Getting back to how to shoot a particular genre, let's touch on mystery. Mystery can be a part of a drama, comedy, suspense, horror, action, pretty much any type of movie. It's more of a storytelling technique than it is a specific genre really, so I suppose I've already contradicted myself. That's not really the important part. Shooting to heighten the mystery is what we're discussing.
The first thing you should do is make it consistent with the larger genre. If it's a comedy you shoot to get the laughs, and the thrills for horror. Know what you're making. But if you have twists, reveals, and a big ending that hinges upon pulling all of the threads together? You have to find the beauty in smoke and mirrors.
The first thing you need to do is properly identify every clue. Any time some bigger picture is set up, any key element is given to the audience, you need to note it. Position these moments and facts as evenly apart as you can in the story. If you put them all in little clumps the audience will catch on that this is an "important" scene and pay far too close attention. They will see too many puzzle pieces together and get a sense of the big picture before you're ready.
Next you have to lay out the red herrings. Stick them in between the real story. Figure out what you'll be doing when you reveal the plot points, then use the red herrings as the bridges between them. Now do a pass where you build up the red herrings in importance to the characters, where the real information is just seen as tangential to what they're learning.
As an example, look at THE SIXTH SENSE. The real story, spoiler warning if you somehow still don't know, is that Bruce Willis's character is a ghost and unaware of it, but the child is trying to help him understand. The clues are there throughout as we see at the end, but we've been told the story is this child who may have the ability to see ghosts. We think Willis is there to help the child, be his protector, and every scene is designed to support this red herring. In the middle of it, with double meaning and careful timing and blocking, we are given information we don't believe is important, just color to the real story.
If you're writing a detective story, the easy trope is having the detective ask a series of people about details pertaining to the case. The natural instinct is to lay out the map from point A to B to C and so forth. The better method is to completely jumble the facts. Then find different questions that the detective can ask that get answered in a long winded way, the real detail being asides that can even be interrupted.
You need to know where the bad guy hangs out? Before we're aware of that character, have someone be questioned about another character's affair. The informant says they were spotted over at the Kit Kat Klub just before so and so got in a fight and spilled a drink on BAD GUY, who sure was... "Hey, who cares about them. Tell me about the affair!" The main character not getting the big picture is a great way to make sure the audience doesn't. That's who we're following, empathizing with, right?
So we really haven't talked about the actual shooting yet, which was the whole point, right? Nope. Same concepts apply. When you're telling a room full of people that the murderer is among them, that person should be in the frame with at least three other people, and they should be the second least prominent person. The person most focused on says "Hey, consider me as a suspect!" The one least prominent seems to be hidden, so if it's a whodunit we immediately look to the shadows and corners. Cut away after people have a chance to look at and consider these two.
Fill the frames. Keep them busy. One of the reasons SE7EN was so effective in keeping us guessing and looking for clues is because everything looked like a clue. Every crime scene was loaded with detail, far too much to take in. There are plenty of shadows and dirt and grit to keep things busy visually. There is always something going on in the background, sometimes something that helps solve the mystery but usually not. The background is where you can give the audience information overload, plenty of hay to hide the needles if they want to dig.
Another thing you can do just for fun is plant little non-context clues. Watch SCREAM 2 (which I still say is far better than people give it credit for). Note the signs all throughout the movie. They tell who is doomed, who is safe, who is being presented falsely. I'd give examples, but I think playing the game is a good exercise. If you watch the movie and don't see what I'm talking about, you might not have the mindset to pull off the gag, so never mind. If you can see it, consider toying with it yourself.
Speaking of games, THE GAME is another one to rewatch on all of the above accounts. If you haven't seen it, another vague set of spoilers ahead. The whole movie feature essentially one company: CRS. That's an abbreviation for "Can't Remember Shit" in some circles, and fits the theme of the film and the journey of Michael Douglas's character. Not a vital clue, but a fun one.
Also, the red herrings are pretty much the entire structure of the film. At the beginning we are told exactly what is going on. Then, through false leads and faulty logic from our protagonist, we come to believe something else is going on and we must know what. The sub plots and false leads don't quite add up or get resolved well, because they aren't supposed to. If they had solutions, the character could have found them. By not even considering the outcome, you guarantee that the audience won't solve a sub plot before you want them to. Very clever and hard to implement, but it is a good example of knowing what the audience is thinking, then manipulating it.
Or is it?
Yes, it is. Sorry.
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| Patrick Storck |
Patrick hails from Baltimore, MD, where playing by the rules is frowned upon. Only average things come from playing it safe.
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