In The Moment – Part Two
Written on March 18, 2010 at 6:41 am, by admin
When we read a story, or watch a movie, we want the protagonist to do what we can’t: live in the moment. The events of the story may, or may not be Earth shattering, as long as they are so important to the main character that they consume every ounce of his or her attention. We demand this as an audience. If we are going to invest the time to watch, or read about a character’s life we want to feel that character is paying attention. If he doesn’t care enough to offer us an immediate reaction to the events at hand, why should we?
Although most of us don’t live moment to moment, we’ve all experienced it. There are times, however fleeting, when something happens that drives out all other thoughts and quiets the internal monologue in our brain. One of the things I love about directing is that it forces me into the moment. This is partially because of the production challenges (which are always a little more than you can comfortably handle) and partially because I have to get actors into the same state.
With Kevin McKdd, James Cosmo and Ben Kingsley
I once had a scene with three actors all speaking in quick succession (not the scene pictured above!). I thought the scene was playing well, but during one take a cast member got one of her lines out of sequence. Suddenly the scene was alive in a way it hadn’t been before. The actors were off script and didn’t know what was coming next. They had to listen, and respond in the moment. It’s an argument for always having something new to introduce to a scene, something that hasn’t been rehearsed and keeps the performances fresh.
There is a paradox in all of this. If we are trying to create a sense of believability in our stories, why would we want our characters to behave in a way that’s unnatural for most adults? In fact, adding distractions (often referred to as “secondary business”) to a scene is usually a good practice. It can make us feel the characters have a life outside of the moment we’re witnessing, and that they will continue to live after the scene ends. There have been times when I’ve given actors the direction to think about something completely different from their dialogue in order to make their performances more natural. These are often transitional moments in a sequence. It’s our job as storytellers to shuttle readers, or the audience, into and out of those states of heightened awareness where the characters are in the moment.
In real life, if someone says something hurtful, we often suppress our response. It’s a defense mechanism that gets us through our daily lives. We might not even feel the pain of it until much later. But we won’t tolerate that kind of behavior from the hero of a story. We want him to react with immediate anger, remorse, or affection. We want him to punch the person who offends him, kiss the girl in public, or kill the villain who’s just done something unforgiveable. We want to witness these emotional responses and see the consequences be dealt with. If the protagonist will do this for us, it brings us a little bit closer to knowing what it might feel like to live an unsuppressed life.
The Rat-Catcher’s Son
Written on February 1, 2010 at 6:43 am, by admin
Click here to return to the Home Page of this site, where new panels of Seven Extraordinary Things are posted daily. New readers to my online graphic novel can begin here.
Do Not Create Characters That Are Interesting
Written on January 29, 2010 at 12:32 pm, by admin
This sounds like heresy. Why wouldn’t you want to create characters that are interesting? Isn’t that the point?
When I began writing my process was simple. I put a sheet of paper into a typewriter (yes, a typewriter) and commenced writing. I created an adventure where people said things, did things, and stuff happened to them. When I finished that first story I gave it to a friend. “Hmmmm,” he said. “Needs better characters.”
I hunted down books on writing. One of them was the excellent Art of Dramatic Writing, by Lajos Egri. I read it cover to cover. I dutifully created back stories for the players in my drama, filling their lives with complications and tragedies. I defined their desires, their fears and their fatal flaws. With all of this in mind, I returned to my typewriter. It came as a bitter disappointment to find none of it made my story better. None of it even made my characters more interesting. Where did I go wrong? Had Lajos Egri lied to me? Was there some concept I missed?
Yes. A ridiculously simple concept. To explain what it is I’ve drawn a short visual narrative called “The Rat-Catcher’s Son”, which I will be posting Monday, February 1st, sometime in the morning (PST).
Simile
Written on January 8, 2010 at 6:23 am, by admin
In my last post I said the objective of using unexpected juxtaposition was not to join two things that didn’t fit together, but that fit together in a surprising, yet ultimately truthful way. A simile came to mind when I wrote that: “An’ the dawn comes up like thunder” from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “Mandalay” (it is a simile, not a metaphor because it uses the word “like” to make the comparison).
I always enjoyed the sound of this phrase, but it didn’t have truth for me until I got my first directing job. I was doing second unit on Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness, shooting nights in the desert of Acton, California.
Filming Army of Darkness
When you’re struggling to complete your night’s work and you glance to the horizon to see a faint sliver of light in the East, panic grips you. I used to think of dawn as a hopeful event; the coming of a new day, with new possibilities. But when you’re on set, that first glimpse of dawn is a warning: you have fifteen minutes to get your last shot. The ferocity with which the sun makes its arrival is both sudden and terrifying. It is (in a word) like “thunder”.
