047 - Some Profound and Wise Street Writing

Today I learned that context in film and TV is everything. While talking to actors on the TV show based on my books, one of them referenced a scene in which one character is shown standing outside the window of a restaurant, looking in. They specifically mentioned that there was no shot showing the character - Mike - walking up to the restaurant, so the joke was that he had just been there all along, creeping on everyone by staring into the window for an endless amount of time. We are supposed to intuit that Mike just walked up to the window minutes before the camera shows him, but that’s not usually the way it works … and so without the shot of him walking up, it really does look on rewatching like he's a peeping tom who’s been standing there forever.

The creative lesson I took from this Noticing is that in visual storytelling (or any form of storytelling, really), what's omitted is just as powerful as what's shown. Sometimes the lack of a scene can shape or misshape an audience's understanding, creating unintentional implications or humor. This phenomenon can be manipulated intentionally for desired effects or narrative tricks.

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