Cliff's Blog

The Debt is a grim spy thriller where a retired team of spies reflect on the most important day of their lives: the completion of a vital mission for which they are famous.  Rachel (played by Jessica Chastain in the past) is attacked and permanently scarred during the mission.

The movie match-cuts from young Rachel to old Rachel (Helen Mirren). The scar is how the audience identifies the character.

Now look at the DVD cover…

The scar is gone! The mark that identifies the character! The constant, unavoidable, physical reminder of the most important event in the movie, and of the character’s life! They chose to put her right cheek in the center of the biggest image on the cover, and then removed the extremely important thing on that cheek. There are so many ways to not do this.

1. Just show the scar! People have scars sometimes.
2. Definitely emphasize the scar because it’s very important to the movie
3. Pick any of the other actors to put on the cover
4. Pick any other angle on Helen Mirren that doesn’t emphasize the right cheek
5. Pick a wider shot of Helen Mirren so the scar isn’t so big

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I trust this statement will be uncontroversial: Rachel McAdams is gorgeous!

Those cheekbones! The little creases she gets when she smiles! Her lower eylids are so expressive! So imagine my surprise when I see the cover of the DVD this image comes from.

All those features are gone! Removed to make her face smooth and perfect. Maybe some marketing person thought, “We need a conventionally attractive woman on the cover to attract viewers!” but the casting directors already had that covered because they hired Rachel McAdams! Why replace a specific beautiful face with a generic beautiful face?

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I love people for being themselves. Specificity and uniqueness are delightful. Attempts to make people more normal and less distinct seem cruel to me. Especially in entertainment. Especially for women. Even a spectacular woman like Rachel McAdams isn’t good enough to advertise her own movie. Her face must be changed to be more acceptable. Even a vital detail like the scar on Helen Mirren’s face–which defines the character and emphasizes the grim, violent tone of the movie–is unacceptable. “Stop it,” I yell into the wind.

Action and violence in a story (I use movies as my examples) can be fun, humorous, empowering, or spectacular. But I want to talk about action that makes the audience worry about the characters. How can we, as storytellers, maximize the apparent danger to the characters, and maximize the audience’s fear for their safety? Going bigger and louder isn’t the answer. It’s hard to keep track of 30 enemy soldiers, and blowing up the whole world seems abstract. No, for maximum peril, put the threat right in the character’s face and give them time to look at it. Keep it close.

This kind of danger has three axes. I’ll provide examples of the extremes, but remember that they are continuums, not binaries.

1. Intimacy: How close is the threat to the character?
2. Vulnerability: If the threat is not neutralized, how badly will it hurt the character?
3. Speed: Does the audience (and the character) have time to understand the threat?

Intimacy: Far

The whole scene is a joke that the knight is not threatening at such a distance.

Intimacy: Close

Dodge This! There’s no room to dodge. No space between the threat and the character.

Intimacy: OVERFLOW

Body horror is especially potent because the threat is already inside, in a place that should be completely safe and under control.

Vulnerability: Safe

She’s got a metal body and knows a secret martial art. She’d be fine even if she lost this bar fight, which she clearly won’t.

Vulnerability: Dangerous

A point-blank shotgun blast will kill a normal human.

Speed: Fast

The opponent’s strikes are so quick that the character can either handle them, or she’s already lost.

Speed: Slow

This creature isn’t moving, so the crew has time to try various ways to remove it and realize that none of them work.

Speed: Too Slow

The soldiers and Jeeps can’t keep up, so the Iron Giant just leaves. If the threat has no effect for a long time, or gives the characters plenty of time to prepare, it’s less threatening.

Combine these three axes to create especially intense moments.

• Dangerous: Drowning is lethal.
• Close: She’s gasping for the last inches of air as the water fills the cabin
• Slow: The water rises slowly, and drowning is a slow death.

Another way to increase the danger is to use multiple threats. In the Abyss, even if Linds doesn’t drown right now, she’ll soon be vaporized by a nuclear explosion, and if that is prevented, she’ll suffocate later when the damaged rig runs out of oxygen. Too Slow threats now loom large in the distance. The disaster has reserves. Do you? To escape more than one threat, the character must use some or all of the following:

1. Simultaneous solutions: The character needs to do more things than they have time for. Too Slow threats are now fast enough to be worrisome.
2. Different solutions: If multiple threats can be neutralized by doing the same thing repeatedly or skilfully, that’s just one big threat.
3. Opposing solutions: Neutralizing one threat makes another threat worse.

Here’s an example from Jurassic Park, where Lex is about to be:

1. drowned in mud
2. crushed by the car
3. eaten by the dinosaur

The crushed car makes escaping the mud difficult. The mud makes escaping the car difficult. Inside the car is the only shelter from the dinosaur. Truly a terrible situation!

A special shout-out to portals like doors and windows, which give you close and slow for free.

Portals can also be used for irony: showing characters something they want or need, but denying them access.