Dialogue can't be obviously expositional and on-the-nose. Yes, we often need to use dialogue to reveal character backstories and reveal crucial plot points and bits of context, but the last thing you want to do is write a Harry the Explainer scene in which all the narrative momentum stops so that the characters can talk talk talkity talk about what happened to them as a child that has scarred them in the here and now, or discuss how they are feeling at this very moment, or tell each other secrets.
Doing that makes the reader aware that they are being told a designed story and pulls them out of the natural flow of the narrative. The goal should be to reveal this information subtextually Click here for a great example of how to do exactly that. Dialogue should be character-specific. That's a note I give all the time as a reader: all of the characters sound exactly the same. If all of your characters sound the same, your narrative world won't feel textured and diverse. It won't feel real, and that will prevent a reader from fully investing in the story.
Ideally, every principal character in your script should be identifiable solely by what they say. After meeting the characters, the reader should be able to cover up the character headings in all of the dialogue blocks and still be able to tell who is talking. Every character should sound different.
They should have different vocabularies and mannerisms and surface personalities. Here's a personal example. Last year I agreed to write a feature for a producer based on a premise he had hatched. It was a paycheck job for me, but I thought I would be able to fake an emotional connection to the core premise enough that I would be able to crank the thing out and be done with it.
In a contractual rewrite I was asked to enhance the presence of one of the key characters, to beef up the character's role in the story. Cinematic dialogue has had an immense influence on how we speak and, consequently, on how we understand our culture and ourselves.
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E-mail: Show my email publicly. Human Verification:. I agree with Hunter Furnish- saying dialog is extraneous is like saying that good lighting is a luxury or that closeups are a crutch. It's all part of a complex whole. Obviously, contrived expository dialog that runs on too long or dumb cliched voice overs or just general techniques that tell rather than show are weak. So is relying on flashy, lazy camera movements or quick cuts in editing or overblown special effects to distract from a poor script.
It doesn't mean all camera techniques, editing techniques, and sfx are bad. I think my problem is with the connection between possible and necessary. It's possible to do most anything, especially in the realm of film, but that doesn't make things necessary or unnecessary.
It's possible to make a film work without dialogue, but that doesn't mean dialogue is an unnecessary tool. I would argue that even though it's possible it probably wouldn't be very entertaining or logical, and most audiences might not be able to follow. It's possible to write a story set in the Star Wars universe, say, without any action scenes, but let's be honest, a Star Wars movie without action would be boring and stupid. Hence, action scenes are "necessary" to a Star Wars tale.
Likewise with dialogue. Dialogue is necessary to the form of film, even if choosing to not have very much of it is the best use of it. What I am saying is that if you cannot make a good film without dialogue, you have no business being the business. Maybe thats a bit arrogant, but that, to me, is building a film from the ground up.
Ah, see, that gets more into the discussion of what skills you should have to be in film. You see film as an art form whereas I see it more as an industry. Combination of the two. That's a different debate, though, that should be left for future blog posts!
Honestly, I do think it's kind of arrogant. How is it different from saying someone is a bad filmmaker if they can't get by without any other element of film making? What's essential varies from movie to movie, but I still think it all has its own value. It doesn't seem very different from saying that you should be able to make an amazing movie without a soundtrack or without controlled lighting or without using more than a single take It's integral to how we communicate, so why isn't it integral to how characters in movies based on us communicate, too?
Taking dialog out of a movie that uses it well is handicapping it- it's gonna cause a deficiency and it's gonna lose so much subtlety and finesse and emotion. That doesn't mean whoever made it uses it as a crutch or is bad at making movies.
Disallowing dialog in a movie that needs it is like taking the killer out of a horror movie or the high-strung intensity out of a thriller. Big movies are investments for studios, yeah, but there's no denying that a huge number of artists work on and influence each of them. Haha but yeah different debate. I'll post this last comment, then we'll keept it for later.
I'm not disallowing dialogue. What I am saying is that people should be able to understand what the characters are going through therefore, the story through facial expressions and actions. I value language. Its not like I'm picketing libraries and burning grammar text books. I'm saying that if a person cannot find a way to express himself without the use of language, that particular person doesn't have a firm grip on how to express certain things.
I am by no means an expert, but if you go back to silent films, you see what I am talking about. Charlie Chaplin was hilarious and enjoyable, with no dialogue; only action and facial expressions. Dialogue makes movies much better than they were before. But a story can still be told without it. What if the story is too complex to be told through body language alone?
Is a foreign film in a language you don't speak bad if it's so complex that you don't really get it without subtitles? I firmly believe that some stories could be told without dialogue, but not all of them.
Oh hell yeah, it was all still very real to him back then dammit. It was at this point just as I was settling into the settee that I realised that the remote was missing.
Oh well, I thought; slightly annoying but I'll just flick through the channels on the digibox. I then discovered however that the t. Mute with no sky remote and no other way of turning up the volume. After a frantic ten minute search and a call to family members who appeared to be conveniently busy elsewhere, I decided to sit down expecting to be highly frustrated as I prepared myself for what would be essentially a silent movie screening.
It was somewhat surprising then that I found myself completely engrossed by this unwanted film experiment. I was able to follow the action through the powerful imagery, the way the actor's eyes told the story in a particular scene and the manner in which the camera followed fluidly through each moment to demonstrate the growing relationship between the main characters.
I was so caught up in the world that had been created on screen that I would often forget that there was no dialogue present. So what point am I making here?
That dialogue is obsolete, that you should put your televisions on mute and throw the controller in the garbage. No, of course not. The role of dialogue henceforth is to reveal character and add layers to the drama.
One of the best examples of dialogue I have ever seen is where words are actually used very sparingly but to great effect in the opening scene of Once upon a time in the West. In this sequence four henchmen have arrived to wait for the train containing the character simply known as ' Harmonica' whom they have been sent to kill. To begin with the images and sound sell the story, the incessant creaking of a windmill, water dropping onto a man's boots, the ruthless killing of a fly and then the adrenalin pumping noise of the incoming train.
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