I've been writing notes for my storyboard artist of late. And I know, I'm probably doing this film bass ackwards, but I'm doing what I can with what I've got when I get it, if that makes sense.
Anyway, my point to this post is pretty simple: It's good to go through these motions, because I didn't realize how boring one exchange between my two lead characters was going to look on the screen. See, they're meeting for the first time, and in the draft as it stands, they're just standing looking at the city from an apartment, and talking. It's a pair of heads going back and forth, which, really, is rather boring.
So I'm following the advice of Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, and I'm throwing the Pope in the pool. It's pretty simple. If you have a scene in a movie where you have to convey a lot of information via dialogue, then you have to give the characters something interesting to do, so your audience won't be bored. Trust me, watching two people talk can be boring, even if what they're saying is interesting. The saying comes from a movie - I forget which one, but the Pope is a character in it - where someone talks to the Pope. The dialogue is exposition. So the screenwriter had the Pope doing laps in the Vatican pool.
Two things are supposed to pop into the viewer's mind at that point. 1) The Vatican has a pool? 2) I didn't know the Pope wore Speedos! Now the scene isn't boring. Supposedly.
A good example of the Pope in the pool is from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Do you remember the scene where the characters were breaking fluorescent bulbs against each other? Yeah? You remember what that scene was about? Probably about getting Steve Carrell being a virgin. Or how about in Before Sunrise, when Jesse and Celine are in a bar, and they're playing pinball? They were talking about their exes, or something. The thing is, it's better than having a pair of heads talk. It's not too distracting, and it gives my eyes something to do.
So I'm going to throw the Pope in the pool and give my main characters something to do. I'll probably catch more stuff later on, and it isn't necessary in every conversation to have them doing something. Eventually, you're going to run out of things for your characters to do. And that's okay, really, because after a while, it'll seem unrealistic if they're doing something all the time.
That's it for today. I'm going on vacation next week, so nothing until then. Talk later, amigos.
Anyway, my point to this post is pretty simple: It's good to go through these motions, because I didn't realize how boring one exchange between my two lead characters was going to look on the screen. See, they're meeting for the first time, and in the draft as it stands, they're just standing looking at the city from an apartment, and talking. It's a pair of heads going back and forth, which, really, is rather boring.
So I'm following the advice of Blake Snyder's Save the Cat, and I'm throwing the Pope in the pool. It's pretty simple. If you have a scene in a movie where you have to convey a lot of information via dialogue, then you have to give the characters something interesting to do, so your audience won't be bored. Trust me, watching two people talk can be boring, even if what they're saying is interesting. The saying comes from a movie - I forget which one, but the Pope is a character in it - where someone talks to the Pope. The dialogue is exposition. So the screenwriter had the Pope doing laps in the Vatican pool.
Two things are supposed to pop into the viewer's mind at that point. 1) The Vatican has a pool? 2) I didn't know the Pope wore Speedos! Now the scene isn't boring. Supposedly.
A good example of the Pope in the pool is from The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Do you remember the scene where the characters were breaking fluorescent bulbs against each other? Yeah? You remember what that scene was about? Probably about getting Steve Carrell being a virgin. Or how about in Before Sunrise, when Jesse and Celine are in a bar, and they're playing pinball? They were talking about their exes, or something. The thing is, it's better than having a pair of heads talk. It's not too distracting, and it gives my eyes something to do.
So I'm going to throw the Pope in the pool and give my main characters something to do. I'll probably catch more stuff later on, and it isn't necessary in every conversation to have them doing something. Eventually, you're going to run out of things for your characters to do. And that's okay, really, because after a while, it'll seem unrealistic if they're doing something all the time.
That's it for today. I'm going on vacation next week, so nothing until then. Talk later, amigos.
posted by ctheokas at 11:02 AM
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