Seeing Through Film — Starting to Think Like a Director
When I got my first DVD player, I’m embarrassed to admit I hooked it up incorrectly. I could watch DVDs, but couldn’t access the extras. I just lived with that, and even when I finally got my wires uncrossed, I rarely even thought about the extras since I was so used to not seeing them. That has changed. I am particularly drawn to either feature-length director’s commentaries (that is, the director doing a voice-over throughout the entire movie, explaining why things were done the way they were done), or a “making of” feature (these are sometimes done by the director, sometimes they’re a combination of cast and crew talking about the film, sometimes for an older movie, a film historian will talk about the movie). I have learned so much, and much of it can be applied to writing. Which brings me to the real subject of this post. Those of you who were reading my daily posts in April (thank you, hardy souls that you are!) may remember that in the alphabetical A to Z challenge, B was for “Blocking,” as in blocking a theatrical play on stage, setting the actions, pacing, placement of actors, and so on. I then likened that process to outlining a writing project. Here’s the link if you want to refresh your memory. A couple of the comments on that post asked if I would pursue the idea further. Um, a funny thing happened with that…