Character growth is never redundant, unless you’ve dramatized the growth, elsewhere, and are doubling your efforts.
-- I believe I have dramatized the growth. In the first scenes, you see how he is treated by his coworkers and family members - the anti hero. He is then introduced to the antagonists. As he deals with them, he picks up on something... something suspicious. My protagonist - a detective with a still unknown back story - then STANDS in the rain. He just stands there, grinning, watching the antagonists drive off.
With such shots I want to make the audience think, speculate... perhaps even slightly confuse them - giving more opportunities for unexpected twists... What is he going to do next? What will happen now? Giving enough clues in the previous shots, WHAT is obvious, but the why's and how's and eventually even the 'what' could turn out to be different.
But the word “dramatized” is the key, here. Dripping coffee machines, ticking clocks, and the like are not very dramatic. There’s a tendency to see a movie, where a character seems, at pivotal moments, to do nothing... and think that we can internalize the struggle. But I’m sure that, in each such instance, there were more dramatic moments which set everything up, allowing us to “know” what’s happening, in the quiet scenes.
Outside of self-produced or avant-garde (and foreign) films, there’s little opportunity for having an abundance of such scenes.
EXT. CANYON AREA - DAY
The red evening sun lights up the dusty inside of the pick-up
truck. David, wearing a black sweatshirt and pilot
sunglasses, takes a long drag from his cigarette... flicks it
out. The BUTT flies past
A LITTER SIGN
and hits the ground. For a few seconds the lit butt tags
along the pick-up before the truck fades in the
gloomy red light of the setting sun.
I have 6 of these...in 110-120p. The example above portrays the beginning of a new adventure. Be free to comment the writing too - I know this is quite 'poetic', but I did that to accentuate the feeling. Big no no?!
Roads... journeys. Rain opposed to sun. Sports wear instead of his uniform...
I’m not sure how you are defining mise en scène, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any one definition. Everyone uses it differently. But... it’s almost always about the film, not the written word. It’s a theater term, translated into a critical term for film. You mention that you can’t pick a Coen’s film that embodies what you are talking about. Can you identify a particular scene, instead? Because it might be that you have a “feeling” from their films, but are mistaking what has caused it. Either way, a particular scene would go a long way to explaining what you see the finished product as being.
-- I read Bordwell and Thompson on M-e-s. Light... I think about light a lot. TL lights, Neon beer bottles...
From all their movies, I think Fargo might resemble the pace and mood the most. Some of the scenes in which Barton Fink shifts around his room by himself might... I try very hard to make this my own story. But then again I grew up watching their movies over and over, and the subconscious mind can be very strong...
luna -
but going through some heavy internal journey... Through these visual shots I want him solve the puzzle, internally.
And that’s a problem. A very real problem, if you wish to sell.
You can’t film an internal journey. You need external elements which dramatize the internal conflict. They needn’t be explicit and, in fact, may be better if they are not... but they need to be there.
A man in a chair, forehead in hand, crying... well... he could be overcome with a bittersweet joy... he could be one minute from suicide... he could be in mourning... The very real risk is that the writer may (by having ALL the details in her mind) think that more is on the page than actually is.
-- All those silent, visual shots are "moments of realization" in their own right to what previously happened. See comments above. I am aware of the risk, which is why I put myself out here...
luna -
Now my question is, I want this to be subtle. I want this to be 'boring' shots (as his life at that stage is boring), but still intensely interesting for the reader, and ultimately and hopefully, the audience... I personally love long shots with a person just thinking and shifting around, obviously cooking up something... I have read first drafts and compared them to shooting scripts, but I couldn't find an answer.
But you DON’T want boring shots.
When I was in a college writing workshop, we workshopped a story involving a character who had injured his head. He was confused and wasn’t seeing the world in a clear way. In response to criticisms, the author pointed out that the character was supposed to be confused... hence, the confusion he had written. I pointed out, to him, that there’s a difference between a scene which shows us confusion and a scene which confuses us.
In your case, there’s a very big difference between a scene about someone who is bored/boring and a scene which bores us. If a scene is boring, the reader is likely to skip it or stop reading, altogether. That’s not good. Same with an audience. I doubt you actually enjoy being bored, by movies. I’ll bet the “boring” scenes that you like are actually (for you, at least) quite interesting.
And the problem is, a lot of what you are talking about requires the director to make it interesting, by the way he films it. But such a script would never get to the director stage, anyway.
-- I hope it does... It relies heavily on good actors too, as many shots rely on facial expression (which I haven't parenthesized lol). It gets across though.
As to the “obviously cooking up something”... well, IS it obvious? By that I mean, have you dramatized everything, sufficiently, that when we get to this moment of introspection, you can almost guarantee that we know exactly what he must be thinking about?
-- Yes, but as in some cases the audience knows more than the protagonist, this could mean they make different conclusions, incorrectly guess his. The same thing goes vice-versa.
I think a lot can be determined, by you, from that last comment, as well. What do you mean, when you say, “I couldn’t find an answer”? Does that mean that you’ve identified scenes, in movies, but their not the same, in the spec scripts? Because that’s important. It suggests that the scenes you like are director scenes. All about blocking and cinematography.
-- There must be a way to write this without directing? I am looking for that.
More important, and useful, is “what DID you find”?
Did you identify scenes, similar to what you are talking about, in movies you like... only to find that the script uses dialogue and/or other dramatic moments, which were then left out of the film?
-- I found it made scripts less 'complicated'. Goodbye flashbacks, even in Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, which has been written by a pro screenwriter. That kinda made me think...
Sorry for the general level of the comments, but I may have more specific (and specifically helpful) things to say, if you can answer a couple of my queries.
I hope they make sense.
