This is The Voice In Your Head Is Mine. The date is April 8th, 2021. If you're receiving this email and have no idea what's going on, well, fuck. I guess I blew it. Or maybe you blew it. Either way, you're here and this is Zac Thompson's weekly newsletter.
Good afternoon from the center of the pandemic vortex. Spring arrived in Vancouver in earnest, the sun is out but the air is crisp and filled with pollen. Which means I’m congested all the time. Such is life when you’re allergic to thirty different kinds of trees. Vancouver is also under an “emergency break” protocol because our COVID cases are out of whack. We’re effectively under a third wave and a brand new province-wide shutdown. Great.
This past week things returned to some semblance of normal. I’ve been on turbo speed for the better part of the year. But getting back into a routine was both refreshing and eye-opening. I’m currently “writing” six different projects. Each are in different stages of production and each require so much general housekeeping and project management that it eats a lot of time. So jumping back into everything was a little bit overwhelming. But I keep myself pretty organized and itemize literally everything - so I’m almost back to having my head above water. Just a few more emails to answer…
I’m incredibly grateful for the continued support on I Breathed A Body. There’s been tons of readers showing up for every issue. The book is an exercise in revulsion while also picking at some really heady themes (I can’t help myself).
It’s been interesting to see the response as some folx seem absolutely gobsmacked by the gore while others have been picking up on the underlying messages about the nature of the fungal internet and the supernatural forces beneath the surface. In particular, this write up about #3 from ComicsXF really and nails some of the inspiration behind the choices in the book.
IBAB is an experiment. I wanted to offer a familiar David Cronenberg style-world at the onset. So much of #1 and #2 spent a lot of time within that world, showing off the uncanny technology but the intent was always to bait and switch readers in issue #3. Revealing you’re actually in the middle of a full-on dark fantasy supernatural-nightmare. We’re now firmly in Clive Barker territory and there’s no going back. Rejoice! That’s two flavours of weird for the price of one:
This week we’re going to talk about picking angles in writing and why the right “camera” placement can make all the difference, I’ll blab about Godzilla VS Kong, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Q: Into The Storm in case anyone cares what I think, we’ll talk a little bit about Robbie Arnott’s excellent eco horror novel The Rain Heron, and a collection of weird links. Let’s do it.
Writing Craft
Pick your shots.
There are many different ways to write for visual mediums. If you read ten different film or comic scripts you’ll find ten different ways to do things. Every writer describes images in their own way and should never be discouraged from pursuing what works for them.
To paraphrase/bastardize the wonderful words of Andrei Tarkovsky: a good script attempts to sculpt time with a sequence of carefully constructed emotional images. It’s up to the writer to arrange these images in a sequence that maximizes their emotional resonance. This is especially true when creating comics, wherein through collaboration both the artist and the writer are acting as editors, picking each frame of story and stitching it to the next.
There is a tendency to believe that offering a shot size or camera direction in a script is “directing from the page” and thus frowned upon.
For what it’s worth, I direct on the page in everything I write. I don’t do this because I’m a control freak or believe that my vision for a scene is sacrosanct. I do this to evoke a sense of purpose behind the choices on the page. It can help elevate the emotion or mood of a moment and add subtext to an otherwise dull action. It creates a sense of purpose behind the information on a page and tells a story unto itself.
Think about placement.
There are so many ways to show that car blowing up in No Country for Old Men but Roger Deakins' chooses to show it from inside the pharmacy while Anton Chigurh doesn’t even flinch. A good placement reveals character just as much as it reveals story.
Let’s say you want to convey that a character is being watched on their walk home from work. Think about where you can place a camera to convey this specifically and concretely to the audience while still evoking a sense of tension. You can shoot out the window of a nearby car, voyeuristically looking through a frame and onto your character as they’re walking home (are they being watched by an FBI agent?). You can have the camera linger just behind your character while they nervously look over their shoulder, never breaking from the looming perspective just behind their head Hell, you have a voyeuristic POV peering from behind a corner, most of the foreground can be a grimey brick wall… but the effect is all the same.
By thinking about staging your camera, you give a specific mood and tone to the image
Be clear.
For the intent of your image to clear, you must understand what emotional tone and plot information you’re looking to convey within the moment. Which is a fancy way of saying pick a shot size.
I think it was Charlie Chaplin who said “Life is a tragedy when seen in closeup, but a comedy in long-shot”. I find that this holds true. You don’t want a big emotional realization to come within a wide shot overlooking a giant battlefield.
Ideally, you’d like to be close to character within their emotional realization. Giving your script a sense of intent behind the images means understanding your character’s relationship to the audience/reader. Every rule can be followed or subverted at your whim. Look how this violent moment from Undone By Blood #1 is robbed of its brutality by being shot in a wide. A shot size changes the way we feel about an image.
Be intentional.
There are tons of opportunities to experiment with the shots in your script. Just make sure there is a clear intent behind what you’re doing. Which is to say, if you’re going to take a risk, make damn well sure you’ve got a story reason for doing it. Most of the time this subtle choices won’t even be noticed by readers but will manipulate the way they feel about the imagery.
Take this page from Lonely Receiver. It’s right after Catrin has made an incredibly awful choice. As a reader, you should be feeling distant and removed from her here. So when scripting the scene, I asked for everything to be viewed through the window of her apartment like you’re a specter floating outside, watching her from a distance. I think it goes a long way to communicate the mood of the moment. Giving everything a greater sense of purpose and cohesion.
Think about it.
Picking a specific shot will help you think about storytelling, subtext, and from a very practical standpoint the blocking of a scene.
The Rain Heron
If you’ve been following this newsletter you know I’m an avid consumer of all things eco horror. So naturally, I immediately ordered Robbie Arnott’s The Rain Heron when it was released last month. The novel concerns Ren. An older woman who lives alone on the remote frontier of a country devastated by a coup. High on the forested slopes, she survives by hunting and trading—and forgetting. But when a young soldier comes to the mountains in search of a mythical bird that can control the weather, everything about her delicate existence falls apart.
What ensues is a broad look at how he ongoing climate crisis will cause us to turn on one another. How those divides are already being made now and how much we lose ourselves to desperation. Arnott’s prose is beautiful and evokes nature at every turn. He manages to convey large existential questions about longing for something better while also not really giving any clear answers.
In the end we’re left with something overwhelming, beautiful, and eerily silent.
I highly recommend this one.
Zac On Cinema
Godzilla vs Kong - Look, I’m not really that hot on most of the new monsterverse movies. I hated Godzilla (2014) and really found nothing to like about Godzilla King of the Monsters so it surprises me to say that I really liked this movie. Now, don’t get me wrong, it succumbs to tons of the problems that plague giant Kaiju movies. Namely forgettable characters driven by plot and plot alone. But Adam Wingard does the unthinkable and shoots these giant Kaiju battles in the daylight. He allows us to have a clear understanding of what’s going on in each of the fights, and the script wisely makes Kong the lead. With Kong diving into some batshit lore/worldbuilding that I couldn’t help but admire. It felt like they finally decided not to take themselves too seriously and leaned into the insanity. I’m all for it. Bring on Kong: Hollow Earth.
Judas and the Black Messiah - Shaka King’s historical drama, where Daniel Kaluuya plays the radical Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, with Lakeith Stanfield as the FBI informer who betrayed him, Bill O’Neal. Daniel Kaluuya’s performance is deeply powerful, and the center of the story. Every scene he’s in, he steals. King’s film is disciplined but impassioned. Giving a lot of clarity to the impassioned movement but never presenting O’Neal’s true intentions with more than arm’s length. That level of ambiguity won’t work for everyone but it really worked for me. The first incredible drama film of 2021.
Q: Into The Storm - This HBO docuseries just concluded on Sunday night and if you’re anything like me, you’ve been following Q but are deeply exhausted by it. This documentary should reignite your interest. Through six episodes the series follows the creators of 8chan during Q’s volatile rise to power over 5 years. It has an incredible degree of access and honestly presents an incredibly compelling case as to the identity of Q. After seeing the final episode, my mind is made up, do with that what you will.
Tiny Scabs
This excellent video from Nerdwriter explores Andrei Tarkovsky, time and the pandemic. It’s an absolutely incredible dissection of a beautiful scene while also shedding some light on Tarkovsky’s ideas around film. I spent a huge part of my pandemic time watching Tarkovsky’s entire filmography while also devouring Sculpting In Time a few months back. So this really hit home for me.
Jeff VanderMeer has a new book out this week and I found this interview with him to be an absolute joy. The idea of rewilding a small plot of land has been on my mind a lot lately…
This week’s playlist:
Peace
Another week down. Things can feel claustrophobic so make space for yourself, enforce your boundaries, and be good to others.
Z
Foxfire In Your Eye
This statement really resonates. "I do this to evoke a sense of purpose behind the choices on the page." I've been planning a script and I would love an artist that can portray different angles and aspects of a character really well through different angles.
The 'pre-scripting' I've been doing has a lot more camera angle directions than I usually utilize, but I feel like they have a reason and purpose. Unfortunately, I feel like I am constantly building an argument for each thing, so it is nice to hear from a professional that I'm not totally wrong.