Misdirection and Reveals

I enjoy it when "things" come together and on Friday night two of my recent explorations came together.

Early last year I attended a introduction to film making run by Raindance, a company that amongst other things runs film festivals. It was certainly stimulating and I still use bits of what was said in other parts of my life. And of course once they have your email you "hear" lots more. So it was that last week they asked if anyone was interested in attending the test screening of their first feature film.

I quickly reserved two tickets for my daughter and me and on early Friday evening we found ourselves with 60 other people in an increasingly warm basement viewing room watching an unfinished (their admission) low budget fetaure film.

The low budget mainly manifested through the small cast (three main characters and one bit part - Sadi Frost!) and limited locations (the rooms in one house, a shop and a couple of street pieces). The final music was not applied and there were still doubts about title, poster, etc.

To me it tried too hard to be arty with loads of soft shots, half shots, obscure shots, etc, but when my daughter and I spoke about it after that was not the problem. The problems were more to do with the script and/or its translation onto film.

The pace was pretty uniform/slow throughout and most of the plot(?) twists were telegraphed. For example think about a man (victim?) in a bath immobilised by rope, but with fingers splayed, when the "baddy" walks in with a pair of bolt cutters...what do you think will happen? Yes, you got it the victim lost a finger. And when he went in with a pair of pliers in his hand, out came a tooth.

There were elements of the film that appeared to have no purpose or if they did when they were "used", it was unclear exactly what and why. Some key dialogue was not clear and some key shots made it too hard for the viewer to take in critical information.

I don't feel it right to give the plot away, but in the end the film showed how the "baddy" did what he did, but not why. Well at least we did not see it.

We were asked to fill in a questionnaire after the viewing and then my daughter and I had dinner where we discussed it further. It was during this dinner I noticed the link between what I had recently learned on my standup comedy course.

There were three things that I took from the standup course and they were:-

• The power of misdirection
• The need for a clear reveal
• Every element must have a purpose/value - else ditch it

As I said too many plot elements were obvious and would have benefitted from greater misdirection - the impact of the reveal would have been so much more effective if we had not seen it coming.

Likewise the reveal has to be maximised, both in terms of how it is delivered to the audience and indeed when. By way of example there was key information that was contained in messages and pictures on a phone. The film limited the reveal to angle shots of the phone screen held in a hand. Given the fact that the audience needed to read the text and see the pics, a full screen shot would have been much clearer.

As for the third point, there were elements that were never explained or developed. For example the female lead was bound while the "baddy" dealt with her husband. For some reason she was bound and suspnded in an elaborate form of Japanese rope bondage know as shibari. Why was this so? Apart from a few lines of something like oriental wisdom this was not explained or developed. And if one was intent on quickly immobilising a victim, it is doubtful the first thought would be complex rope work.

Overall it was an interesting evening that linked some of my personal explorations and gave rise to good conversation with my daughter.

We both agreed that this showed how hard it is to create "entertainment" well, whether it be film, comedy or theatre, and we can appreciate that a little better now.