Time Compression and Narration

I understand that a typical mistake made by amateur movie makers is showing too much establishing footage.  Filming a guy leaving his house, shutting his door, walking to his car, pulling out his keys, getting in his car, driving away, sitting in traffic, arriving at his destination.  Audiences only need to see that last bit – the arrival.  Maybe, if continuity is an issue, we can see him driving away from home.  But anything more is a waste of time and the viewers’ attention.

So I’m writing this supposedly short web comic script for my sister-in-law, and I’m still fighting the expanding page-count. I’m on page eight and I’ve finally gotten to the meat of the story.

One of the problems I had was having the main character arrive outside an apartment window while the next scene requires her to be inside.  The question is – do I need to show her climbing through the window?

I decided that entering the apartment was a necessary bit of continuity to avoid confusing the reader.  But it is an unfortunate necessity, using up page space and making my artist do more work.

The trick, it turns out, is making each panel do double duty.  So while the characters are doing uninteresting things like climbing through windows, I have them thinking (hopefully) interesting and revealing things.  Thank heaven for first person narration.

An interesting reversal actually occurs here – once I decide what information to reveal during these necessary transition panels, I have to make the panels large enough to contain the new data. 

It’s like the film maker above intentionally extending the driving sequence in order to make time for an important voice-over.  But that’s no longer a mistake – it’s an intentional control over the flow of time.  The movie takes time to think because the character does.

But none of this makes my script any shorter.

After what came before…

For today, a couple of unrelated thoughts based on my previous post.  If you need to, you can go back and read it. I’ll wait – the Internet is patient.

My first thought is that comic book format creates interesting challenges to pacing.  At the request of the person I am writing for, I’m trying to avoid too many words per panel.  I’m also trying to avoid too many panels per page.  Otherwise, you know, they get really small and cramped.

Unfortunately, the original plan also included not having too many pages of story as well.  And the way I’m working now, it takes five pages to move the story an inch.  I suppose economy of storytelling is an issue in any media.  Brevity, wit.  It’s a fun, but occasionally frustrating challenge.

My other thought was about the classification and demystification of magic that I ranted about in my previous post.  Particularly as it pertains to my work-not-so-much-in-progress, The Illusionist’s House. 

I’m thinking the solution may be to go ahead and let the people in the story try to classify magic.  Maybe even let them think they’ve succeeded.  And then have them be wrong.  Let them learn that some things defy pigeonholes.

The limits of what can be known is becoming a theme for the story anyway.