Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

Collapse

Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

    One of the ways I tend to make things much harder for myself than they have to be is that I don't assume the reader will willingly suspend disbelief for me even for the smallest thing.

    For example, I wrote a spec last year for a procedural, and agonized over the timeline because I had a scene where a detective questioned a witness at a museum on a Monday - but that actual museum isn't open on Mondays.

    Insane, right?

    The thing is - there are people in the audience who do this. I used to be a TV recapper/forum moderator and the extent to which viewers fusspot over every little thing is remarkable. I partially blame the ease with which we can re-watch. I often had to watch a show several times to do a recap, and I think any plot unravels after multiple viewings. What seemed exciting during the first watch became "wait a minute...how did he know she was dangling off the edge of that balcony?" three viewings later.

    But even aside from that, they'd ask things like "Why are these characters talking in person?Real people would call or text or email." And of course - were there to be an episode where characters silently texted each other, they would complain that it was incredibly boring.

    Which leads me to - Do audiences know what they want? As an audience member, I feel like answering "yes, of course we do, and it's patronizing to suggest otherwise."

    But then I remember the day I came across a post lamenting that you never see movie or tv characters getting their periods, unless it's a plot point. And I think...no, of course not, these people are bonkers.

  • #2
    Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

    Originally posted by bmcthomas View Post
    For example, I wrote a spec last year for a procedural, and agonized over the timeline because I had a scene where a detective questioned a witness at a museum on a Monday - but that actual museum isn't open on Mondays.

    Insane, right?
    -- Honestly, I can't see how this stuff matters. Specialists in every field are going to find nitpicks. But if it drives you nuts when it's not right, then get it right.
    Last edited by Centos; 01-12-2013, 08:43 PM. Reason: Removed quote
    STANDARD DISCLAIMER: I'm a wannabe, take whatever I write with a huge grain of salt.

    Comment


    • #3
      Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

      I have a good friend who is a huge Alpha-Nerd Fanboy. He's not too bad to talk movies with, he at least has a basis in stuff he points out, so I accept it. In fact, I have learned from his criticisms and it has helped make me think about things I would not have thought of. But his wife.... don't get me wrong, very nice caring person, but man does she go for the negative. In everything. I showed my friend some raw footage of a short film and she pointed out everything right down to how unimpressed she was with the camera quality (it was a 5D). I tried to explain to her what raw footage was without sound tweaking and color correcting but there was just no getting through, negative, negative, negative, I'm right, I'm right, I'm right. It's almost like a feeding frenzy once the train leaves the station.

      Finally I figured it out. I told my friend that I just wasn't going to listen to his wife anymore and I did not want to hear it. I know that she is going to say something negative and since I already know that, her opinion carries no weight since that is what she looks for (she admits she wraps herself in the cloak of being a "naturally critical person").

      My point is that, at some point, you just have to discard the opinions of the natural critics. They are always going to find something. I am like you that I obsessed about timelines, but I have learned to let some of it go if it makes the movie better (they're going to complain anyway). Tarantino is actually famous for intentionally putting mistakes in his movies, just to get them out of the way and let the critics pat themselves on the back and stop looking. I also remember a good point from Gary Marshall when I was watching one of Director's Commentaries. He pointed out a scene and said "I know that's a continuity error. I knew it when I edited it and I know it now. But those were the best cuts of my actors and my job is to put their best work forward for the film, not worry if the flowers are in the same location". It is the same for your script or movie. Put the best work forward, tune out the natural critics.

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

        Apologies if everyone's heard this already, but Jonathan Demme coined this phrase 'refridgerator questions'. So you watch a movie, get home, reach for a beer from the fridge and suddenly think 'Wait a minute - where did they get the car from just after they robbed the bank?' Point being, if it takes the audience that long to notice, it doesn't matter - one for the nerds on bullshitcontinuity.com.

        However contrast with something like Prometheus where in the screening I went to you could actually hear people questioning how the guys got lost, who drove them all back during the storm, why they didn't notice that two people from a small team were missing, why the black goo did whatever was convenient for the script rather than obeying any logic...

        As a writer I think - as ever - it's a gut thing. This is why I recommend having a non-writer friend to read you scripts, someone who doesn't know a plot-point from an inciting incident but who'll read your script and say 'If Bob can speak French on p56, how come he couldn't understand the French guy in the hospital scene?'
        My stuff

        Comment


        • #5
          Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

          Originally posted by Jon Jay View Post
          Apologies if everyone's heard this already, but Jonathan Demme coined this phrase 'refridgerator questions'.
          He coined it from Hitchcock!

          http://mubi.com/topics/icebox-scenes?page=1

          Comment


          • #6
            Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

            I think audiences are just like studio executives, managers, and agents: they may not know what they want, but they know what they don't want.

            Comment


            • #7
              Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

              I never notice stuff like this unless it's either so huge that it yanks me out of the story... or the story isn't working and that gives me lots of free time to nit-pick.

              A movie *is not reality* - so if the museum is closed on Monday in real life doesn't matter at all.

              - Bill
              Free Script Tips:
              http://www.scriptsecrets.net

              Comment


              • #8
                Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                Refrigerator question not long ago.

                ME = "Hey wait a minute. Why was the Lizard holding Spider-Man dangling sixty stories above the city a threatening moment? Couldn't Spdey have just touched the building and said, um, thanks, I got this?"

                I'm gonna say every single movie has a least one of these and you'd make yourself crazy trying to avoid it.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                  Originally posted by bmcthomas View Post
                  One of the ways I tend to make things much harder for myself than they have to be is that I don't assume the reader will willingly suspend disbelief for me even for the smallest thing.

                  For example, I wrote a spec last year for a procedural, and agonized over the timeline because I had a scene where a detective questioned a witness at a museum on a Monday - but that actual museum isn't open on Mondays.

                  Insane, right?

                  The thing is - there are people in the audience who do this. I used to be a TV recapper/forum moderator and the extent to which viewers fusspot over every little thing is remarkable. I partially blame the ease with which we can re-watch. I often had to watch a show several times to do a recap, and I think any plot unravels after multiple viewings. What seemed exciting during the first watch became "wait a minute...how did he know she was dangling off the edge of that balcony?" three viewings later.

                  But even aside from that, they'd ask things like "Why are these characters talking in person?Real people would call or text or email." And of course - were there to be an episode where characters silently texted each other, they would complain that it was incredibly boring.

                  Which leads me to - Do audiences know what they want? As an audience member, I feel like answering "yes, of course we do, and it's patronizing to suggest otherwise."

                  But then I remember the day I came across a post lamenting that you never see movie or tv characters getting their periods, unless it's a plot point. And I think...no, of course not, these people are bonkers.

                  Remember the scene in Jurassic Park where the T-Rex comes through the fence?

                  Right before it breaks through they establish the tied-up goat that gets eaten? It's right next to the jeep with the kids in it. They look right out the door and they see the goat getting eaten and the T-Rex comes right out through the fence. Right there. Right where the goat gets eaten.

                  Two minutes later, the T-Rex knocks that same jeep -- in exactly the same place upside down and pushes it over the wall.

                  That same wall. The same wall where they just saw the goat.

                  Only instead of that place where the goat was, there's now a giant seventy-foot drop off where the jeep falls over and ends up stuck in the top of a tree.

                  Does anybody notice this? Does anybody care?

                  Remember the end? We've seen this space that they enter -- that entrance hall that they walk into with the dinosaur skeletons. There are only human-sized doors leading into that space.

                  So how does the T-Rex get in there to fight the raptors?

                  Anybody worry about this?

                  There is absolutely no connection between what happens in that movie and either physical or temporal reality. Time and space are twisted completely out of recognition and not only do people not mind -- most people don't even notice.

                  This is a kind of sleight of hand trick - if you make the audience, or the reader, look where you want them to look, they're not going to pay attention when you play even quite enormous tricks with time, space, and logic.

                  Remember -- people can only really pay attention to one thing at a time, so if you keep their attention completely occupied with whatever it is that you want them to be paying attention to -- you're free to move the scenery of the story around as much as you want and there's a good chance that they won't see you doing it.

                  NMS
                  And it doesn't matter in the slightest.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                    This is why so many scripts by internet nerds SUCK.

                    Don't worry about this stuff. When you test a movie and listen to the focus group afterwards, their questions are almost always about character, general story, etc.

                    The whole gaffe squad crap rarely comes up, unless, as others have mentioned, they are glaring errors that disrupt the viewing experience.

                    Those kinds of errors require true vigilance when writing and shooting.

                    The little dinky crap, like whether or not a museum is open? No.

                    So don't be an internet nerd.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                      A different approach to take can be found in this quote from Michael's roommate, Jeff, in the movie Tootise.

                      I don't like it when people come up to me after my plays and say, "I really dug your message, man." Or, "I really dug your play, man, I cried." You know. I like it when people come up to me the next day, or a week later, and they say, "I saw your play. What happened?"

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                        OP--

                        Your question raises questions about fundamental psychologies, in my opinion.

                        In terms of the tv recappers, I think people reframe their brain when asked to provide feedback. Suddenly their perspicacity is on the line and they want/need to impress with their "catches." Awareness of that role affects the way they experience the work. I don't know that their picayune mindset reflects the mindset of someone plopping down in a multiplex chair on a Sunday afternoon, etc. The recappers are agenda-driven by dint of the frame of their task.

                        Other commenters have mentioned critical people. The "naturally critical" woman sounds like she's threatened by other people being producers of content, whereas she is a consumer. It's so easy to be a critic because it's so passive. Tautology of the day: Passivity is effortless.

                        In terms of nerd/fan boys, that line about "consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" was never more appropriate. That laser-like focus on logic is perverse. Stunted and stunting. And yes, in terms of their own material, they generate excruciating rubbish. Dismissed, with prejudice.

                        Having said that, I try to err on the side of exactitude when it comes to the world/events etc. I'm writing about because I think that at the end of the day it helps the work. I call it "following the law of gravity" and I follow it up to the moment where I have to decide to let it go. That's a case-by-case moment for me. If I'm wrong about a fact in my world -- hours of museum operation, for example -- but I can't do anything about it, I swallow it and live with the itching piece of sand in my throat.

                        Surrender may be what this topic really comes down to.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                          In one of his books William Goldman talks about how people always complain that in films a parking space is always available, but really who wants to watch someone driving around for 10 minutes trying to find a spot to park.

                          It's a film, not reality, if it was reality who'd want to watch it?

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                            Originally posted by Bairn_Writer View Post
                            In one of his books William Goldman talks about how people always complain that in films a parking space is always available, but really who wants to watch someone driving around for 10 minutes trying to find a spot to park.

                            It's a film, not reality, if it was reality who'd want to watch it?
                            Well, right. That was kind of what I meant by "do audiences really know what they want." I have a friend who is an FBI agent and she says most fictional depictions of her job are wildly inaccurate but that's okay because her real job is pretty boring.

                            Obsessing over minutiae is a bad habit I've picked up and obviously need to get rid of.

                            OTOH, I think it can help to think of logical questions your audience might ask, and resolve them beforehand. If there's an obvious solution to the problem, and the character doesn't even try it, they seem pretty stupid. (which is fine if they actually ARE stupid, of course.)

                            For example, the script I'm working on right now involves a guy having to return an item to someone who lives in another state. The first thing he tries is sending the item via FedEx - if he just hopped in a car and drove cross country, that would be ridiculous.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Re: Willing suspension of disbelief & do audiences really know what they want?

                              I agree with the sentiments here that it doesn't matter. Well, not usually. But I wonder if in your script...
                              Your character, at work in her office at the Prudential Building in Boston. She sees it's 5:45 PM. "Crap, I have a meeting in Framingham at 6." And then she gets there on time.
                              Or...
                              Your character, at work in his office at Universal. He sees it's 5:45 PM. "Crap, I have a meeting at Fox at 6." And then he gets there on time.

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X