‘ARRIVAL’ SAW THE BIRTH OF AN ALIEN LANGUAGE.
The circular patterns originated in Eric Heisserer’s early drafts of the screenplay. “I drew something for my wife (TV writer/producer Christine Boylan) to show her what I was thinking of, to see if I could get her to come up with a different metaphor, and her decision was ‘Just put that in the script,’ ” he says. “The idea that blotches were where the words and phrases were nested” was refined in the inky moving masses designed by artist Martine Bertrand.