Notes For Visual Storytelling.

Screenplays are usually a page a minute. If an action scene in a film is supposed to last for five minutes, there should be five pages of the screenplay focused on the action scene.

The protagonist/hero normally enters the scene for the first time from the left hand side of the screen, walking to the right, and the villain generally enters from the right hand side, and walking towards the left. It’s subconscious, and the viewer tends to like/dislike a character more because this is the way that people have learnt to watch films.

Leading the eye is a detail in which can be put into the script. Parts of the scene can be focused upon by lighting, sound, character positions, camera angles and camera movements, to make things seem more important than others. Paranormal activity doesn’t have these cues to tell the audience where to look, which is why it is scarier to watch it in a cinema as you are unsure of where to look compared to normal films.

Symmetry is something that people always look for. It’s easy to throw the audience off by unbalancing something on screen, as it feels like something is missing or wrong, whereas a balanced and symmetrical shot feels calmer and safe. If a shot is described as having something missing, the audience will assume it is something important.

The size of things in the shot is important too, as framing can make things seem larger or smaller than usual, giving them more significance or less significance than usual. Something small like a nail or a ring could have a huge impact if it fills up the screen compared to if it was portrayed as its usual size in a wide shot. Framing could be used in this too, and help to get information across.

People often look for boundaries and lines within shots, things that stop characters and others from reaching their goals, or to relay important information – like Brody being unable to cross the boundary from the beach and into the sea due to his fear of water which is information that is relayed to the audience quite a lot. Lines breaking across the screen could be used if a character ‘crosses the line’, and it would be almost like a visual representation that the character has taken something too far.

Sound is another detail that is used a lot in films. In Jaws, the famous theme song is never used for fake shark scares, it’s only used for genuine scenes with the shark because otherwise the audience would stop paying attention to the music and wouldn’t tense up when the shark is actually nearby.

Some things shown on screen are just pieces of information to show or suggest things relating to the story, and aren’t something that characters in the film would be looking at. This allows the audience to link two things together, for example, and add to the story without them literally needing to be told.

Camera movements such as contra shots can be used to make the audience feel uneasy, or make something seem more important within the film.

Colours are sometimes used to represent things – such as the colour yellow appearing a lot throughout Jaws to represent danger and the shark, and it sets the audience up to subliminally recognise the colour when something bad is about to happen.

When going from one scene to another, always have something to lead the audience by the hand into the next scene. Whether it is a huge contrast, something exactly the same, or carrying something on from the previous scene – such as characters walking into a house from the rain being soaking wet rather than cutting to them being indoors and already dry. There should always be a continuity or a discontinuity between all scenes.