A film’s tone – perhaps the single most important element in filmmaking – can, and often must, be established using shorthand. Sure, you can have an opening narration describing the fictional world you’re about to view, but that would be a violation of the Show-Don’t-Tell edict. I recently saw a classic 1971 Australian film called Wake in Fright that uses a single opening shot to establish the tone of a film more effectively than any other. It’s a slow pan over the film’s setting: a bare, featureless desert, only punctuated by a pair of small buildings and a single train track. Using about four seconds of film, director Ted Kotcheff managed to convey the remoteness and isolation of the movie. This sense of isolation lingers over everything in Wake in Fright, and we are terrified as a result. Wake in Fright is great, by the way. Seek it out.
But such cues don’t need to linger over an entire film to be salient filmmaking tools. Consider the little details that are so often used. How about when it’s raining in a movie? Weather is very often used as a metaphor in movies, and a sudden outburst of rain very often represents a sad moment, a moment of hopelessness. When the rain ends and the sunlight returns, hope is also returning. The rain metaphor is so ubiquitous, I’m sure some filmmakers aren’t even aware they’re doing it.
Or how about the Cough of Death? Surely you’ve noticed this one. This occurs in dramatic movies about someone who is dying of cancer or some other unseen disease. Characters in movies rarely cough for no reason, so when it happens, it’s typically a portent of some kind. If someone coughs late in a film, it’s surely a sign of a much more dramatic health malady to occur later on. A single cough indicates forthcoming tragedy.
How do you convey that a character works too much? A recent visual shorthand for “workaholic” has been to depict the character in question answering their cell phone at a dinner table. In real life, this may be an insensitive thing to do, but it’s not necessarily a sign that a real person works too hard. In a movie, it’s always an indicator that they work too hard, and are too busy working to appreciate the other person or people sitting at the table.
Sometimes visual shorthand can feel cheap. In the recent film The Book Thief, a bland and sentimental WWII drama, the filmmakers used the very simple image of a swastika to convey a sense of dread. There is nothing all too dreadful in the movie – the wartime atrocities and violent Nazis are whitewashed and glossed over beyond recognition – but the filmmakers are exploiting decades of WWII memories (or perhaps more rightly: memories of WWII-set movies) to set the audience on edge. This is an example of cheap shorthand, as the film isn’t telling a compelling enough tale to earn any drama that would otherwise be invoked by the image of a swastika.
So the next time you’re thinking of establishing a character in a movie, try to think less of their backstory, their narrative, or even their name, and focus more on what the audience will see immediately. Where is their scene set? Where are they located in the frame? What are they wearing? What are they eating or drinking? And what do all of those things communicate?
Homework for the Week:
Here is your character: A 49-year-old suburban New York housewife with a two kids, a drinking problem, and an unflagging optimism that things will improve. She will eventually learn to be strong, but is still weak and has no plan of action to improve her life. Using no more than four or five seconds of film and no dialogue, communicate all of that to me. How about this guy?: A 21-year-old rock star who eschews drink and drugs for his music. He is already successful, and has to constantly fight against the hedonism that fame offers. Same rules: Four or five seconds of film, no dialogue. Go.
Witney Seibold is a featured contributor on the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can read his weekly articles Trolling, Free Film School and The Series Project, and follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
