What is the premise?
Track 3: KeyWords, Phrases, Taglines, and Sounds-Repetition
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- MASTERPIECES OF SCENE CONSTRUCTION
| Track 3: KeyWords, Phrases, Taglines, and Sounds-Repetition, Variation, and Leitmotif Key words, phrases, taglines, and sounds are the third track of dialogue. These are words with the potential to carry special meaning, symbolically or thematically, the way a symphony uses certain instruments, such as the triangle, here and therefor emphasis. The trick to building this meaning is to have your characters say the word many more times than normal. The repetition, especially in multiple contexts, has a cumulative effect on the audience. A tagline is a single line of dialogue that you repeat many times over the course of the story. Every time you use it, it gains new meaning until it becomes a kind of signature line of the story. The tagline is primarily a technique for expressing theme. Some classic taglines are "Roundup the usual suspects" "I stick my neck out for nobody" and "Here's looking at you, kid" from Casablanca. From Cool Hand Luke: "What we've got here is failure to communicate" From Star Wars: "May the Force be with you" From Field of Dreams: "If you build it, he will come." The Godfather uses two taglines "Ill make him an offer he can't refuse" and "Its not personal it's business" MASTERPIECES OF SCENE CONSTRUCTION I'd like to take one last look at the techniques of scene construction and dialogue by studying two great films, Casablanca and The Godfather. These films are masterpieces in the art of storytelling, and their scene construction and dialogue are brilliant. Because so much of your success in scene writing depends on your ability to place a scene on the arc of your hero's development, I want to expfore scenes that come from the beginning and the end of these two films. To fully appreciate the excellence of scene construction and dialogue, give yourself the pleasure of seeing these films again. Casablanca (play Everybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, and Howard Koch, 1942) Download 0.98 Mb. Share with your friends:
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