Question: How to misdirect reader in scene description?
Open forum question from E.C.:
How do you format a scene where you want to open on an image, THEN reveal where it takes place at? The rub lies in do you have to give away the suprise of where you’re at in the first shot heading, OR can you like open on an image then in another WIDER scene to reveal where the first scene took place?
For something to play with I provide this.
A BUSINESSMAN
lies on his back. Hands crossed on his Armani suit he looks happy — might have even worked for Bernie Maddoff… Too happy. No longer breathing. Eyes glazed.
BRAKES SQUEEL, HORNS HONK from TRAFFIC BELOW. DOWN past the body to the gray cement of an overpass. The body shakes, it has been kicked. But now we’re LOWER still to see…
EXT. DENVER, COLORADO — HIGHWAY OVERPASS — PRE-DAWN TRAFFIC
Headlights. Stop and go traffic. The morning commute made worse by the advent of white flakes.
And that’s not all that’s falling, as the DEAD MAN in suit comes back INTO VIEW as he falls off the overpass and CRASHES onto the ROOF of a FORD BRONCO.
So… What I was trying to do there was open on the body. Get the misdirection of peace. Show the body’s dead. THEN introduce the setting by dropping below the overpass at which time the oncoming traffic is visible. And finally end the scene with the shock of body crashing on vehicle on the highway.
Lemme know whatchu think.
I think it tracks. And you approached it pretty much how I would do it: Start on the tight image, then essentially pull back to a master shot, indicated by the primary slugline, to provide the context of the scene.
I was trying to think of misdirection scenes from movies. Here’s the scene where Jack Sparrow is introduced in the original Pirates of the Caribbean:
EXT. PORT ROYAL - HARBOR - DAY
The skeletal remains of four pirates, still clad in buccaneer
rags, hang from gallows erected on a rocky promontory. There
is a fifth, unoccupied gallows, bearing a sign: PIRATES - YE
BE WARNED.
The top of a billowing sail passes regally in front of them.
On the landward face of the sail, apparently high in the
rigging, is a man for whom the term 'swashbuckling rogue'
was coined: Captain JACK SPARROW.
He gazes keen-eyed at the display as they pass. Raises a
tankard in salute. Suddenly, something below catches his
attention. He jumps from the rigging --
-- and that's when we see that his is ship is not an imposing
three-master, but just a small fishing dory with a single
sail, plowing through the water -- the Jolly Mon.
And it leaks. Which is why he has the tankard: to bail.
Elliott & Rossio use the paragraph break and double hyphens to suggest the camera shot which pulls back to provide the wider angle — and sell the misdirection.
GITS readers suggested some other scripted misdirections to check out:
* From flaris: How about Dexter? There are a lot of scenes at the beginning of episodes that use it.
* From Christina: How about the opening of French Kiss? We think the Meg Ryan character is on an actual plane, but she’s really in a simulator and freaks out so much the “fear of flying” people give her her money back. :-) Funny! And a great opening.
* From Jeff: This is probably a rotten example but its the first thing that came to mind… the outset of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, wherein we begin with a typical Warner Brothers type short subject involving Roger attempting to keep Baby Herman in one piece. After a ‘fridge lands on Roger’s skull, we pull out to reveal us on a Maroon Pictures “set.” I remember feeling completely taken aback and stunned by this shocking spacial reveal.
* From kgmadman: The draft of Zombieland I have opens with a pretty ingenious image.
It opens with a CLOSE ON the American Flag while “This Land Is Your Land” plays.
Pulls back and rotates to reveal the flag sticking out of the presidential limo which is upside down in a heap.
Pulls back further to reveal Washington D.C. in ruins.
Pulls back more as the guy holding the camera runs for dear life but is abruptly tackled and mauled by a hungry zombie.
* From Things That Can F Themselves: Team America World Police, the opening with fake, shitty marionettes in a movie with doll characters. according to Trey and Matt, studio execs freaked out pretty good at the first screening.
* From Just_Hiltz: “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Chase scene where Indy is chasing after Marion and he(we) knows she’s in a wicker basket …but then there are HUNDREDS of baskets in the bazzare as he moves into the new scene. Leads up to the 10' swordsman and he just shots him and turns away.
* Another one from Jeff: Blazing Saddles…
As the final massive war erupts between Heddy (THAT’S HEDLEY!) Lamarr’s army and the townsfolk of Rock Ridge, the battle gets so massive, it spills out onto the entire Warner Brothers studio lot.
Things get so out of hand that a flustered director on a musical number (the late great Dom Delouise) screams, “This is a closed set!” to which Slim Pickens replies, “Fuck you, I’m working for Mel Brooks!” and punches his lights out. (“Not in the face!”)
Then Jeff goes on to add this thought:
Comedy seems to use this tool frequently. French Kiss, Team America, etc. Is it possible that such a jarring spacial/reality disturbance would be too self-indulgent for any other genre???
Altman toys with us a little bit in both Nashville and The Player but, again, both those films are comedic in nature. PT Anderson kinda’ tinkers with us as well in Magnolia but he’s an Altman protege so cry foul again.
Fascinating topic!
It’s piqued my interest as well. So while E.C. can scurry off to find the scripts of the above movies and see how they approached setting up and paying off the misdirection, what about it: Is this type of narrative device something almost exclusive to comedies or can it work in other genres? If the latter, how about some examples?
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