Yesterday I quoted some of film-maker Christine Vachon's thoughts about writing and films. In her book, "A Killer Life," she gives an excellent example of a simple change that can transform the experience of a film by changing the opening. The movie in question was "One Hour Photo":
"Originally, the story was told in linear fashion. We meet the Yorkins. They take birthday pictures. They bring the film in to the mall. We meet Sy Parrish (Rob Williams) at the photo counter of the Sav-Mart, etc. What I didn’t anticipate was that the studio’s marketing would fill the audience in on the basic premise of the film (as it should). This rendered the first act a bit draggy, so all this setup seemed a little belabored to them. At the test screening, the audience knew they were going to see a dark “thriller” (a term I was loath to have the studio use in the recruiting of an audience), so they were a step ahead of the story, which causes unrest (of the bad kind). So now I had a first act that seemed interesting and necessary but somehow useless at the same time. A conundrum.”
She asked Francis Ford Coppola for advice.
“He suggested something that would get the thriller aspect of the film going from the very start… We bookended the film with Sy already having been arrested for having done something awful and criminal. The audience doesn’t know what he’s done, exactly. This one change suddenly rendered the first act more compelling. The first act played out almost as before, but now the audience is paying closer attention. They’re now put in the position of trying to discover clues as to what Sy might’ve done. They’ve gone from passive viewers to detectives of a sort. And the first act came alive again."
You'll see the same technique in a lot of thriller novels as well. At the moment, I'm reading Michael Ridpath's "The Predator." The book starts off with a shocking murder, then we flash back and get to know the main characters for some 60 pages or so. Then Ridpath very cleverly introduces another shocking scene you don't see coming and revs up your curiosity again. (There will be an interview with him on my new website, coming soon!).
