Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Flashback to Lost

When the people who write Lost sat down and started on it I bet they spared very little thought to the negative effect such a show might have on student scriptwriting. Or to put it another way; the positive effect they've put on telling a story using flashbacks.

Reading other peoples scripts from my course a scarily large percentage of them feature flashbacks, or flashbacks within flashbacks, or flash-backs within a flashback, flashing-back to a flashback. I've absolutely no idea how they expect anyone to ever understand their plot; most of them don't even have any link into the flashback, so you're pretty much left guessing where you are in the time line.

Clearly someone should have said:
"Remember, its okay for the Lost writers to make it up as they go along, and worry about endings or making any form of sense later. They have several years to tell their story in. You have 10 minutes. Make it make sense."
Really when writing a 10 minute film it would be smart to make that 10 minutes the most exciting collection of minutes in that persons life; not 10 minutes where they sit about reflecting on exciting things that happened a while back.

Of course that's a total over oversimplification; Flashbacks are fine when used well. Its just not when you use them because Lost does. Also in my complaint list were the frequent shots of topless men; very long winded romancing stories; overuse of guns and the appearance of non-related polar bears.

Well I'd better get over this flashback hating soon. Aiming to watch The Prestige tonight.

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