The key phrase is not always. They are usually the same, because for the most part, audiences want to like the character they’re following through the film. Yes, there are a handful of movies and books with unsavory leads who do all manner of nasty things (American Psycho comes to mind), but those pieces tend to be the exception, rather than the rule (American Psycho was also something of a satire, a type of storytelling that can get away with more).

As said before, the protagonist is the person we are following in a story—we see him so much, we figure we’re supposed to root for him. The camera is looking over his shoulder most of the time; his actions, reactions, and feelings frame the entire narrative. If your audience doesn’t care for your protagonist—the individual they spend the most time with—then you don’t really have an audience. Now, they may bond with his witty sidekick or fall in love with the erudite villain, but they won’t care for your main character.

As a result, some creators must toe a fine line in making their protagonist both realistic to the world in which he exists, and also relatable enough to appeal to audiences.

The problem with the classic good guy—the hero who always wants to do the right thing, no matter what—is that he can get terribly boring. He’s basically doing the right thing because it’s the right thing to do. There is no further rhyme or reason for it. You often get these heroes in older fantasy and sci-fi productions, though fortunately their popularity seems to have died down. Luke Skywalker almost fell into this trap in Return of the Jedi, though his efforts were ultimately fueled by a desire to save his friends and redeem his father (we just couldn’t tell by his facial expressions, which were…well, nonexistent).

A contemporary look at potentially unlikable protagonists is the new HBO show Girls. The show debuted to rave reviews, though critics and viewers alike remarked that the show’s characters were highly unlikable, whether it was through sheer selfishness (Jessa), self-obsession (Hannah), or pure stupidity (Shoshanna). But take a look at some of the reviews left by the twenty-somethings the girls are supposed to represent. Many of them remark on the way the titular girls talked to each other. Their dialogue and the problems they face, while somewhat emphasized at times for comedic value, is what makes the show works. The audience may not like the girls as people, but they can understand what they’re going through, and even grow grudgingly fond of them.

Who is your protagonist? Is he doing the right thing just because it’s right, or does he have a deeper reason to act? Give him some backstory, flesh him out, and make sure his actions are due to his experiences—it will go a long way in making him more than your average good guy.

Beyond that, we get into the bad guy—Mr. Evil (or Dr. Evil, as it may be). Not only is he an antagonist, he’s an unsavory person in general. He doesn’t just want to win the girl; he wants to utterly crush the hero, his family, and maybe destroy a city or the planet while he’s at it.

The Bad Guy usually crops up in genre films; superhero movies are particularly guilty of supporting him. The Bad Guy can indeed be a fine antagonist if the movie calls for it, but too often, the Bad Guy is just a dumbed down antagonist, to the point where he’s almost a caricature. He’s bad for the sake of being bad. Sometimes his evilness is due to some sort of failed experiment (Doc Ock), or maybe he underwent psychological trauma that short-circuited the good part of his brain. Whatever the reason, he’s just there to cause problems.

This is generally OK and even encouraged in comedies and the occasional genre film, but too often, it comes off as taking the easy way out. “Evil just to be evil” has its place (Sauron in Lord of the Rings, Palpatine in Star Wars, any James Bond villain), but there’s several ways to create an antagonist that’s just as compelling as your protagonist…without turning him into a clichéd supervillain.

Why, exactly, is your antagonist standing in your hero’s way? What does he stand to gain from stopping the hero? Spend some time crafting this character. It’s one thing if he (or they, as the case may be) are just shadowy background figures, as they so often are in horror films. This approach works very well when you’re trying to make your audience jump out of their seats, but if your antagonist is going to be spending a lot of time onscreen, he should at least be compelling.

As technology has improved and become more accessible, sound effects have swelled up alongside special effects. There’s very few movies out there that make use of true silence, and when they do, it’s usually a fleeting lull in between big, bombastic moments—often to indicate a character’s ears are ringing, or in the aftermath of a giant action scene.

Perhaps this is a reflection of our ever-louder society. Consider the world around you: how often is it ever truly silent? Planes fly by overhead, cars drive past, people talk, phones ring, appliances and equipment hum. Our computers run, our pets move around, the wind blows through the grass and trees. Even the quieter notes in movies are rarely entirely silent; they’re filled in by music, no matter how soft, or the same background noise we hear each day.

Even scary movies don’t always make use of silence; they rely on loud sound effects and creepy noises to build dread. A character sitting alone in a room waiting for a serial killer to come get him will be accompanied by the soft footsteps as the killer searches the room next to him, or the slamming of doors to indicate his opponent is near. This is partially to keep audiences on their toes, jumping from one scene to the next.

But what can silence do to build fear? Because most people aren’t used to total silence, it’s likely to make them uncomfortable at first. But as the emptiness stretches on and nothing fills the void, the discomfort turns to real concern. Silence, like darkness, can contain any number of evils—things that mean us harm. Long silences are never a good thing; look at the history of long silences in literature—usually something bad has just happened, or at the very least, characters must deliver or have received bad news.

What happens when there is a complete absence of noise? Granted, you’ll never see a movie in complete silence (the projector or DVD player will hum, someone will cough, and so on). But imagine a character onscreen with nothing more but his own dread and the knowledge that something is creeping ever-closer to him—he can’t hear footsteps or creaks, and there’s no soundtrack to fill in the endless void. He has no idea where danger lurks, and neither do you.

Nervous yet?

Better yet, how do you transmit that fear to an audience?

The good news is most audiences are attending a movie hoping to enjoy it. They’re already in your corner; you start out with an advantage. They’ve paid for their tickets or their rental, and they want to enjoy a couple of hours with your film. It’s up to you to keep them, though.

Fear is a tricky subject to bring to the screen, and often require intense collaboration from the screenwriter, the director, the cast, and sometimes receive a little bit of help from lighting and sound. These tricks—say, ominous thumping music playing in the background and a harsh filter on the lighting for a particularly adrenaline-charged scene—assist the actors and director in transmitting the intended feeling to the people watching the film.

When everything goes right, the movie does its job and can scare people; when even one thing goes wrong, it can do anything from throwing off the overall effect to utterly wrecking the shot. The problem here is that while fear itself is universal—everyone’s afraid at one time or another—what actually makes people afraid varies wildly.

Again, they’re already in your corner. The person at an Aliens screening is waiting to be terrified by the drooling extraterrestrial. They’d much rather jump than leave shaking their heads, muttering, “Not so scary.” It’s up to the filmmaker to make that fear as accessible to his audience as possible. That means tapping into some of the universal things that most people shrink away from, whether they admit it or not:

Darkness – humans are hardwired to be wary of the dark; thousands of years ago, nocturnal predators lurked just outside the range of fires. We become jumpier once night falls, and most of us can’t help but peer into corners when the lights go out, wondering what’s hiding there. Filmmakers can’t make their scenes too dark, but enhancing the shadows and toning down the lights can leave audiences wondering what’s just out of the characters’ sight.

Sound – We touched on this a little bit in our sound series. Soft background noises can build dread, particularly if they’re just generally discernible—growls and hissing might alert us to potential predators, while muttering and whispers tell us there might be something supernatural (or at least psychotic) afoot.

Darkness and sound can build the scene—but what about the rest? Stay tuned…

With dialogue comes the all-important tone, or the way you deliver a line. It can change the meaning of almost everything; much subtext is delivered with tone. Consider a character being questioned about her next-door neighbor’s disappearance. The detective is hassling her, asking pointed questions about their relationship and where she was the night he vanished. Her only response is “I don’t know.”

But how does she deliver it, and how does her tone influence the line? Consider the following:

“I don’t know!” – Anger and irritation here; she wants to be left alone. The cop’s questions are getting to her.

“I don’t know!” – Delivered shrilly, this might be closer to hysteria than anger. This might also indicate she’s not telling the entire truth, and is coming close to cracking.

“I don’t know…” – Delivered in a whisper as she looks out the window, this might well suggest she’s thinking of him as she speaks.

Tone has its place in just about any art form, though film has a distinct edge over, say, novels, in that actors can utilize tone as they need to. You can usually tell when someone is being sarcastic onscreen (or angry, or seductive, or sorrowful, and so on). Novelists, sometimes unable to properly convey tone through dialogue alone, will sometimes add a little “tone tag” to their work: “I don’t KNOW!” she barked.

Tone is a powerful ally of subtext, and the two often go hand in hand together. It’s the harsh words delivered in a soft voice—and it can break down further than that. Is it a man dressing down his son while trying to reassure him that he’ll always love him? Or is it a villain whispering his dark plans into the heroine’s ear?

You can bury a lot of information in a character’s tone, from hidden pains to longings to barely-concealed outrage. Tone can reveal feelings and intentions that even the character’s face might not completely convey. It’s a powerful tool, and should be used to its fullest potential.

Listening to characters talking—to each other, to themselves, to their pet rooster—is the easiest way to convey information, plot development, and humor. You can pull off all of the above without fancy camerawork, CGI, or the need for stunt doubles. Dialogue—along with sound effects and soundtrack—sets the stage for our ears, completing the audible scenery that we take in without even thinking.

Properly crafted dialogue is an essential component, as it helps bridge the gap between movie and viewer, but using it to convey setting requires a careful hand and some restraint. It fills in the gaps between what we see on the screen and what we need to know to better understand the plot or the characters. Characters idly discussing a murder at a bar may foreshadow the grim mystery that will unravel for our protagonist, or murmured concerns about a child’s grades will indicate not all is well in a family home.

Dialogue can help set the scene and tell us more about a movie’s universe. For example, Obi-Wan Kenobi’s explanation of the Force as “an energy field…it surrounds us, penetrates us, binds us together.” His simple description gave A New Hope—up until then a sci-fi film—a mystical element.

Dialogue’s greatest use, however, is its ability to tell us about characters, whether it’s used directly (a character introducing himself: “My name is Frank”) or indirectly (characters telling us Frank should be avoided: “Frank murdered a guy and got away with it”). Dialogue fills in the blank spots and delivers tidbits that might otherwise never come to light.

Look at Merle Dixon from AMC’s The Walking Dead. He spits out virtually every line (unless he’s grumbling menacingly), and within his first few sentences, we can deduce that not only is he a Southerner and a racist, he’s also possibly off his rocker or high as a kite. Merle only appears in three episodes thus far, but one of his most memorable turns is when he appears via hallucination to his younger brother, Daryl:

“All them years I spent trying to make a man of you…look at you…you’re a joke is what you are…you’re redneck trash, they’re laughing at you behind your back.” Merle continues his string of insults, seemingly voicing insecurities Daryl keeps carefully hidden: “Ain’t nobody ever gonna care about you except me, little brother, ain’t nobody ever will.”

In just a few lines of dialogue, we learn more about Daryl’s life than the man himself has revealed in ten episodes.

Check back next time for a chat about dialogue’s evil twin—tone.

Music has long been an important part of human culture, but in the last century or so, we’ve managed to actually commit it to a recording, playing it back for all to hear. It’s become an important part of the movie-going experience, and when used in conjunction with spoken dialogue (or lack thereof) and sound effects, it helps the movie surround and occasionally engulf a viewer.

By the twenty-first century, most movie-going humans have been programmed to associate certain audio cues with specific meanings. Whether it’s something built into us or just the result of a hundred years of going to the movies, we often associate harps with love, drums with battles, and the occasional guitar riff with a mean action sequence. Movie soundtracks build on these expectations, fleshing out a particular scene or setting with a melody meant to signify a particular character or event.

A far-reaching example is “The Imperial March,” first heard in 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back. Bombastic and commanding, the March represented then-ultimate bad guy, Darth Vader; thirty years later, the song is so well-known, it’s often used to announce a bad guy has walked onstage. It’s most often used in comedies, but once those first few chords strike up, the moviegoing audience instantly knows the character it’s associated with is bad, bad news.

The March did its job—part of a soundtrack’s duty is to clue us in to what’s happening in a scene without dialogue. Slow, mournful violins are still associated with sad scenes—which happens often enough that “playing the world’s smallest violin” has become a synonym for whining—as are short, distinct pauses in music. The best soundtracks are the ones that speak for themselves; you can listen to music from a particularly sad scene in a movie, and even without the imagery and dialogue, you know nothing good is happening here. Likewise, a quickened pace and low, distinct drumbeats might indicate a shadowy pursuer, while a lone piano, played slowly in a low key, has become synonymous with something creepy and otherworldly. Meanwhile, the tinkling melody from an old music box can be at once romantic and sinister, setting the stage for a complex, unpredictable character.

Stay tuned for a look at the third part of the aural troika: dialogue.

We’re not just talking movie soundtracks, although those often have a stirring effect on the viewer. We’re talking about sound effects—the noises that surround characters, often lending color and information to and about their locations. Strip out a movie’s sound and you deprive it of one of its most important characteristics—though viewers may not immediately realize it. They’ll know something is missing, but won’t exactly be sure what that something is.

Consider the typical suspense film. Yes, the protagonist is creeping steadily down a darkened hallway, which is usually a definite no-no in these types of movies. Every creak of the floorboards could give him away; the audience holds its collective breath when far-off footsteps echo down the corridor, or a rusty hinge on a door squeaks. Something whistles down the hallway. Is it the killer, or is just the wind?

Some sounds are simply ingrained into the human psyche. A loud, honking siren will tell us to be on high alert—the hull’s been breached, or there’s a fire. A flat, steady beep in a hospital setting indicates someone is flatlining. A door slamming suggests the preceding conversation didn’t go well. Occasionally a filmmaker may add a rapid heartbeat or breathing to indicate the character is running, hiding, or functioning on adrenaline.

Removing all these background sounds effectively strips a setting of much of its character. Imagine a scene with two characters hiding in a darkened room. They’re whispering furtively to one another, but that’s all you hear. Well-placed sound effects might cue the audience in to what the weather’s like outside, if the person they’re whispering about is lurking nearby, and even how old the building is by the amount of creaking, squeaking, and general groans the structure makes.

Visuals may be the heart of a movie, but the sound effects may be its soul.

Let me give you an example of something we had to figure out for “The Kult”. In one particular scene we need to scan past a nightstand and see several bottles of pills. Shaun’s book never covers what type of meds the character could be taking. So you just do a little research and find out what meds will work for the character and then the fun begins.

Now, for the most part, you want to keep real pharmaceuticals off of the set. So that leaves creating your own. There are several companies that manufacture pill bottles and you can get them very cheap. (.50 – 1.00 US) So you get a couple. Then, with just about any graphics program (Corel, Photoshop,etc) you can make a label. Usually the 2”x4” shipping labels from Avery are just the trick. Then you need to fill your pill bottle. I recommend Smarties, Tic-Tacs, Pez, or Dentyne Mints. You can usually use any small candy and no one will ever know. But that also depends on how good your label is. In these pictures I labeled the bottles for the character that requires them.

When the movie comes out drop us a line and let us know what you think.

So here are the links to the new photo galleries. We hope you all enjoy them. Lots of blood, sweat, and tears are going into the making of this movie — both real blood, and lots and lots of fake blood.

Behind the Scenes – Day 14