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Comment by theoh | Hacker News Reader

For more "making of" information, there's a lot of material online about Eric Heisserer who wrote the script (based on Ted Chiang's story.)

Heisserer did a recent Reddit AMA: https://m.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5ay3h2/im_eric_heissere...

It's a bit unfortunate that Heisserer made the visual design choice of a circle as the basis of nonlinear writing. It's a little trite. Overall, I'm thinking that maybe this story didn't need to be visually realized, even if it's a good script. A radio play instead?

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When I came back from watching "Arrival" I immediately looked Heisserer up, thinking "this guy did his job well, he must be behind some other interesting movies". Yeah. "Final Destination 5", "The Thing" remake.

Makes you wonder how many very talented people are stuck doing shitty things in any industry because things just didn't line up for them. At least they have for Heisserer, now. He's like the inverse of Lindelof, who turned out after all the hype to be a phony.

So much credit goes to Villeneuve, who elevates scripts that could easily go wrong into works of art. See Sicario if you haven't, for example—a script that would have been a pedestrian drug war film in lesser hands.

Hours (2013) with Paul Walker was quite good [1].

As far as I can tell, having followed this writer for a while, a lot comes down to opportunity and demonstrating talent within the spaces you are given opportunities.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hours_(2013_film)

I don't know what the alien script in the movie looked like, but in the book (if I remember correctly) they started out from a point and spread outwards, drawing connectedly on the entire page.

It's similar in the movie, the writing is very beautiful and alien. Whoever invented it did a fantastic job.

It's different, but it works. I think (pure speculation) they changed the visual process because watching it written the way it was done in the written story would have taken too long on film. In writing you can compress time easily. On film you really have to maximize usage of time.

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