The art of writing a feature film about an invisible being

Written by Johnny Wickham and Mike Capes

We have been writing comedies together for almost 20 years and making each other laugh. To have an idea that is as entertaining and funny as The Invisible Raptor because the script for our first full-length comedy was a dream come true.

We first met at comedy legend Jerry Zucker’s office, not to meet with him, but simply to have access to his office and meet with a group of sketch comedy writers after hours. That meeting was the beginning of a creative partnership that allowed us to develop a comedic voice that we feel really stands out in The Invisible Raptor.

The Invisible Raptor

We wrote The Invisible Raptor over the course of about six weeks in the spring of 2020 (mostly via Zoom) when another invisible threat threatened our safety. As with that threat, there has been a lot of scientific research into this one. Our scientific explanations range from the creation of our creature (Chance, the Raptor) to simply “Have you seen Jurassic Park? We did that. Then the decision to explain his invisibility as “did you see The Invisible?” To get it right, a lot of meticulous scientific research went into the writing process. We were pretty adamant about it. We took it very seriously.

In creating this raptor, we discussed a variety of scientific topics, such as: Would the poop of an invisible raptor be visible? (It is.) How fast can a raptor, visible or not, actually run? (41 mph.) And: Would an invisible raptor have a penis or a cloaca? (We gave him a penis. He uses it on a 6-foot ceramic chicken.) After we got the boring scientific part out of the way, the real fun began.

The challenge of writing a comedy creature feature without any visible creatures is that when we wanted to have the raptor in a scene with us, we had to find creative ways to solve that problem without showing it. How were we going to show it without showing it?

Thank God this is a comedy, because we had a lot of fun figuring that out in the writing process. In every scene where the raptor appeared, we tried to create a funny visual gag to pull it off: a dead scientist (played by Sean Astin) like Bernie Lomax from Weekend at Berniesan eyeball floats across the screen as if the raptor were carrying it, the raptor is harpooned with an arrow attached to a “Happy Birthday” balloon, and of course, plenty of excessive violence and bloodshed!

The Invisible Raptor

Since the invisible raptor is the main antagonist of our story, we wanted to make him pretty bloodthirsty, and this gave us the opportunity to make his presence felt on screen in a much more visually impactful way. It’s one thing to have the raptor do invisible man gags like shaking stair banisters, rustling bushes, and knocking over furniture, but it’s quite another to have him rip someone’s head off or disembowel them while on the phone with customer service.

Structurally, we wanted to give the audience fun glimpses of our unseen villain that became more and more apparent as the film went on, with each glimpse raising the stakes without revealing him, until a really fun, suspenseful ending. Maybe you’ll finally see him in a climax that may or may not allude to the movie we stole our science from.

Undoubtedly the most fun we had writing The Invisible Raptor was to find clever ways for our actors and performers to interact with and bring to life an invisible dinosaur. We wrote it so that the performers as a group could pantomime fighting nothing, carrying nothing and – using a newfound technique – screwing Mike’s boots into the concrete of the (redacted backlot studio) sidewalk and making him look like he’s defying gravity, like Dr. Alan Grant lying on the breathing Triceratops in Jurassic Park. He did it all with core strength, which surprisingly is worth about four tries. And no, we didn’t get our deposit back.

We had a lot of fun writing this film and we really hope everyone who sees it enjoys watching it as much as we enjoyed writing it.