Meet the Reader: “Gimcrackery”

A device used in the service of storytelling is technique; a device used for its own sake is a gimmick.

Modern filmmaking is very gimmicky. Quite a few in the current crop of young, mainstream directors – many of whom cut their teeth making music videos and television commercials -- love to adorn their movies with tons of visual “style:” slow motion shots, fast motion shots, subjective shots, a constantly moving camera, ramping, bullet time, distorted color, Cuisinart cutting, etc. These devices can look very cool, but the problem, from a storytelling point of view, is that they are often used without purpose – in ways that have little or nothing to do with the story being told.

These directors have forgotten (or perhaps never learned) that cinema has a grammar just like language does. Over a century of filmmaking, specific visual devices have come to have very specific meanings. For example, just as a comma in a sentence always means pause, and a period always means stop, a dissolve tells viewers that time is passing and slow motion tells them to pay close attention to a particular bit of business.

However, many current filmmakers use visual devices in ways that don’t take into account these meanings. For example, I recently saw a film in which a gang of thieves was heading out to commit a caper – they picked up the tools they were going to use to pull the job and walked out of the room. There were approximately twelve shots in the scene (showing the characters picking up the tools, putting them into bags, shouldering the bags, putting on sunglasses, walking towards the door, etc.). Although the scene unfolded in real time, the director decided to dissolve between each shot rather than simply cut. While it certainly did look stylish, it wasn’t clear why we were being given a visual cue to indicate that time was passing between each of these shots when it obviously wasn’t. The device looked cool, but it didn’t “read” correctly and so was confusing rather than captivating. Another recent film contained an action sequence in which every other shot was done in slow motion, even though the events in the slow shots had no more significance than the events happening in the regular speed shots and so did not require any additional scrutiny or attention. Once again, the device looked interesting, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the storytelling purpose of shifting from normal speed to slow motion to normal speed to slow motion and so on was meant to be – there was no connection between the form and the function. As a result, what could have been an innovative narrative technique became nothing more than a pointless (and rather distracting) gimmick.

Modern screenwriting can be similarly gimmicky. There are four devices in particular that are so popular with writers that at least one (and usually two or three) turn up in approximately 90% of the scripts that I read, although they are often used in ways that hinder the storytelling process rather than enhance it. They are:

If you’re going to use devices in your writing, only do so if they enhance your story or your storytelling. If you’re only using them because they’re cool or because everyone else is using them, then don’t, because all they’ll do is distract and detract. In other words – embrace technique and avoid gimmickry. Your work will be better for it (and your readers will be grateful).

Now, if only we could get some of those directors to do the same…