Flashback in shortfilm

P

Polaroid22

Well-known member
Hello,

I was wondering about the use of flashbacks, I thought flashbacks arent used anymore. And I did not want to include a flashback in my shortfilm. But then I saw this article from Herzog, that everything needs to be shown in the film not talked about.

Like for example the bank robbery in reservoir dogs, was never shown in the film. Only the other characters talked about it.

For my shortfilm I have written a scene where the main character gets real emotional, because he was abused in the past. But now I am wondering should I create a flashback scene to show the audience what happened? Or is it ok to be a little mysterious about it, but it might not have the same impact.

So what are you thoughts about that?

Thanks!
 
There are all kinds of ways to present the information. You need to decide which is best for the story you're telling. But flashbacks are used all the time. There's no reason to not consider doing a flashback.
 
When asking for a screenwriting advice from a DVXuser member (such as myself) or Herzog, always go with Herzog.

PS. Tarantino's films don't always have a linear story structure anyway, so it's not a good example to follow. He can do it and do it well because he has the gift for this type of a narrative (plus, he can take up to a year of full time work on a script, to make sure that all the loose ends are tied up).

Spielberg, to the contrary, in "SPR" omitted a flashback and used that whole Matt-Damon-tells-a-story scene as a break from action. Frankly, I thought the scene sucked - it was entirely improvised by Damon and not in Robert Rodat's screenplay - but a quiet all-talk pause was needed at that point of the film.
 
Don't worry too much about "rules", whether the rules come from Herzog, anybody on this board (including me), Jesus Christ Superstar or Joe Sh|t The Ragman. There are no iron rules, and really only one principle to hold on to that should guide you in all things film: what's the impact on the audience - does it "work". The general rule of "show don't tell" is sound as far as it goes, but always, ALWAYS ask "does it work here". Actually quite often telling is better than showing - leave stuff to the imagination... but again, depending on the final result. Take the example of the monologue by Robert Shaw's character in Jaws when he talks about the aftermath of the Indianapolis sinking and the shark attack - a monologue actually written by Spielberg's friend, the writer/director John Milius. Take a look at that scene - over three and a half minutes of talking, just by Robert Shaw, and it works brilliantly - it's one of the most memorable and affecting scenes in a pretty dramatic movie. Think about it - one man talking for minutes on end (an eternity in screen time) describing extremely dramatic events... and not showing those dramatic events - just describing. And it works amazingly well. Now, use your aesthetic sense. Can you understand why it was better to tell and not show? Can you imagine how it would be if you showed that scene instead of just described it? First, to give it context, you'd probably have to use even more screen time, but let's forget that aspect and use your filmmaking sense - that scene would be extremely disruptive if shown at all (that it's a flashback is not a factor), on purely rhythm grounds - this is not what the movie needs at that moment, and it throws you into a completely different frame of mind as you witness all those events - in fact, dramatic as they would be, they'd compete against the rest of the movie Jaws that's about ONE shark. It would not belong. It would stand out like a sore thumb. Instead, you have a riveting performance by Robert Shaw, fantastic mood inside that cabin and a standout scene - all "tell, don't show". It was done, because it worked better.

So forget about all those rules - and ask yourself: what works better in this particular case? What makes the my scene better, and does doing the scene this way make my whole film better? Does it fit into the film? How does it impact the audience? If you don't have an innate sense of these things, nobody can teach you this, and no rules will help you - you either got it, or you don't. That's the harsh truth. Best of luck!
 
Much depends on how this character is affected by the abuse, and what kind of abuse took place. Is he / she terrorized by it? Coming to terms with it? Wants to use his experience to counsel others? How long ago did this abuse happen before you introduce him / her on screen? Six months? Ten years? How old were they? Did the abuse happen one time, or over a period of time? All of this plays into how your character will be affetcted by it, and how they will remember it. They may only remember parts of it, or are just beginning to think maybe something happened.

A solid back story is essential.


What do you want your audience to understand about about this character?

If he or she is terrorized by it, the flashbacks should reflect that. Fractured images. Angst. Or just their behaviour will be enough to let the audience know something is off kilter. Are they spooked by shadows, or small spaces? The woods? Most important to let visuals convey as much as possible before considering your dialogue. If flashbacks seem the best option, then go with them.
 
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OldCorpse said:
... Take the example of the monologue by Robert Shaw's character in Jaws when he talks about the aftermath of the Indianapolis sinking and the shark attack - a monologue actually written by Spielberg's friend, the writer/director John Milius. Take a look at that scene - over three and a half minutes of talking, just by Robert Shaw, and it works brilliantly - it's one of the most memorable and affecting scenes in a pretty dramatic movie. Think about it - one man talking for minutes on end (an eternity in screen time) describing extremely dramatic events... and not showing those dramatic events - just describing. And it works amazingly well. Now, use your aesthetic sense. Can you understand why it was better to tell and not show? Can you imagine how it would be if you showed that scene instead of just described it? First, to give it context, you'd probably have to use even more screen time, but let's forget that aspect and use your filmmaking sense - that scene would be extremely disruptive if shown at all (that it's a flashback is not a factor), on purely rhythm grounds - this is not what the movie needs at that moment, and it throws you into a completely different frame of mind as you witness all those events - in fact, dramatic as they would be, they'd compete against the rest of the movie Jaws that's about ONE shark. It would not belong. It would stand out like a sore thumb. Instead, you have a riveting performance by Robert Shaw, fantastic mood inside that cabin and a standout scene - all "tell, don't show". It was done, because it worked better.
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Well, they couldn't exactly do the sinking of "Indianapolis" there. That would be a bit off budget. Besides, as I had mentioned with "SPR", the director needed a slow, talky scene before sending the film on its last action sequence and Shaw's speech gave his character an additional motivation to act. Plus, Spielberg could have edited portions of the speech out but he didn't. Because Shaw was great and the timing of the speech was great too.

As to rules - of course, there are rules. There's a three-act story arc, the 10-minute complication interval, the background of the characters, the emotional resolution, the psychological resolution, etc. And, of course, you can break those rules. But, if you do, you better do it really, really well. Kubrick broke the rules in "2001" and "The Shining" and some of those story lines were barely coherent but the films are still deemed as classics. These days, a studio exec will not green light an incoherent script that is void of a plot.*

*They'll often overcompensate for that by squeezing the story characters into a such a bland 3-act arc that even a preteen will have the plot figured out by the 20th minute but that's the different story altogether.
 
The scene in JAWS wasn't really about the Indianapolis--it was about those three men in the Orca. It was all about the telling of the story and their bonding. A flashback would have had nothing to do with what Spielberg was intending to do with the scene, and would have destroyed it.

Sometimes flashbacks are appropriate, and maybe the best way of telling the story. You need to determine what the point is for any given scene, and then figure out the most effective way of getting it across.
 
DLD said:
As to rules - of course, there are rules. There's a three-act story arc, the 10-minute complication interval, the background of the characters, the emotional resolution, the psychological resolution, etc.
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Those are not "rules", they are just a way of doing things, a paradigm, a design, a format. Those are not "rules" in the sense that you have to follow them, or else your film will fail (artistically or commercially). And since it's a design, and not a "rule", of course the design can be changed... as you yourself acknowledge:

DLD said:
And, of course, you can break those rules. But, if you do, you better do it really, really well.
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Um, there is no "you better do it really, really well" that applies only to those designs that are different from the ones you mentioned - in reality "you better do it really, really well", no matter whether it has "the 10-minute complication interval" or not; it's not like "oh, good, it has a 3-act story arc, go ahead and do it poorly". You do every design "really, really well", or you'll end up with a really, really poor film. There is no special requirement to do a particular design better than another one. You may find it easier to do one kind of design - perhaps you are more inclined that way - but that has nothing to do with some kind of universal "rule" of human aesthetics.

DLD said:
Kubrick broke the rules in "2001" and "The Shining" and some of those story lines were barely coherent but the films are still deemed as classics.
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Whether Kubrick did a story line well or not is on Kubrick, not on the "rules". It's up to him to do it well or incoherently.

DLD said:
These days, a studio exec will not green light an incoherent script that is void of a plot.*

*They'll often overcompensate for that by squeezing the story characters into a such a bland 3-act arc that even a preteen will have the plot figured out by the 20th minute but that's the different story altogether.
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That has nothing to do with the artistic validity of any "rules" and all to do with the natural conservative bias of 99.99% of studio executives - always lagging behind artistic developments... after all, it's artists who push the form forward, and not the executives, so there is nothing to be learned about the validity of the "rules" from the fact that executives cling to them - because they cling to them until things change, upon which they cling to new rules... see the evolution of cinema and storytelling from the beginning of film.

There are no "rules", there are designs, and there are traditions, valid only insofar as they work - and one kind of design does not by the fact of its existence invalidate every other kind of design. The evolution of art is a testimony to the impermanence of "rules", and the constancy of change - from the time of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through till today - art rules have changed and evolved. There are no permanent "rules", there are only good works of art that can have any design or work according to any rules.

I affirm to the OP - don't worry about "rules". Worry about what works in your particular film. Use your eyes and ears and your own judgment - there is no substitute. No "rule" will make a bad work good, or a good work bad. There is only the audience response - what works.
 
OldCorpse said:
Those are not "rules", they are just a way of doing things, a paradigm, a design, a format. Those are not "rules" in the sense that you have to follow them, or else your film will fail (artistically or commercially). And since it's a design, and not a "rule", of course the design can be changed...

There are no "rules", there are designs, and there are traditions, valid only insofar as they work - and one kind of design does not by the fact of its existence invalidate every other kind of design. The evolution of art is a testimony to the impermanence of "rules", and the constancy of change - from the time of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome through till today - art rules have changed and evolved. There are no permanent "rules", there are only good works of art that can have any design or work according to any rules.

I affirm to the OP - don't worry about "rules". Worry about what works in your particular film. Use your eyes and ears and your own judgment - there is no substitute. No "rule" will make a bad work good, or a good work bad. There is only the audience response - what works.
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This reminds of a recent Ritchie Blackmore interview, where he said that he fired Graham Bonnet, whom he actually admired as a singer, for cutting his hair short. As Blackmore opined, "If you play hard rock/heavy metal, you better have long hair". (shorter cuts, including buzz cuts, were at that time deemed as either punk/new wave or disco). I am sure Ritchie would have really gone berserk, not that he needed any additional reasons, if Bonnet came out on stage dressed like Frank Sinatra at the "Concert for the Americas". That would have really broken the rules.
 
alex whitmer said:
''the 10-minute complication interval''

What's that?
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http://variety.com/1993/film/news/in-the-world-of-stunts-there-s-a-silver-lining-109023/

The [Joel] Silver Whammo Chart has a mythic rep in studio circles. (...)

“It’s an old AIP esthetic,” says Silver. “I think it comes from the old days of musical comedy, where you’d have a musical number every 10 minutes. If you have an action beat every 10 minutes, which is actually every reel or every 10 pages of script in the development, you never let the movie get slow. It never feels boring, because the audience really wants to see an action movie. If you keep the action coming, the picture will never drag. You’ll always keep them on the edge of their seats.

“It can be a big sequence or a small sequence. A small fight, a chase, whatever it may be. But you never go more than 10 minutes without something happening.”
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To the OP:

What's the point of the scene? In a short, especially, you have to get in late, make your point, and get out. So what is the scene really about? Also, what are the conflicts in the scene? What does each character want and why are they having trouble getting it? The answers to those questions will answer your question as to how those things will be best dramatized.
 
David W. Richardson said:
But apparently nobody's opinion is as good as Herzog's, so the rest of us should keep our opinions to ourselves?
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We get it. He hurt your feelings terribly. Go out in the yard and fight it out, or start a new thread. It was an off-the-cuff remark that was wryly and momentarily mildly amusing. Laugh it off or find someone to talk to quietly about it until you work it all out? Or have someone change the thread title and we'll all hash it out with ya.

As for flashbacks - sometimes the less we see or the less specific things are, the more intriguing they are and the more our minds fill in the blanks to make them more germane to our experiences. Horror film makers in particular seem to have forgotten this.
 
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