Directing, Filmmaking, Visual Storytelling
5 Challenging Scene Types and How to Conquer Them
September 15, 2018 - Directing, Filmmaking, Visual Storytelling
Practice, practice, practice!
As the saying goes, you need to put 10,000 hours of practice into something to become a phenomenal practitioner of that thing. (It might actually take less than 10,000 hours, but that’s another story.) Well, it may hurt to think about how much time that means you really need to put in to become a master of your craft. I get that.
Don’t think about it too hard. Just practice when you get the chance and make it a habit.
So, a great way to become a great filmmaker is by practicing some of the most common scenes.
Each of these scene types reveals something important about your characters, create or resolve a conflict, or advance the story, so they are important to get under your belt if you haven’t tried shooting them before.
This article from Yeah Write! goes into depth about the elements of a scene, what makes a scene work, and what the goal of a scene is.
Basically, a scene mimics an entire film in that it has a beginning, middle, and end, and should reveal something about your characters as they make active decisions toward a goal.
That said, you need to make sure your scene has all the important elements of drama to make it effective and not simply a filler scene.
The dinner scene
This scene is deceptively simple. The mistake I made when I got started as a filmmaker was thinking that having a ‘normal’ dinner scene showed that my main character was a family man (or something like that). Just by having it in there.
Instead, the scene felt fake, because there was no conflict within the scene–what family never has conflict at the dinner table?
By having no conflict, my characters revealed nothing about themselves, and the story was not advanced. It was essentially a waste of time.
A dinner scene (or any meal, really) is a great opportunity for storytelling. You are taking your audience and inserting them into one of the most private moments anyone has; eating a meal at home, away from the prying eyes of the public.
They are probably at their most relaxed and vulnerable and may reveal something about themselves.
What if they are eating with family, but are totally clammed up and uneasy? Or, perhaps your character is eating all alone in a small apartment littered with cigarette butts and empty bottles.
See what I mean?
Quick Tip: think about the setting of the meal, the people present, and what their goals are during the meal in order to reveal more about your characters in this scene. This breakdown by YouTube channel “Now You See It” goes into depth on how powerful dining scenes are.
The foot chase scene
This type of scene is both fun to shoot but also challenging to pull off. Using the right kinds of shots, lenses/focal lengths, and editing to make the scene feel energetic and intense is not as simple as it might seem.
While you might not do very well on your first try, practicing and reviewing your work afterward is key to mastering this scene. If you can nail it down, it becomes a great tool for advancing the plot and injecting a little excitement into your film.
Remember, though, that the scene should reveal things about your character and your character should be doing it to achieve a specific goal.
If we don’t have a reason to care about the outcome of the chase, it won’t be interesting. Is he lazy, an overachiever, overconfident? Perhaps he is chasing a criminal but intentionally lets him get away, revealing he may be hiding something?
Quick Tip: use long lenses to shoot characters moving side to side, and use wider lenses to shoot characters moving toward or away from the camera – that will make them seem to move more quickly than they are. You can also get great results by tracking behind or in front of a character.
The fist-fight scene
If you go ahead and practice this, you don’t have to do anything too crazy. However, knowing how to shoot a fight is good to know how to do in a pinch. Ever needed to just have a character punch someone in the face?
Beginner filmmakers can have a hard time selling this single, straightforward action on camera.
It certainly confused me at first!
Like the foot chase, a fist fight comes with a variety of technical challenges, since you have to ‘cheat’ the position of your actors and camera to simulate that they are actually striking each other.
As far as storytelling goes, a fist fight or physical struggle is a legitimate method for a character to attempt resolving a conflict or issue.
Your character may even be making a bad decision, but it’s a strong choice that reveals much about your him, nonetheless.
You just have to make sure that physical altercations advance the story and aren’t there just for their own sake.
Quick Tip: the actor’s arm/fist should always hide the gap between their fist and the other actors face, like Ryan Connolly demonstrates in the below video breakdown.
Oh, and for a good laugh, check this out.
The travelling scene
Travelling scenes aren’t just for cookie-cutter transitions!
This is a multi-purpose scene in that it can really tell your audience a lot–if you use it well.
A traveling scene can range from a montage of your character going on an epic journey, to traveling from one city to the next, or even just walking a few blocks.
However, in that rather short span of time, the audience sees many things.
Environment. World-building. Tone. Character attitude. How the character interacts with his world. How they fit into the world.
Do they ignore their surroundings? Do people avoid them? Do they take the back alleys, looking around cautiously? Do people spit insults at them?
Is their world busy and full of stimulus? Is it a slow country town?
Give your audience a sense of the world your character inhabits, and tell them a bit about who they are and what they do.
Travel scenes are often used as a transition, such as going from one city to the next as a matter of plot progression, but you should always try to use that time to show your audience something about your character.
Quick Tip: take a look at a scene where your character is traveling. Think about the layers of information you can convey through this scene–who, what, when, where, and why–and try to communicate more than the obvious through your travel scene.
The exposition scene
Exposition: “the insertion of important background information within a story; for example, information about the setting, characters’ backstories, prior plot events, historical context, etc.” (Wikipedia)
The rule of thumb for filmmakers is ‘show, don’t tell’. This is incredibly important. You should always look for ways to build vital information into your story through characters’ actions and their world.
Exposition, if done badly, tends to tell, not show. So, only once you have built as much information into the scene as possible through non-dialogue means should you use dialogue.
At that point, dialogue can be a good way to communicate information (like in this great breakdown of how to use dialogue), but you need to get to the point, and you need to make it interesting!
Don’t have your characters sitting and doing nothing but chatting, pandering to the audience. Not only is that boring, but… well, that’s actually a great reason not to do it.
Part of your job is to entertain the audience.
A way to handle exposition is ‘the walk and talk’.
Sometimes the walk and talk can double as a traveling scene (from one location to another) and way to deliver exposition. It can show a lot about the character’s world, their busy life, and deliver information that will be important for later in the story.
The video below hints at some ways you might effectively use text and dialogue to communicate information without pandering to your audience.
You can also use a traveling scene as an opportunity to have characters deliver important information while also getting to a critical next step for the story. This might be traveling on a plane, bus, in a car, or another mode of transportation.
Quick Tip: try to communicate as much information as possible with action, tone, and world-building. Whatever you need to tell the audience through dialogue, have your characters say it while doing something relevant or interesting. Traveling, Building something, cooking, cracking jokes, struggling to get the kids to the dinner table, hiking to their hunting blind… anything–just keep it entertaining.
Oh, and then there’s this:
Try these and many more
Like I said, the key is to practice. This is obviously not an exhaustive list of the types of scenes, the ways you can execute them, or what you should try. Regardless, I’d encourage you to bust out a camera, call a couple of friends, and go try out these scenes. Good luck!
Author
Entrepreneur & Storyteller. Co-founder of Occulus Films. I love working with teams to create compelling and engaging films and commercial video content. Fave films include Blade Runner and Mad Max: Fury Road.
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