10 Movies That Started Shooting Without A Completed Script

8. Boyhood

If a director knows that it is going to take twelve years to shoot a movie, a finished script probably isn't needed on the first day of shooting. When filming of Boyhood started in 2002, director Richard Linklater had a general idea for each of the film€™s twelve-year-spanning segments and also knew that the film would end with the main character arriving at college. What he didn€™t have was a full script for all of those yearly segments. Nonetheless, Boyhood wasn't €œimprovised€ as the years went by as many have suspected. Linklater scripted each part in full before production started on each year€™s segment. Because it would be impossible to go back and reshoot scenes set several years before because of the characters€™ real-time ageing, Linklater had to make sure he had a complete script year-to-year to avoid any continuity mistakes and to make sure the story was progressing as he intended. So while Boyhood didn€™t have a completed script on the first day of filming, Linklater still made sure the actors received the script in bits and pieces over the years.