Invisible Ink- Be the Drama Queen!

Did you know rats can’t cook? Did you know fish can’t talk, balloons can’t fly houses, monsters are not in your closet waiting to scare you, toys are not alive, cars don’t have emotions, humans do not have superpowers, robots can’t fall in love, and ants can’t invent things? Many of the most popular films ever to come out of Hollywood are the ones that are most illogical. I mean think about it. There is no such thing as a Jedi who can use some magical force to read your feelings and there is no such world populated by blue aliens and floating islands called Pandora. Why do we go to movies which show these things if they are not really real?

You might be the kind of person who does not like fantasy. You might only go to movies like Schindler’s List or Pursuit of Happyness, movies which are based on true stories. So at least those movies are real, right? Have you ever seen someone in real life who had a personal theme song play whenever he showed great emotion? Have you ever been in one place one second and then dozens of miles away in the next second in real life? The fact is all film is an illusion. Every action and camera move is thought out before hand. The lighting and most of the props have been planned out way before anything is actually shot. The goal for  filmmakers has never been to give you complete reality, you can just go outside if you want that. The goal is to give you an emotion which hopefully is more real to you then most of the emotions you have through real life.

Personally you can not convince me the animals in the Disney animated movie Bambi were just a bunch of drawings. You can not convince me the emotions I saw in the movie Schindler’s List were not real in some way. Characters like Wall-E, Thumper, or Forrest Gump have become just as real to me as any character I run into while going on a walk or shopping. In fact, these fictional characters have impacted me in ways few real people have.

In the book Invisible Ink Brian McDonald quotes famous director Billy Wilder, “Don’t give me logic, give me emotion“. Movies do not need to hit on logical truths all the time, what they need to hit on are emotional truths. Sometimes exaggerating logical truths can help highlight an emotional truth. No one does this better then Pixar in my opinion. Rats can not cook, however the premise of the Pixar movie Ratatouille is a ambitious rat, in Remy, venturing out to become a chef. As illogical as the premise is we as the audience are thrilled when we see Remy begin to succeed in his ambitions. The fact that Remy is a rat gives us even more fuel to root for him because we know he is fighting a huge uphill battle, I mean most restaurants are forced to close if it is discovered rats are in the kitchen. We begin to see Remy as a symbol of a man overcoming the impossible in order to fulfill his dreams. The idea of a rat wanting to cook captures us because emotionally it hits on a truth which is extremely real and relevant. Watching Remy succeed in being a chef allows us to realize we are capable of succeeding in things which we are told by the world are impossible or closed off.

It is the filmmakers job to become the drama queen. Film and stage acting are the places where we are allowed to let it all out and use everything to further our point. The reason why we have music playing in the background or use quick cuts is so we can get across to the audience a very real idea. The reason it takes so long to plan out the camera moves, acting, lighting, and set design is because we want all those things to further the actual emotional theme of our film.

A good man to study in order to see to what effect you can use cinema to further your theme is Martin Scorsese. Some of his earlier movies like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull went against many rules of filmmaking at the time. In Taxi Driver there were times where Scorsese would just wonder off of the main character, use fades to show his character moving across long distances, and shoot medium shot of a character talking to another without having the other character in frame. These very gutsy techniques worked because Scorsese understood how they were contributing to the theme of his film. He didn’t care if he showed more blood then what would be realistic from something like a gunshot wound, if he point was being made. (Check out this LINK to read more about how I feel Scorsese is a perfecter in using the elements of cinema).

Everything needs to be about the theme of the film. You must figure out how to get the most drama out of the performances and camera shots. Sometimes in order to get a curtain point across you need to go completely against logic. You must be careful to not lose your audience through going too abstract and it is important to stay true to some rules. In a movie like Ratatouille we are introduced to a rat who wants to cook and we are able to except this concept. However, we still need to see Remy go through the obstacles of becoming a cook. We still need to buy into him as a character and relate too the struggles he goes through.

I actually think Billy Wilder’s statement, “Don’t give me logic, give me emotion“, is slightly misleading. We do need things to be logical in some ways if we want to generate believable emotions from them. However, they do not need to be logical in the way “rats can’t cook” or “houses can’t fly” are. We need what we see in the movies to make logical sense emotionally to us. They must hit on a core belief we have as human beings. If someone falls in love with another character in a movie but the relationship has not connected with us as the audience, we will call it corny. If a character dies on screen but it doesn’t feel believable, we won’t be effected by the loss.

Make the character, environment, and story resonate with us as the audience through what ever rout you think is best. I do not need to believe characters like Wall-E and Forrest Gump live in the world I call “reality”. However, I need to have the characters and stories you tell become something I can believe in. But first the stories you create need to become real in the realm you call your “imagination”. When they become real there you can start translating them to film.