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Using Technology Onscreen
6/1/2009 at 2:20 PM by Suraj Das
Imagine if Hitchcock's "Rear Window" took place in 2009; Grace Kelly would have left her phone on vibrate when she snuck into the apartment across the street, and James Stewart would've sent her a text message telling her to run away when Raymond Burr's car pulled up outside. What's more, the central mystery as to whether or not Burr's wife was dead probably wouldn't amount to much of a head-scratcher - her Facebook friends and Twitter followers would have likely pieced together the puzzle long before Stewart got around to it.
Writing a good script was hard enough before the advent of cellphones and the internet made things even harder. This insightful article in The Times explores one of the greatest challenges faced by screenwriters today - making internet activities appear dramatically interesting and exciting to watch. "If fighting now looks like making up now looks like booking travel, as it does when people conduct their affairs online," asks writer Virginia Heffernan, "how do film directors make human action both dramatic to viewers and roughly true to life?"
Heffernan provides some examples of films and television shows, including Fox's "24," that feature compelling scenes where drama unfolds over the internet. I'm sure you can think of many other examples. Let us know about your writing challenges involving technology at feedback@massify.com and we'll discuss them in a later article.
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