Dialogue

 I’m starting to gather material on Dialogue. Initially, I’m looking at links where dialogue is sparse – and other elements deliver the film to the viewer. We begin with a short video that is cinematic, has a use of edited continous motion, and uses ambient sound and music.

Lykke Li & David Lynch join forces for...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9rgGueO6Cs&list=RDd9rgGueO6Cs&index=1 

Lykke Li & Tarik Saleh combine on this use of actors, confined location and ambient sounds & silences mixed with music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu-b3u5jDiU

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Here’s a Silent Film directed by F.W. Murneau.  Scarcely any Titles...here’s what a person posting wrote:

“Ryan, thank you for posting this wonderful film. There are a few postings of this film on YouTube but this digital print scan seems the best. Emil Jannings gives an astonishing performance as the old Doorman, considering he was around 37 years at the time. To my mind "The Last Laugh" director, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, was the finest director of the silent film era.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmIUP0ElS7k

The Myth:
That there are grammatical rules, stylistic rules, and proper writing that will represent character.
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That there is a hierarchy of grammar and vocabulary that characters need to obey. 

Breaking The Myth;
Works, mainly, by a simple approach: Listen to people everywhere you go.  
On the bus? Make sure you eavesdrop. 
On BC Ferries?  Eavesdrop - listen to everyone.  Make life real - not 'correct'
If a character however, always finishes sentences, forever applies correct grammar, and is more formal than informal, well...make sure you capture that. 


The Truth:
Sorry, but if you find characters always have well-constructed sentences, finish thoughts and hear what another character is saying... well, that's  a hold-over from the 1950s where societal structure imposed artistic 'rules'
That may work for other art-forms. But it certainly does not for Film & Video. 
Characters have their own life, and if they are always speaking properly, constructing poetic and proper dialogue - the writer may be suspected of having a tin ear.
Our characters need to be thought of as real. They have their own backgrounds, ways of speaking and, most of all, a set of individual logical rules that relate to the character and not to an externally generated way of speaking properly.  They generate us as much as we generate them.

They will forget words, hesitate, have echoic speech patterns, speak over other lines, misinterpret what's said.

They have their own rules, but no externally generated set of rules apply to their speech.

An excellent approach is to go through your script, covering up the names of your characters.
See if you can tell, purely by dialogue, what character is speaking.  
If you can, good. This is what we aim for.



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