. Filmmaking Imagination: Moving the Scene Forward Leave the story to the imagination Interpretations and assumptions When you’re building your shots to create a scene, you must remember the importance of moving a scene forward. You can do this through a combination of dialogue and visuals. This next lesson component will talk about the use of visuals to move a story forward. We will also talk about the different possible shot arrangements one can use to tell the same story in different ways. First of all you need to realize that not every single shot needs to raise a question or answer a question. Some shots may provide evidence or backup shots to help support an idea. For example, if we were just to use Q and A sequencing a shot may look as follows 1. Man standing with knife 2. Women lying on ground dead 3. Murderer staring out a window of his apartment The first question is raised “what is the man going to do with the knife”. Shot two gives the answer. Shot three answers the question, “does the murderer get away” with “yes”. However, more shots may be needed to pace the film properly, provide enough visual evidence and create a particular feeling or a certain amount of tension. An alternative shot sequence could look as follows 1. Man standing with knife 2. Struggle between man with knife and woman 3. Women running upstairs 4. Another struggle 5. Shot suggesting attacker is winning 6. Husband driving as fast as he can to get home to save his wife 7. Woman just about to loose her consciousness due to strangulation 8. Husband barging into the room and shooting the attacker in the leg. 9. Attacker looking out the window 10. A wide shot showing the attacker is actually looking out the window of his jail cell with crutches and a large cast around his leg. As you can see, not all of these shots provide an answer or raise a question. Some of these scenes simply help build up conflict, others help provide visual evidence. Storytelling in every medium should be engaging from the audience’s perspective. Film is no exception. As you’re working on your storyboard try not to spoon feed the answers to your audience. Keep them guessing or coming up with their own conclusions.   Continue Below... Re-Establishing Shot Bridging Shots Without a Pivot Shot Manipulating Cinematic Geography Exploring Temporal Connections Lev Kuleshov Experiment Constructing Scenes Using Q and A without Dialogue How Much to Feed Your Audience More About Q and A and Cause and Effect Cutting in the Camera Vs. Open Approach       .

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