Unleash the Power of Your Audience

Posted on May 9, 2011 in Filmmaking 360, General Screenwriting | 1 Comment

I was having a conversation with Filmmaker IQ’s founder, Dennis about how to cram a big story into 4-7 minutes. One of the things we discussed was using character “crutches” – actions, places, props, life events that provide “short cut” for the audience as to how the characters on screen are suppose to be feeling.

An example of this is in one of my shorts: Please Accept this Ring on Farmville (below) – I open up with a shot of the lead character Tom admiring an engagement ring and then stuffing it in his pocket when his girlfriend arrives.

With just two actions here (the Ring and shoving it into his pocket), I’ve establish a lot about this male characters, his relationship to the female character and what the audience expects to see in the rest of the short. And I did it without any words in about 10 seconds.

As writers (and I’m certainly guilty of this as well), you must never forget the power of the visual medium to convey information that is not spoken.

I let Dennis go to sleep because he’s been up for 48 hours coming up with the next big IQ thing… and I started working on this corporate piece that I shot a couple weeks ago. I recorded about 10 minute interviews of women who were receiving a “Family Matters” award and I was to come up with 10 sound bite packages around 90 seconds each.

The interviews consisted of what their background was and what they did and anecdotes from their life.

What I learned listening to anecdotes and judging the great ones from the good ones is how it’s so important to boil down the big ideas into small memorable points that the audience can latch onto and use as trigger points for emotion.

Here’s example: One of the women was a hospice care giver. If I wanted to write a uninspired anecdote this is what it would be:

I visited an elderly woman’s home. She was very sad and had a terminal illness but she loved to cook. I baked her a cake, and she said it was the best cake she ever had. Not soon after she died.

This is what she said paraphrasing (by the way, she was a great speaker):

I visited this elderly woman’s one who was terminally ill. Her house was lined with cookbooks all different kinds. So I asked her if I could borrow one and make something for her but she said “no”. She finally relented and had me make a Lemon-Jello Spongecake – the kind where you pour in the Jello in all the little holes of the cake. It might have been her last meal – I kept the voice mail of her saying in her little crackly voice that it was the best Lemon Jello Spongecake she ever had. The next day she passed away.

Same story, but it was the small details – the cookbooks, the Lemon Jello Spongecake, the Voicemail, the little crackly voice that the audience member can latch onto and truly get the emotion of the story. These small details trigger the emotions we may have about the objects themselves. Maybe we had a grandmother that had cookbooks and loved Lemon Jello Spongecake – or more importantly, we have a collective cultural memory of the little old lady with cookbooks that we call share and can feel fondness for.

And that’s what I mean when I say “Unleash the Power of your Audience” – don’t shove “emotion” at an audience and expect them to care – supply the audience with triggers for emotion and they will bring it to the film. Tap into that well of common shared experiences that we all have and you can truly move your audience.

And if you need more proof… This next segment is the most beautiful example of this concept and it makes you really feel deeply for a character that has a block for a head: