How to Write (and Direct) a Contained Story

I'm on a contained story kick right now. My creative partner and I are fresh off a short film shoot and want to make something else, but we want to make it as easy on ourselves as possible in terms of production, and cheap. So, of course, my mind went straight to single-location, contained ideas.

While contained stories are easier to produce and one of the most practical formats for emerging filmmakers, they're also one of the hardest to pull off well at the writing stage. You have to have characters that are interesting enough to carry 90 minutes, as well as a plot compelling enough to keep the audience hooked.

So I was excited to find StudioBinder's breakdown today. It's a good excuse to go through the core mechanics, from the page to the set.

We've covered the basics of writing a contained screenplay before, but this gets more granular. Let's dive in.

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What "Contained" Means

To be a contained story, you should have one primary location, a short span of time, and a limited cast, but the dramatic engine is intensified conflict, not scaled down. The video's phrasing is "narrative claustrophobia." The closed environment amps up the drama.

Contained does not mean simple and boring. When it comes to character and plot, you essentially need to think like a playwright. We don't want to just watch characters have dinner. We would watch a bunch of characters in conflict as they hash out neighborly arguments and then eventually propose sex and partner-swapping (essentially the plot of The People Upstairs , which takes place in one apartment). The dinner is the backdrop.

The great thing about this concept is that it's genre-agnostic. A contained story can be horror, thriller, comedy, drama, even action. All of them can work.

The Narrative Cage

Every contained story needs a reason the characters can't just leave. StudioBinder calls this the "narrative cage. There are two types. The cage can be physical, meaning the characters are literally trapped. They could be in a jail cell, a car, a coffin, a bunker, a locked room, up a tree, almost anywhere.

The second type is situational. Technically, the characters could leave, but social pressure, hierarchy, obligation, or some unseen danger keeps them put. 12 Angry Men is one example. In It Comes at Night , a family stays in a remote home trying to avoid a dangerous disease outside. (That's a common one, it seems. Right at Your Door traps a man in a house using a dirty bomb. It's a Disaster finds brunching friends trapped while the world ends outside.)

The writer's job is to make the cage feel airtight without it feeling contrived. This is where plant and payoff becomes load-bearing. Every element of the cage needs to earn its place.

Location Is the Co-writer

Location is one of your most important elements, and it should be able to evolve with the story.

You have two tools for keeping a single location from going stale.

****First, reveal new spaces.Cube is one big example. Project Hail Mary used contained filmmaking as a structural blueprint even for a space movie. Heretic is a recent one that might be easier to replicate.

Second, charge objects with meaning. You know Chekhov's gun. Props that seem throwaway become pivotal. Think the stew in The Hateful Eight.

Screenwriters, map your location before you write. Know every room, every object that can be activated later.

Phone Booth Credit: 20th Century Fox

Characters Drive the Plot

In contained stories, if you don't have interesting characters, you'll likely be DOA. Escalation comes from relationships, not action, in most of these stories. Do we care about what the characters are going through and their interpersonal struggles? We have to for this to work.

Three techniques the video identifies are conflicting goals, clashing values, and hiding secrets.

Characters should want incompatible things. Everyone should have their own agenda, and that should subtextually charge every scene. Building tension through character conflict is a simple way to keep things exciting.

Characters should have belief systems that make every reaction unique (and at odds with someone else's values).

And finally, giving characters hidden information creates turning points and opportunities for big dramatic moments. It can also create power shifts. Who holds leverage changes, and that becomes plot.

New characters entering the space can also refresh the narrative _.___The Hateful Eight uses this repeatedly as new arrivals change the dynamic at Minnie's.

The Ticking Clock

Ah, the old standby. But it's essential in contained stories where you can't rely on physical momentum.

This can be a literal ticking clock (a countdown, a deadline) or resource-based (dwindling oxygen, dwindling money)._ _

Speed is the video's example. The bus is a contained story with a ticking clock and constant threat built in. The horror movie Countdown is about an app that predicts characters' times of death, so pretty literal. Pontypool traps a DJ at a radio station, where he must figure things out before a zombie horde attacks.

Learn more about the race-against-time structure.

Directing a Contained Story

The script's constraints become the director's constraints too. You're in a limited space, with limited movement.

Consider implementing 360-degree shooting. Light and design the set so the camera can point anywhere without breaking. Rob Hardy on Ex Machina favored this approach.

"I’m always an advocate of shooting in a 360-degree environment, and building lights into the set often allowed me to do that," Hardy told Filmmaker Magazine. "It helps not only with the way you shoot, but also in the way in which the actors can perform. They can immerse themselves into an environment and it just makes it that much more real."

This approach pairs naturally with long takes, but editing matters too.

You'll also want to consider blocking. Characters have to move. What's the energy of the scene? Do you want actors sitting or standing?

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One Low-Budget Example

I just rewatched Coherence. It's a great example of what a contained story can be, and how creative you can get.

James Ward Byrkit's 2013 debut finds eight friends at a dinner party. The team used one house and did five nights of shooting with no script.

Byrkit told The Dissolve, "It was based on the reality of not having any resources. It also stemmed from a desire to get back to a purity of filmmaking, after years of working on these huge movies that I enjoyed, but that were very pre-planned, where a lot of the decisions were made before I even got on set. I missed the days when it was just me, some actors, and a story."

He had a living room, two Canon 5Ds, and some actor friends, and reverse-engineered a premise from that.

Instead of a script, actors got notecards each night with their character's motivations. They improvised everything else, didn't know how the film would end, and some didn't even know who the lead was.

Byrkit and his DP told actors they could move anywhere in the house and the camera would follow, essentially shooting a documentary that happened to have a meticulously plotted multiverse underneath it.

A year of planning went into the outline before a single frame was shot. The improvisation worked because __the architecture was airtight. If you haven't seen the film, check it out. A sequel is in development, per Deadline.