All media have their own language. I remember a two designers fighting an uphill battle to explain a cue to a novice technician. At the end of an act, a man is
at home with an angry mob outside his front door. The mob is a sound effect, naturally. The man goes out on the porch to confront them… fade to black.
Now, if the lights and the sound fade together, we the audience are leaving the scene. The moment is frozen in time and we have no indication what might be happening until we return from intermission. If the sound fades first, then the mob is leaving. If the lights fade first, and we hear the mob sound continue in the darkness, then it is an ominous indicator that the mob is tearing he guy apart.
If you're new to a medium, you want to understand its particular language.
Now it gets interesting, because different genres have their own conventions, which are completely different from the language of the medium. I think we all know by now that the comic book folks in the writers' room at LOST is far above the proper average statistics have laid down for our guidance. They were great at adapting to the television medium, the breadcrumbs they laid for the first season were just terrific. They captured an audience with clues to a riveting mystery. The problem seems to have arisen when they brought in all the monsters, mind control, and over-the-top fantasy-tech to start solving the mystery. Those are conventions of the superhero and fantasy comic book, not television. The audience that was engaged in the mystery thought the mystery was more or less grounded in the real world. A hatch from some old military installation on a Pacific island is fine. An underwater Bond-villain installation and a guy strapped to the Clockwork Orange chair shattered disbelief. It would have been fine in a comic or in a scifi tv show, but it never fit on ABC's Lost.
Thing is, success is a double-edged sword. The theatre technician knew he was a novice and had a lot to learn. But a writer who has had success in one genre and medium is (justly) inclined to think he knows his shit. It takes a special kind of wisdom to consider the possibility that, like the captain of the Titanic, everything he know from elsewhere may be wrong in this particular situation. It goes beyond "special" into down right MIRACULOUS if he's in show business. Entertainment does not lend itself to humility. The answer to "Can you roller skate/tap dance/ride a horse/play the harmonica/levitate" is YES (and I'll learn how to do it later once I've got the job). So balancing the self-promotional superlatives to get the job with the thoughtful modesty to do the job and do it well, that's no parlor trick.
Now, if the lights and the sound fade together, we the audience are leaving the scene. The moment is frozen in time and we have no indication what might be happening until we return from intermission. If the sound fades first, then the mob is leaving. If the lights fade first, and we hear the mob sound continue in the darkness, then it is an ominous indicator that the mob is tearing he guy apart.
If you're new to a medium, you want to understand its particular language.
Now it gets interesting, because different genres have their own conventions, which are completely different from the language of the medium. I think we all know by now that the comic book folks in the writers' room at LOST is far above the proper average statistics have laid down for our guidance. They were great at adapting to the television medium, the breadcrumbs they laid for the first season were just terrific. They captured an audience with clues to a riveting mystery. The problem seems to have arisen when they brought in all the monsters, mind control, and over-the-top fantasy-tech to start solving the mystery. Those are conventions of the superhero and fantasy comic book, not television. The audience that was engaged in the mystery thought the mystery was more or less grounded in the real world. A hatch from some old military installation on a Pacific island is fine. An underwater Bond-villain installation and a guy strapped to the Clockwork Orange chair shattered disbelief. It would have been fine in a comic or in a scifi tv show, but it never fit on ABC's Lost.
Thing is, success is a double-edged sword. The theatre technician knew he was a novice and had a lot to learn. But a writer who has had success in one genre and medium is (justly) inclined to think he knows his shit. It takes a special kind of wisdom to consider the possibility that, like the captain of the Titanic, everything he know from elsewhere may be wrong in this particular situation. It goes beyond "special" into down right MIRACULOUS if he's in show business. Entertainment does not lend itself to humility. The answer to "Can you roller skate/tap dance/ride a horse/play the harmonica/levitate" is YES (and I'll learn how to do it later once I've got the job). So balancing the self-promotional superlatives to get the job with the thoughtful modesty to do the job and do it well, that's no parlor trick.
