just a thought

Thomas J. O'Hara

Thomas J. O'Hara

Senior Citizen
i took film class last semester and they taught me about these certain "rules". one of them was you can't kill anybody in the first fifteen minutes (something about developing a relationship with the character/ you don't feel any emotional attachment before fifteen minutes). And i guess it's true....Like when I watch a short film by a DVX user, and all the characters die in 2 minutes, i don't really care who's getting whacked.
So why do you think so many people are breaking this rule?
 
tjohara99,

the rule makes sense, of course depending on how well the character is written/acted.

oh and make sure you send the link to your film prof once all the 5 minute long zombie movies start hitting us in a month or so...
 
This is the part where we dont have stopwatches. Can anyone think of Moviedeaths where a character got whacked in the first 15 minutes and we did care?

Scream (drew barrymore) ?
 
15 minutes is pretty arbitrary. I've seen hundreds of films that couldn't make me care about the people 120 minutes into it.
 
Saving Private Ryan had more emotion and truth in the first 15 minutes than the rest of the film. And all it had was people dying.
 
so should i just tell my prof to F off?
or is it an ok rule to abide by (for the most part), or did i just waste a bunch of money listening to some guy's opinion?

Basically, if the acting is great, and the film works, then kill kill kill?
 
Didn't Steven Seagal get tossed off that airplane in Executive Decision within the first 15 minutes?

Oh wait. You said characters we care about...
 
Rules are there for a reason. There are very specific reasons why the rules are developed. Unfortunately, sometimes people get caught up more in the rule than in the reason.

Here's what the professor was trying to say: if you haven't spent enough time developing audience empathy for a character, then we will not care when that character gets killed.

That's what he ws trying to say. Putting a hard time limit on it, like "15 minutes", is ridiculous. Bruce Willis got shot in "Sixth Sense" within the first 9 minutes, and it was a jarring moment and some people in the audience cared. But you have to dwell on the character, get inside their head, etc.

Classic example is in "Psycho" -- we spent the first HALF of the movie inside Janet Leigh's character. When she got killed, it was extremely jarring to the audience -- perhaps the most famous movie killing of all, because we - the audience - had "moved in" to the Janet Leigh's character. So when she got killed, it was US getting killed.

It had nothing to do with a knife in the shower. Had nothing to do with gore (because there was none) or with special effects (because you never saw the knife touch the body). The reason Psycho's shower scene was proclaimed the scariest movie death of all time was because the audience had invested an hour of their life into this character, and she got killed! That never happens!

Now, contrast that with any cheeseball "horror" film nowadays, populated by the typical cast of "a nerd, a jock, a slut, a misfit, and a stoner" (or whatever) all getting killed in a house. WE DON'T CARE. You could spend an hour with those characters and YOU'D want to kill them.

Develop your characters as real people. Show them really, really wanting something. Show them taking steps to get it. Then if they get killed, we (the audience) will be upset.
 
15 minutes is pretty arbitrary. I've seen hundreds of films that couldn't make me care about the people 120 minutes into it.
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Too true.

so should i just tell my prof to F off?
Click to expand...

Not exactly; but I think what Barry stated is pretty spot on. That much I would tell him. "Putting a timestamp on it is absurd"

Didn't Steven Seagal get tossed off that airplane in Executive Decision within the first 15 minutes?

Oh wait. You said characters we care about...
Click to expand...

Everyone I have ever spoken to about this was surprised and bummed about that. I thought this was clever by the filmmakers to off his cameo.

Or is this just a cute cut-down on him since he his career has comedown?


American Werewolf in London
When Griffin Dunnes character gets killed. That was surprising. I cared. :cheesy:
 
One of the most shocking "kill offs" I've ever seen was from "To Live and Die in L.A." when William Petersen's character, the lead character, just suddenly gets blasted in the face with a shotgun. It came out of nowhere and the co-star ends up cleaning up the film.

At the time it was almost annoying but it was very effective. Along the lines of what's already been said here there isn't a "time limit" so much as developing a character that everyone cares about.

It's the same in life, you read about someone getting killed in some crash and it's like "well that sucks" and then some athlete or actor or celebrity gets killed and it's like "NO WAY" and you begin "what happened", "when did it happen", "how old was he/she", etc, etc, etc.

It just a natural response so if you want impact you need to make people care. A "15 minute" rule doesn't make any sense imo.
 
thanks for all the insight guys, i like to get more than one opinion as much as possible because im what some would call "gullible" or "easily manipulated"... the first camera i bought was a JVC because i didn't do any research, and boy was THAT a mistake!
 
Another thing to consider is whether the character is intended to be cared about. Perhaps the death is intended to show that another character is a homicidal maniac and the dead character is irrelevant.

Or perhaps we get to know the dying character through the dialogue and grief (or anger or remorse or resentment, etc.) of another character. So the actor is "dead" so to speak, but the actual CHARACTER can be developed very fully without ever being seen again. Wish I could think of an example where I cared about a character only through dialogue... The wizard of Oz maybe? What about the Blair Witch? I was scared shitless of that character having only seen a shadowy glimpse as the movie ended.

Maybe I'm stretching this argument a bit, but only to reinforce what others have said - don't rely on rules but remember the principles they're intended to uphold.

Don't ever tell your prof to F off unless the campus has a building named after your family. If so, indulge freely.
 
I think Barry has it right on in regards to the rule...

*spoiler*
the most recent main character death I can think of that shocked the hell out of me was Robert DeNiro in "15 minutes". I was ****in pissed when those shitheads capped him!
 
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