she is to her father, David.
But after a family tragedy, they’ve grown very distant—
each hiding their emotional pain from each other,
and in the process becoming strangers.
Once Margot goes missing,
the only way for David to find out what happened to her
is to search her computer for clues,
and in doing so he learns surprising things
about the person his daughter has become.
In this way, the story inherently explores the theme of disconnection,
which resonates with the designing principle
of telling the story via the technologies that are supposed to connect us.
Now that Chaganty and Ohanian had a great foundation for a film,
the question became:
"How do you write a screenplay about a story told entirely on screens?"
To communicate this unconventional story
required some unconventional formatting.
Contemporary screenplays are written
in what’s called “Master Scene” script format
and it has remained largely unchanged over the last fifty years of filmmaking.
The formatting rules are very specific.
From the typeface and font size, to the margins,
to the scene headers elements,
a screenplay is a document meant to convey the story clearly
and aide production.
But this format became solidified
before we had computers and smart phones.
So how did they write a screenplay for a movie that takes place entirely on screens?
They didn’t—at least, not at first.
"We actually wrote what we call a 'scriptment,'
which was written much more like prose."
"It was 41 pages. It was a really short read,
but it was the whole movie written almost like a short story..."
This “scriptment” was used to secure the actors
and get the movie into pre-production, but...
"...it was actually our producer Natalie Qasabian who was like,
'we can't make a movie off of a 41 page word document'
and she forced us to go and write the Final Draft.
I remember we spent our first four days of writing
purely trying to figure out form.
What should the screenplay look like?"
What they arrived at was a variation on the Master Scene script format.
Anything that took place in the digital world of the screen
would have a simple, descriptive Scene Heading,
like: “Google Maps - Google Chrome”...
...while anything that required
actual on-set shooting would have a numbered, classic scene header,
with an added parenthetical
to convey where on the screen the audience is seeing it.
"Hold on. You just gave me an idea.
To convey text message conversations,
Chaganty and Ohanian dropped the text size
from 12 points to 9 points,
and adjusted the margins to be in between that
of the action lines and dialogue.
Together, these formatting changes make it clear to the reader
who is speaking and where the interactions are taking place,
without dramatically deviating from the classic screenplay format.
But while clearly conveying how the story is told on screens is important,
it is pointless if it is not also revealing character.
So Chaganty and Ohanian had to find on-screen ways of
expressing the inner life of the characters.
In a normal film, a character’s behavior is used to betray their inner life.
They may avoid eye contact, discard a precious object,
or begin to say something, but change their mind.
For "Searching," Chaganty and Ohanian had to find ways
of translating this emotional behavior to a computer screen.
"And we looked on our laptops
and we saw buttons that said 'share.'
Ok what does share mean?
We saw 'close window.' What does close window mean?
What does it mean to empty your trash? What it does it mean to delete something?
What does it mean to hide something? Search something?
These all have emotionality behind it."
"Searching" is filled with moments where the characters’
interactions with the computer convey their inner life.
When David is reporting his daughter missing,
he is Googling statistics on missing persons cases.
We know he is thinking about how serious the situation has become.
At his lowest point,
David comes across an old video of Margot giving him a father’s day present.
Overwhelmed with guilt, he takes an extreme action.
Margot holds up a drawing to the CAMERA.
Written below: “Happy Father’s Day to the BEST DAD EVER.”
PAUSE.
DESKTOP
On Finder, David DELETES the video.
Then EMPTIES the trash.
But my favorite screen technique
is when characters type out a text message
and then decide not to send it,
because it is both true-to-life and revealing of character.
"It allows us to have subtext.
You know the characters saying one thing but means something else.
And that allows us to have it."
This is used several times in "Searching,"
and in the screenplay is represented by a strikethrough in the text.
Early in the film, when David is talking to his brother,
trying to figure out how concerned he should be that Margot hasn’t responded all day,
we feel how worried he is through the messages he almost sends.
The inner life of the character is clearly communicated,
simply through text on a screen.
"Searching" is a great example of how to marry
a classic narrative with contemporary storytelling.
It could have lazily applied a gimmick to a random plot,
but instead, the orchestration of the theme,
designing principle, and story
elevate it to a thrilling, cinematic experience.
"In our minds, we wanted to tell a story that would be engaging,
and cinematic, and moving,
and to do that we wanted to use all the hundred years
of cinematic techniques that have been developed by all these great filmmakers..."
"We wanted to make a screen movie to end all screen movies..."
"You really covered all the bases."
"You did all of it."
This shows that you can find fresh ways of telling familiar stories
if you don't mind doing
a little searching.
Hey guys, Michael here—
and today we're launching a podcast!
It’s called “Beyond the Screenplay”
and it’s available pretty much wherever you get your podcasts!
In the show, it'll be myself and the Lessons from the Screenplay team
doing deeper dives into the storytelling of each film we talk about here on the channel.
We’ll also be chatting with guests—
from other YouTube filmmakers
to people like Sev and Aneesh—
the creative teams behind the films we’re discussing.
So head to wherever you listen—Apple Podcasts, Spotify—
to check out our first three episodes
including our full conversation with Sev and Aneesh on "Searching."
There's going to be more episodes coming in the coming weeks,
and I’m really, really excited to see where this goes.
So, thank you to Sev and Aneesh for coming on the podcast,
thank you to the patrons for helping us workshop and develop the podcast,
and thank you for watching!