Notes: Lecture Seven [011206]
December 7, 2006
Functions of a Dialogue
♥ conveys messages of the story
♥ explore characters’ emotions
♥ explains characters’ personalities
♥ creates moods
♥ shows relationship between characters
♥ makes the film interesting
Elements of Dialogue
1. Dialogue reveals character
♥ A character talks about himself or herself
♥ other people talk about that character
EG: Usual Suspects – Kaizer Souzeh
2. Dialogue establishes relationships between characters
♥ characters express attitudes and opinions that are in opposition to one another
3. Good effective dialogue will move the story forward (makes the film more interesting)
4. Dialogue communicates faces and information to the audience
♥ it conveys essential exposition (information to the audience – the audience needs to know to understand why everything is happening the way they are)
♥ characters will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline
5. Dialogue ties the script together
EG: Usual Suspects – Final dialogue between Verbo & police officer; floating back and forth
Dialogue no-nos
♥ sentence structure that creates ambiguous meaning
♥ when characters express exactly how they feel because it doesn’t really happen in reality
♥ trying too hard to amplify details therefore creating something that appears unreal
♥ but if dialogue is too normal, not interesting
WRITE INTERESTING DIALOGUE.
Common Mistakes
♥ dialogue should be used sparingly, never telling the audience what they can see for themselves – Dialogue is no substitute for action
