20/06/2024
Show Don't Tell (SDT) in visual arts is one of the commandments. Scriptwriting, both TV and feature, is a visual medium. And although TV has historically been called a ‘talking heads’ medium, that is no longer as true as it was with multi-million dollar budgets going to series these days. The pilot for “Game of Thrones” cost upwards of eight million dollars. The production showed plenty and it was all gorgeously wrought.
SDT isn’t always the rule. There are times when you must tell. We have both dialogue and narrative in our toolbox. An agent I worked for told me once if the scripts I was reading for her consideration didn’t have great dialogue, put it on the pass pile.
But to understand the power of this scriptwriting trope, we can go to one of the best movies ever made: “The Godfather”.
Two scene sequences spring immediately to mind that tell everything by showing.
Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) has been attempting the entire film to avoid becoming involved with his family’s business. In the end, he has little choice, especially when his brother Sonny (James Caan) is brutally murdered after an attempt on their father’s life. War has been declared and Michael cannot avoid it.
During the baptism of Michael’s baby, filmmaker Coppola intercut the baptism scene with Michael’s revenge. Countless enemies of the Corleone family are gunned down while Michael and his family attend the baptism ceremony. A stark contrast to be sure and one that tells you everything you need to know about the world that Michael is now immersed in.
Similarly, the ending coda with Michael assuring his wife (Diane Keaton) that he did now kill her brother (he did), and reassured, as she’s leaving his office, a shot of a man kissing Michael’s ring and the office doors being closed on that secretive world tells us, by showing, that Michael is the new don.
Filmmaking just doesn’t get much better.
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