Last night I was watching the first part of the Phantom mini series, and I thought ‘sheesh, should I turn this off and do some re-editing?’ I sat there and thought about this and I realised that writers don’t watch movies, we study them!
As a writer I assessed the ongoing story, the character development, the interactions, the setting, the sensibility. I looked at what did and did not work, at what was done purely to freak out the viewers, at what could have been done differently, at what would have made the story line stronger.
Oh yes, I enjoyed the episode, but it was definitely not mindless entertainment. It was a time to sit and assess the workings of the story.
I’m not interested in movies that rely on special effects and have very little evident storyline, they are a waste of time. There is no excuse for any movie lacking a story line.
Good story. Whole characters. Relationships. Interactions. I want to see how the writer handled them, how real they were to him/her. You can always sense when the writer was not close to the characters, as there is a shallowness to the development.
So, next time I watch a movie or a miniseries will I feel guilty? No, I will call it what it is: study time!
without a story, a movie is as flimsy as the film it was made on.
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