South Africa’s Oscar Entry ‘Variations on a Theme’ Was Written With Microsoft Excel
I keep coming back to the image of someone typing a screenplay into Excel. Cells for scenes, columns for characters, maybe a formula to check if the three-act structure balances out. There's a strange logic to it. A spreadsheet forces you to think in rows and columns, in discrete chunks, which is exactly how film structure works when you strip away the poetry. Scenes are units, beats are values, and a film is a sequence of calculations.
The Estonian composer detail makes me wonder about the score as another kind of data. Music written to fit a grid-built story would have to find its own rhythm, maybe something more mathematical than emotional. I'd love to know whether Delmar wrote the whole thing in Excel or just outlined it there, and whether the grid leaked into the finished film's pacing.
I think this matters because it shows how creative tools shape the work more than we admit. We assume stories come from blank pages and coffee-stained notebooks, but a spreadsheet is just as valid a canvas, and maybe a more honest one. I'd want to watch it and see if I can feel the grid underneath.