Five Parameters for Story Design

in the Short Fiction Film

Richard Raskin

 Introduction
 1. Causality/Choice
 2. Consistency/Surprise
 3. Image/Sound
 4. Character/Object
 5. Simplicity/Depth
 Summary in schematic form
 Short films cited

Introduction

The simplest questions are often the most difficult to

deal with. For example: what are the properties of a
good story? Or for our purposes: what are the
properties of a good story for a short fiction film?

There are many excellent works on narrative theory as

well as books on writing in general and on screen
writing in particular. In an earlier booklet,[1] I
assembled key passages from works ranging from
Aristotle's Poetics to Sidney Lumet's Making
Movies. In the present essay, I will present my own
ideas.

In an attempt to identify factors which make film

stories function optimally, I have found it useful to
work with pairs of properties that can be thought of
as balancing or completing one another. Each set of
properties constitutes a parameter. When the two
components of a given parameter are both fully present
in a filmic event, their interplay shapes and enriches
that event. When only one is present, or when they are
out of balance or there is no real interplay between the
two, the filmic event will be that much poorer.

I will be looking at five such parameters for story

design - that is, at five different kinds of balance -
which in their aggregate form a conceptual framework
that is both comprehensive and yet sufficiently open to
allow for greater structural divergence than do, for
example, sequential models which define a specific
path or dramatic curve for any narrative to follow.

The five parameters discussed in this essay are by no

means the only ones which count in filmic storytelling,
but they are arguably the most important ones. None of
them involves concepts borrowed from linguistics,
semiology, psychoanalysis or any of the other
disciplines or political agendas which have virtually
colonized film studies for decades.

I have also tried to write in a manner which

filmmakers would not find totally foreign to their own
concerns.

This essay has a double focus. One of its purposes is to

enable student filmmakers to design better stories for
their films. In that connection, the five parameters can
be used either as guidelines during the early stages of
screenplay development, or as a means for diagnosing
problems at later stages.

Another and equally important purpose this conceptual

framework can fulfill is as an analytical tool, in which
case the parameters can help to illuminate the story
design and esthetic qualities of any given short fiction
film.

While this framework is prescriptive in nature, it in no

way favors any given film style, but rather is geared to
making the most of any type of short narrative.

No serious research has previously been published on

the short fiction film.[2] It is hoped that the present
essay will contribute to stimulating additional
scholarly interest for a field that has been sorely
neglected and that deserves the same lavish attention
that is routinely accorded to feature films.

1. Causality/Choice to the top of the page

It is generally believed that the core of any story which
is satisfying to its public, is a chain of cause-and-effect
relationships. In Aristotle's words,
whenever such-and-such a personage says or does
such-and-such a thing, it shall be the probable or
necessary outcome of his character, and whenever this
incident follows on that, it shall be either the necessary
or the probable consequence of it."[3]
This principle has remained a cornerstone of narrative
theory and of works on the crafting of fiction, which
define a story (or plot) as a sequence of causally
related events.

For example, Gerald Prince wrote:[4]

Any story must have at least two events which not

only occur at different times but are also causally
related (p. 26).
We can now define a minimal story as consisting of
three events [...] conjoined in such a way that (a) the
first event precedes the second in time and the second
precedes the third, and (b) the second event causes the
third (p. 28).

Another influential commentator on this issue is the

novelist E. M. Forster, who looked down upon "story"
as a mere narrative of events in temporal sequence,
appealing only to curiosity, while he praised "plot" as
involving causality and appealing to intelligence. In an
often quoted passage of Aspects of the Novel , he
wrote:
We have defined a story as a narrative of events
arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a
narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality.
"The king died and then the queen dies," is a story.
"The king died, and then the queen died of grief" is a
plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of
causality overshadows it.[5]
However, I would argue that causality alone - by
which I mean: causality not enmeshed in choices
freely made by characters who do what they want -
belongs to the realm of the inanimate and the
involuntary, and results in lifeless stories, while an
interplay of causality and choice is a basis for
storytelling at its best.

A good example of causality and choice in perfect

balance can be seen in William Golding's account of
an incident he witnessed while serving in the Royal
Navy during the Second World War:

...The Germans used to have a very long distance

plane. And if we were escorting convoys back across
the Atlantic, this plane would come out, and it would
circle the convoy, perhaps five miles away from it,
round and round and it was wirelessing to submarines
saying where this convoy is. So you knew that this
thing that was going round was sending your position.

And I remember one moment at which the captain of

the escort got in touch with the plane. He flashed it up
on an alders lamp, you see - and said, "Please, will you
go round the other way. You are making my head
ache." And this airplane turned round and started
going round the other way, like that, you see. There
was this kind of insane contact between people.[6]
Here, one event - the English captain's request - leads
to another: the German pilot's reversal of his flight
pattern in compliance with that request. In that respect,
a causal relationship exists between the two events,
since one person gets another to change what he is
doing. But at the center of each event is a choice freely
made by the person in question, and much of the
pleasure we derive from this story stems from our
understanding that in changing the direction of his
flight, the pilot deliberately and of his own free
will did what he was asked, and in so doing, went
along with the joke.

The basic structure of Golding's incident can be

described as an overture/response figure, in which one
character makes a proposal to another, who is thereby
confronted with a choice between compliance and
non-compliance. This figure is ideal for designing
pivotal moments in short fiction films, in which
causality and choice can be balanced in novel and
satisfying ways.

For example, at the end of Pål Sletaune's Eating

Out (Norway, 1993, 6 min.), which is set in the
grungiest hamburger joint in the world, the main
character (Parka) says to the shivering woman (Julia)
who is now seated next to him: "You may lean up
against my parka if you like," and after a moment's
hesitation, Julia chooses to do just that.[7]

Parka: You may lean

up against my parka if
you like

An overture/response figure is also used at the end of

Liz Hughes' Cat's Cradle (Australia, 1991, 12 min.), a
film with a deliciously dark humor in which a family
that is too poor to pay for a professional burial, tries on
their own to dispose of the deceased father's body.
Unable to bury it themselves because the ground is too
hard, or to fit it into an industrial oven for cremation,
the mother and children finally leave the body sitting
upright and seemingly looking at the screen in a movie
theatre. Soon after a woman seats herself next to the
dead father, his head flops down onto her shoulder.
After a moment's hesitation - which emphasizes the
process of deliberation in which she is engaged - she
overcomes her initial resistance and leans her head
down onto his, in response to what she interprets as his
overture.[8] Here again, causality and choice are in
perfect balance.

What I have been calling the overture/response figure

is not, however, the only framework for that balance,
which can be successfully managed in many other
ways as well.

For example, in Daphna Levin's The Price Is

Right (Israel, 1994, 17 min.),[9] the main character is
Lev, a supermarket stock clerk who knows the exact
price of every kind of merchandise under the sun. He
eventually becomes a contestant on a TV quiz show
about product prices, and correctly answers one
question after another, while the other contestant - a
pretty but emptyheaded blond - sits by passively.
Suddenly, in the midst of his winning streak, Lev's
buzzer stops working and his protests to the host are
ignored. Here, we can figure out that someone has
deliberately disconnected his buzzer, either to make
the contest less lopsided and more interesting for the
viewers, or in order to get the now favored female
contestant into bed. In this situation, we can work our
way back from effect to probable cause by considering
what might have motivated someone to choose to
disconnect the buzzer.

Zev's opponent. Zev and his buzzer.

Yet another strategy for interweaving causality and

choice, can be seen in Gregor Nicholas's Avondale
Dogs (New Zealand, 1995, 15 min.),[10] in which a
young boy shoots a neighbor's pigeon with a beebee
gun. When his mother, who is fatally ill, takes a turn
for the worse, the boy thinks his misbehavior
somehow caused the deterioration of her condition. In
this way, his choice to shoot the pigeon becomes a
cause for guilt feelings, and a subsequent choice he
makes - giving to the girl whose pigeon he shot, a ring
he had intended for his mother - is at least in part
motivated by a need to make up for his misdeed and
for the loss of his mother.

Paul aiming at the Paul's terror-stricken

pigeon. face a moment later.

The films cited above are among the most

distinguished short films of the present decade. In all
of them, causality and choice balance one another and
their interplay is an important part of the richness of
each film.

There are also films in which causality and choice are

out of balance, and whatever other qualities those
films may have, they are severely limited in their
appeal because of their problems with this parameter.

One such film is called The Rat's Death (La Mort du

rat, France, Les Films de la Commune, 1973, 3
min.).[11] A man whose factory job consists in
holding small plastic bags up to a nozzle from which
beans pour out at regular intervals, gets behind in his
work, tries to block the nozzle with his hand, and is
severely scolded by his boss.

When he returns home, he takes out his frustrations on

his wife by walking over to a pot on the stove, lifting
the lid, looking disgustedly at the food she is cooking,
and throwing the lid down; he then stalks out of the
apartment, without a word to his wife or child. The
wife, wiping away a tear, then trips over her child's toy
lying on the floor, and takes out her frustrations on
him by slapping the little boy - who in turn kicks the
dog - which then barks at the cat - which finally
pounces on a rat. However politically astute the film's
message may be, its causal chain is unrelieved by
choices freely made; each action has been totally
conditioned or programmed by an antecedent event.
And because the film leaves no room for overcoming
the determinism in play, The Rat's Death is more a
fable designed to prove a point than a story with
characters who have a life of their own. I am well
aware that determinists will not approve of my
position on this issue. In this connection, I subscribe to
the views proposed by such representatives of
psychoananlytic ego psychology as Heinz Hartmann,
Ernst Kris, R. M. Loewenstein, Erik Erikson and
David Rapaport, the essence of which I have briefly
described elsewhere.[12] An old story told by David
Rapaport will help to illustrate this position with
regard to freedom and determinism:

Moses' portrait was brought to an Oriental king whose

astrologers and phrenologists concluded from it that
Moses was a cruel, greedy, craven, self-seeking man.
The king, who had heard that Moses was a leader,
kindly, generous, and bold, was puzzled, and went to
visit Moses. On meeting him, he saw that the portrait
was good, and said: "My phrenologists and astrologers
were wrong." But Moses disagreed: "Your
phrenologists and astrologers were right, they saw
what I was made of; what they couldn't tell you was
that I struggled against all that and so became what I
am."[13]
What I am suggesting is that stories in which causality
overshadows the freedom of characters to choose
among options and do what they want, even when
circumstances exert a pressure on them to behave in
other ways, are stories in which the characters will be
lifeless representations of mental states or social roles.

This is a danger that will crop up whenever a story is

designed to demonstrate a principle, which is why
Lajos Egri's idea that any drama should "prove a
premise" is to be avoided like the plague.[14] A
devastating critique of this conception was proposed
by David Howard and Edward Mabley, who wrote that
a student of theirs, who was a devoted believer in the
"method of the premise," had to "learn to give her
characters full freedom so that they would be able to
do what they wanted and needed instead of being
forced by her to perform what the premise required.
She had to learn that characters are never our puppets.
They have to live their own lives."[15]

While stories designed to prove a point are

problematic, even worse are stories in which
characters are portrayed as the helpless objects of
forces beyond their control, so that things happen to
them rather than their being - even to the slightest
degree - in control of their own lives. A short film
exemplifying this type of imbalance in the
causality/choice parameter, is Rudolf
Mestagh's Ouf! (Belgium, 1994, 14 min.). In this film,
a passenger on a tram has a sudden need to get to a
toilet - though it's only at the end of the film that this
becomes clear - and runs off the tram before the
inspectors can check his ticket. He is pursued through
the city by growing numbers police, and the chase sets
off a series of cause-and-effect chain reactions which
are supposed to be hilarious. For example, a running
policeman bumps into a man carrying a basket of
corks; the man stumbles, spilling the corks all over the
ground, in time for another passerby to slip on them
and fall into a nearby dumpster, which then rolls down
the hill. At a later point, we see the dumpster

being emptied into a garbage truck, and the refuse it

contained is carried along a conveyer belt along with
the passerby who is kicking and groaning; and later
still, we see a pair of gesticulating hands sticking out
from a cube of compressed garbage, as it is being
driven away. This is only one of perhaps twenty
running gags, which include for example a runaway
baby carriage, a man in a wheelchair unable to stop his
own accelerating descent down steep hills, and a
mailman who is accidentally hoisted up by a crane and
lowered into a metal tube standing on the platform of a
truck, which is then driven away.

Whether or not these gags are funny I will leave aside

as a matter of taste. But it is clear that choice is
reduced to a minimal or non-existant role within the
various causal chains woven through the story, and
that is why this film is tedious beyond belief.

Summing up, I would suggest that causality is

necessary for the coherence and inner logic of a story,
and that when causality is conceived in terms of the
power of characters to act on the situation in which
they find themselves, it serves the interests of the
story. Similarly, choice is necessary for the characters
in a story to come alive. Unless they are freely
choosing to do what they want, there can be no breath
of life within them. As John Garder wrote:

No fiction can have real interest if the central character

is not an agent struggling for his or her own goals but a
victim, subject to the will of others. (Failure to
recognize that the central character must act, not
simply be acted upon, is the single most common
mistake in the fiction of beginners.)[16]

2. Consistency/Surprise to the top of the page

Aristotle taught that every character should be
"consistent and the same throughout"; and that if
inconsistency happens to be a particular character's
trait, then "he should still be consistently inconsistent"
(op. cit., p. 56).

Any major character in a short fiction film should have

definition, a central core of attibutes that remain
constant. As much of this definition as possible should
be established when we first encounter the character,
so that we get to know as early on as possible how the
character thinks and acts - above all, how the character
interacts with others.

This does not mean, however, that we can predict what

the character will do next. Each successive action
should be both unexpected and yet fully compatible
with the character definition already established, so
that although each new action takes us by surprise, it
also strikes us as being "in character."

In Dorthe Scheffmann's The Beach (New Zealand,

1996, 8 min.),[17] two women, who have been friends
for years, have a quiet dialogue at the seashore while
their husbands are taking care of the children playing
on the beach. Margie notices a bruise on Anne's back,
and though Anne at first answers evasively, Margie
presses her for an explanation, until it finally comes
out that Anne's husband has been been beating her for
years. When Anne eventually admits "David hits me,"
in a manner which shows that she is thoroughly
resigned to this situation, Margie angrily replies:
"What the fuck do you mean, he hits you?"
Immediately after this exchange, Anne's husband,
David, cheerfully comes running over to the women,
and Margie lashes out at him: "David, you fucking
prick, don't you ever hit her again," to which he
answers innocently, "What? What are you talking
about?" Margie repeats: "You heard me. I said don't
you ever hit her again." When David angrily tells
Margie to "mind her own fucking business," she jumps
to her feet, rushes over to him and kicks him in the
balls with all her might. He falls to the sand, doubled
over in pain.

We already knew, on the basis of her dialogue with

Anne, that Margie is a forceful and assertive person,
who would not put up with anything that threatened
her friend's well-being. That she ends up kicking
David in the groin is therefore fully in keeping with
her definition as a character; at the same time,
however, no one - neither we, as viewers, nor any of
the other characters present - could foresee the kick. In
this respect, it exemplifies an action which perfectly
balances consistency and surprise.

Pål Sletaune's Eating Out is so abundant with

examples of consistency/surprise that virtually
everything that happens in the film could be cited with
respect to this parameter. To keep the discussion
within manageable bounds, I will focus primarily on
the behavior of the cook.

As already mentioned, the action takes place in an

exceptionally unappetizing diner. It is manned by a
lone cook, who is unshaven, wears a filthy undershirt,
and has strings of greasy hair hanging down from his
hat. So much for his repellent appearance. There is

only one customer in the place: a man sitting at the

counter, with his parka hood pulled up over his head,
hence the name "Parka" given to him in the shooting
script. When Roy enters the diner with his female
companion, pulls a gun on the cook and hysterically
yells "Give me the money," the cook turns to look at
Roy and then returns to scraping the grill as he replies:
"Can't you see I'm busy? You'll have to wait until I'm
finished." However much his appearance has put us
off, the cook's gutsy reply to the hold-up man wins us
over to him totally.
Later, as the cook is dutifully emptying the cash
register, the female accomplice, Julie, discovers that
she is hungry and asks Parka if his hamburger is good.
Parka then launches into a connoisseur's comparison of
menu items number 37 and 36, which is utterly
incongruous with the situation at hand and yet
perfectly consistent with his self-image as a
gourmet.[18] Julie follows Parka's recommendation
and wants a burger like the one he is eating. When Roy
gruffly orders the cook to make her one instantly,
although we already know that the cook is not to be
interrupted when he is in the middle of something, his
reply - involving both total compliance with Roy's
demands and yet an insistance on defining the situation
in his own terms - is nevertheless as unpredictable as it
is in character: "I can't do two things at the same time.
Do you want the money first and then the burger, or
the burger first and then the money?"

This same balance of consistency and surprise is found

in the cook's third and last line of dialogue, spoken to
Roy when the hold-up man has heard the sound of
approaching police sirens and is in the process of
making his getaway, before the cook has finished
emptying the cash register. As Roy exits, the cook says
to him in genuine puzzlement: "Didn't you want the
money?" Here again we

have a line of dialogue which takes us by surprise

while being fully consistent with the cook's character,
in the sense that a) as in his previous line (about not
being able to do two things at the same time), the cook
expresses both compliance with and a questioning of
Roy; and b) the line is spoken by a man who has been
defined for us as saying what we would never expect.

The unpredicitability of virtually all of the events in

this film - the fact that we never know what will
happen next, or how any character will respond to
what another character does - is wonderfully
refreshing, since we don't want to be able to foresee
what is coming, even while attempting to do just that.
This in itself is a paradox: our wanting to be thwarted
in our attempt to outguess the screenwriter.

Furthermore, the many surprises the film has in store

for us are doubly satisfying, because they 1) defy our
attempts to guess what will happen, catch us off guard
and tickle us with their originality; and 2) at the same
time, fulfill our expectation - shaped during the
opening shots - of being repeatedly taken by surprise.
In other words, it is by remaining unpredictable that
the film lives up to what we are led to expect of it.
This might be called the paradox of expected surprise.

In commenting on the orgasm scene in When Harry

Met Sally,[19]Meg Ryan stated in a TV interview:
"The only reason this scene works is because Sally is
precisely the kind of person who would never, ever do
such a thing." However, if that were true, then the
audience would not accept it. (Instead, we would be
irritated by her acting out of character.) What I think
Meg Ryan actually meant is that Sally is the kind of
person we would never expect to do such a thing, but
once she has done it, we can accept that - surprising
and unforseeable as it may have been - it was
nevertheless within the range of possibilities for her
character.

When characters truly come to life and are allowed to

live out their own existences, what they do may
surprise not only the viewer but the writer as well. In
commenting on his novel The Music of Chance, filmed
in 1993 by Philip Haas, Paul Auster stated:
There's no question that [The Music of Chance] took
over and had its own life independent of my will or
judgment about what should or shouldn't go into it.
There was an interesting example during the poker
game. Nashe leaves the table and goes upstairs to look
at "The City of the World" again. He stays for an hour
and winds up stealing the two little figures of Flower
and Stone. I had no idea he was going to do this until I
wrote the passage. It was as though Nashe had become
enirely real for me and was doing it on his own. I still
don't understand why he did it, and yet it was right that
he did it. It had to be that way.[20]
 The figures of Flower Nashe (Mandy
and Stone, played by Patinkin) in the
Charles Durning and process of stealing the
Joel Grey in the film. figures from "The
City of the World."

What is in play here is not only a view as to how

fictional characters behave, but also a fundamental
belief that human life is unpredictable. Auster stated:
"If my work is about anything, I think it's about the
unexpected, the idea that anything can happen" (ibid.,
p. 233); he also said: "...what I'm talking about is the
presence of the unpredictable, the utterly bewildering
nature of human existence. From one moment to the
next, anything can happen" (ibid., p. 289).

This outlook concerns not only the

consistency/surprise parameter, but also the interplay
of causality and choice, since in both contexts, it is
important to realize that we don't necessarily need to
understand why a character chooses to act as he or she
does. In a film on the making of Short Cuts (1993),
Robert Altman stated:

If we were able to explain any of these characters, any

of the twenty-two of them, it probably wouldn't have
been interesting enough to make stories out of. It's the
very fact that the things happen to them that happen to
them, and that they are inexplicable, because I think
that's probably more truthful to the way life really is.
And I don't think we have explanations. I mean, I've
been doing this for thirty years, and I've been getting
the same flack from the critics. They say, "Why did
they do that? You didn't explain why." Well I don't
know why. Go back to Nashville: why does the
assassin kill the singer? Well, if we knew any of that,
we could probably prevent that sort of thing.[21]

The above discussion might be summed up by

suggesting that any short fiction film should be
designed in such a way that surprises and consistencies
balance one another. The consistencies provide
structure and a framework within which the surprises
are endowed with a resonance they would not
otherwise have, while the surprises, the unpredictable
events, keep the structure open and breathe life into it.

Incidentally, an interplay of consistency and surprise is

the very substance of the set-up/pay-off figure.[22]

3. Image/Sound to the top of the page

In the same work cited above, Robert Bresson argued
against integrating sound and image, suggesting that at
any moment in a film, precedence should be given
either to the visual or to the auditory component, and
that sound and image should never work together in
balanced interaction as equals. He wrote for example
(p. 62):
If a sound is the necessary complement of an image,
give preponderance either to the sound or to the image.
As equals, they interfere with one another or kill each
other off [clash], as is said of colors.

Sound and image must not come to one another's

assistance but rather take turns, working in shifts.

For Bresson, it is either our eyes or our ears which

may be occupied at any given moment, but not both at
the same time, just as any one filmic event should be
directed either to our sight or to our hearing, but never
to both simultaneously (pp. 60-61). Views of this kind,
sometimes cast in terms of avoiding the redundancy of
sound and image, regularly turn up in works of film
theory. And although the theoreticians or filmmakers
who propose these views may be among the most
distinguished in their respective fields, their basic
position with respect to this one issue is nevertheless
utterly misguided.

Perhaps the misconception involved here is an

offshoot of a fully justified objection to any
redundancy of the verbal and the visual. Jean Epstein
wrote for example:

In his Mémoires, Casanova judges to be one of the

most serious and stupid errors that a lover who says "I
love you" to a woman who can see that she is loved.
But this is an error committed by nine films out of ten,
in nine shots out of ten.[23]
That it is a mistake to use verbal cues - lines of
dialogue or voice-over - when the physical enactment
of events before a camera could carry the same
information to the viewer more effectively, is a view to
which Alfred Hitchcock heartily subscribed, as can be
seen in such statements as:
In many films now being made, there is very little
cinema: they are mostly what I call "photographs of
people talking." When we tell a story in cinema, we
should resort to dialogue only when it's impossible to
do otherwise.

In writing a screenplay, it is essential to separate

clearly the dialogue from the visual elements and,
whenever possible, to rely more on the visual than on
dialogue.[24]

What is true of feature films in this connection can be

argued even more forcefully with respect to the short
fiction film. Roman Polanski, whose wordless Two
Men and a Wardrobe (Poland, 1958, 15 min.) created
a sensation and gave new life to the short fiction film,
went so far as to say that dialogue is not proper to the
form.[25] But there is an exception to every rule, and
in this case, the obvious exception which proves the
rule is Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes (USA,
1986, 5 min.), with Roberto Benigni and Steven
Wright as the two coffee drinkers, whose off-the-wall
dialogue keeps us spellbound for five minutes.[26]

Two Men and a Coffee and Cigarettes

Wardrobe (1958) (1986)

Having argued that: a) a redundancy of the verbal and

visual is unfortunate; b) it is preferable to
communicate information visually in a film, rather
than verbally; and c) the best short fiction films (with
few notable exceptions) generally keep dialogue to a
minimum and rely primarily on visual storytelling, I
would now like to look at other aspects of the role of
sound in the short fiction film.

Even beginners, making their very first shorts,

generally understand that in designing a story to be
filmed, they must make sure that the action
is visually exciting. However, that the action must also
be exciting in auditory terms is often overlooked.

One way in which this can be managed is to design

events which include a striking auditory dimension.
In Cat's Cradle, for example, which has one of the
most mesmerizing sound tracks of any short fiction
film I know, there are - in virtually every scene -
events in which the interplay of sound and image is
essential: in scene 1, theamplified sound of a spoon
scraping porridge from a bowl to a pot, as we see it
done on screen - the increased volume of the sound
making us feel closer to or more present within the
situation at

hand; in scene 2, the "thwap" sound made as the

mother forces the dead father's arm into place in his
suit jacket, making that physical act more convincing,
grotesque and comical, all at once; in scene 3, the
sound of the shovel hitting rock or impenetrable
ground, helping to tell us why burial will be
impossible there, as well as the subsequent sound of
the shovel being dragged along the ground, as though
to emphasize the uselessness of the implement.

In all of these examples, we simultaneously see and

hear the same event, the sound and image interacting
to give more power and richness to the storytelling.
Each of the actions involved are ones which produce
sounds, and the noise they make are as much a part of
our experience as the sight of the physical event.

There are also events in the film which do not make

their own noise, but which are accompanied by sounds
that also enrich our experience. For example, when the
mother pulls the sock onto the father's foot, with the
big toe protruding through a hole, we hear a

sound that might either be a cat meowing or a baby

crying. This sound, issuing from some off-camera
space, in no way distracts our attention from the event
shown on screen, but rather in accompanying it, gives
us two events to experience (one visual, one auditory)
instead of only one.
Yet another strategy - in some ways the most
important one - for ensuring a vital role for sound in a
short fiction film, is to allow what might be called
"sound events" to play an important part in the action.

For example, in Rita Nunes's Menos Nove (Portugal,

1997, 12 min.), one of the many murders portrayed is
that committed by a man who is driven crazy by the
sound of a woman loudly, demonstratively and
repeatedly striking her spoon against the inside of her
coffee cup as she stirs to dissolve the sugar she has
added to her coffee.

Similarly, near the end of Jean-Marc Vallée's Les Mots

Magiques (Canada, 1997, 21 min.), the son
deliberately wakes up his sleeping father by putting a
record on the phonograph and turning the volume up
as he leaves the apartment, thereby making sure that
his father will find and read the letter he has just left
for him.

In Christine Parker's The Peach (New Zealand, 1993,

16 min.), in the midst of a seduction scene in which
the Woman (Lucy Lawless) is about to kiss Sal (Tania
Simon), Sal suddenly hears her baby crying (off
screen) and the spell is broken.

The Woman in the The sound of Sal's

process of seducing baby crying breaks
Sal in The Peach. the spell.

Finally, in Brad McGann's Possum (also New Zealand,

1997, 15 min.), we see Kid - an autistic child - sitting
under a table, looking at pictures of animals in a book,
and making the animal sounds. As she roars like a
jungle cat, her sister, Missy, teases her by pushing
their pet kitten toward her face. The sounds escalate,
with Kid's roaring frightening the kitten, until the
father - a stern and repressive man - exasperated by the
noise, slams a hammer down onto a possum trap on
the table to put an end to the incident.

In all of these examples, from Les Mots

Magiques, Menos Nove, The Peach, and Possum, the
screenwriter designed his or her story in such a way
that a sound is used to trigger or transform an event,
and in that respect, the sound constitutes a decisive
event in its own right.

Summing up the above discussion, we could say that

strategies for ensuring a dynamic interplay of sound
and image in a short fiction film include: 1) designing
events which are both visually striking and make
striking sounds; 2) accompanying an event that does
not produce its own sound, with an appropriate off-
screen sound; and 3) focusing the viewer's attention on
a sound which in itself will have a role in determining
what happens next, and might therefore be described
as a "sound event" in its own right. It is also worth
insisting at this point that minimizing
the verbal component - a generally desirable effort
with regard to story design in the short fiction film -
does not mean neglecting the importance of building
sound-producing events into the story.

4. Character/Object to the top of the page

A great deal of ink has been spilled over a controversy
Aristotle inadvertantly started, when he taught that
"the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of
Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come
second" (op. cit., pp. 37-39). Virtually everyone who
has subsequently written about storytelling has in one
way or another taken Aristotle's position into
account.[27]

However, arguing as to the relative importance of plot

and character is of little practical use to the filmmaker
designing his or her story, or to the analyst trying to
understand how any given short film works.

A far more fruitful discussion concerns the

relationship of character and object, of person and
thing.

In feature films, characters often run themselves

ragged trying to get their hands on secret plans or
stolen papers - a class of object Hitchcock called
a MacGuffin, and which is sometimes even more
contemptuously referred to as the weenie of a film.
Here the object is primarily a plot device intended to
get the action moving, and may have little or no visual
presence within the film, or have any meaning beyond
its literal one (though the statuette in The Maltese
Falcon - "The, er, stuff that dreams are made of" - is a
notable exception).

Possibly because the short film lends itself in general

to a more symbolic mode of communication, objects
have a more noble role to play in this context. In many
cases, an object is the central focus of interest in a
short film and the interplay of one or more characters
with that object is an essential part of the life of the
film. This is the case, for example, in Polanski's Two
Men and a Wardrobe (1958). Here, a fundamental
ambiguity at the heart of the film lies in the possibility
of understanding the wardrobe in two very different
ways: either 1) as symbolizing those physical or moral
properties which set the two men apart from everyone
else and constitute an obstacle to their acceptance by
others; or 2) as representing a gift, a set of life-
affirming values which the two men embody in their
behavior, such as playfulness, generosity,
protectiveness, tenderness and loyalty, and which they
unsuccessfully attempt to transfer to or to share with
others.
Another film in which an object plays a central role is
Didier Flamand's La Vis (France, 1993, 19
min.).[28] In this film, the protagonist discovers a
defective screw and tracks down the culprit
responsible for it; in the process, the screw becomes a
central focus

for the filmmaker's playful exploration of questions of

social hierarchy and of identity.

Other recent short films in which an object carries an

important share of the film's storytelling work, include
Kriv Stenders's Two/Out (Australia, 1997, 12 min.), in
which a small black plastic bag filled with water
becomes the "woman" of one of two prisoners sharing
a cell; and Vivian Goffette's La Carte
postale (Belgium, 1997, 16 min.), in which a post card
takes on a pivotal role on the day of a funeral.

Two/Out La Carte postale

In Assif Kapadia's The Sheep Thief (U.K., 1997, 24

min.), there isn't one single object which becomes our
focus of attention, but rather a number of objects or
even the very physicality of everything shown. When a
young thief strikes back at a boy trying to catch him,
the thief hits the boy with a stick, which a subsequent
shot shows to have a nail hammered through it, and on
the nail are drops of blood and bits of tissue from the
wounded boy's head. Other shots in which the very
physicality of things is in sharp focus, include images
of raindrops falling on grains of sand and pebbles, and
of drops of sap rolling down the bark of a tree. After
the sheep thief is caught, he is branded on the
forehead, and later covers the mark of his shame with
a red headband which becomes a part of his persona.
When at the end of the film, his identity is discovered
and he is expelled from the village, he tears the
headband into two pieces, and gives them to the two
brothers he has befriended.

The nail with droops of Drops of rain falling on

blood and bits of tissue grains of sand and
on it. pebbles.

Drops of sap roll down The red headband.

the bark of a tree.

Tearing the headband. Giving it to the brothers.

In an exceptionally thought-provoking passage, Frank

McConnell suggests that literary and film narratives
differ essentially in the following way:
In written narrative, we begin with the consciousness
of the hero and have to construct out of that
consciousness the social and physical world the hero
inhabits. But in film the situation is, essentially and
significantly, reversed. Film can show
us only objects, only things, only, indeed, people as
things. Our activity in watching a filmed narrative is to
infer, to construct the selfhood of the hero who might
inhabit the objective world film so overwhelmingly
gives us.[29]
Perhaps it is all too easy to take the world of objects
for granted when writing a screenplay and to
concentrate instead on evoking subjectivity or
interiority. In the best short fiction films, there is a
dynamic interplay of character and object, of
subjectivity and physicality, and specific objects are
singled out and invested with special meaning for
characters and for us. Once charged with that meaning,
objects can take on and carry out an important role in
the storytelling work of the film. And particularly in
the short film, enlisting the use of objects in a dynamic
interplay with characters can be an effective strategy
for telling a story with great economy,
5. Simplicity/Depth to the top of the page
Student filmmakers sometimes assume that in order to
have depth, a story must be complicated. Actually,
simplicity enhances the possibility for depth, in ways
that will soon be described.

One facet of simplicity in story design is clarity, about

which François Truffaut stated:

Each cut of a picture, lasting for three to ten seconds,

is information given to viewer. This information is all
too often obscure or downright incomprehensible,
either because the director's intentions were vague to
begin with or he lacked the competence to convey
them clearly.

To those who question whether clarity is all that

important, I can only say that it is the most important
quality in the making of a film.[30]

And here again, what applies to filmmaking in general

is even more true of the short film, in which the viewer
must at no point be in doubt as to what he or she is
seeing on screen.

Simplicity can also be understood in terms of the time

- a kind of temporal space - allowed to the viewer to
absorb what is going on in the story. Paul Auster said
in an interview:

The one thing I try to do in all my books is to leave

enough room in the prose for the reader to inhabit it.
Because I finally believe it's the reader who writes the
book and not the writer... There's a way in which a
writer can do too much, overwhelming the reader with
so many details that he no longer has any air to
breathe.[31]
In this connection, it is worth returning to a comment
made by Marcell Iványi, in the interview provided in
full on pp. 15-22 above:
...usually the short film that makes a strong impression
- and for that matter this applies to the feature film as
well - the short that makes a strong impression is one
that is simple enough to give time to the viewer. When
you are watching a film by Antonioni, the main thing
you feel is that you have time to think, just to be there,
and the film is not pressing you to think about this
now, and now here's a close-up of this, you have to
think about this, and now this is a detail here, you have
to see this. When it starts to be like that, the viewer
gets tired of it. And doesn't want to think any more. So
he gives it up. And when the film wants you to think
later, then you won't think, and you say: "Well, why
don't you just show it to me, just the way you did
before?" So when there's time and space for a viewer
just to be there, and be settled about the whole theme -
just be able to look at everything the way a child looks
at things for the first time. I think that's very important.
All the great films we see, the classics, also the short
films - the best of the films we see is always like that,
always works inside like that (pp. 20-21).
In the same spirit, the film editor and sound designer
Walter Murch advised:
Always try to do the most with the least - with the
emphasis on try. You may not always succeed,
but attempt to produce with greatest effect on the
viewer's mind by the least number of things on the
screen. Why? Because you want to do only what is
necessary to engage the imagination of the audience -
suggestion is always more effective than exposition.
Past a certain point, the more effort you put into
wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience
to become spectators rather than participants.[32]
What all of these quotes suggest is that simplicity
means leaving enough space - also
enough temporal space - for the viewer to play an
active role in experiencing the film, while excessive
complication or detail reduces the viewer's role to that
of keeping up with and merely registering what
happens at the surface level of the story.

One way in which we experience depth in a short film

is in the form of inner space within characters. For
example, in the final shots of The Beach and
of Immediate Departure,[33] we have a sense of
almost unlimited inner space within the boy, Simon, as
he looks at his mother from a distance, trying to
understand what has just happened, and within the
Man, now in tears and in utter despair, as he looks out
of the train window. These shots last 21 and 32
seconds respectively, and both give us ample time to
plumb the depths of the characters, to think about what
is going on inside of them. In both cases, we have a
perfect interplay of simplicity and depth.

The Beach.. Final Immediate Departure.

shot. Final shot.

In Come, directed by Marianne Olsen Ulrichsen

(Norway, 1995, 5 min.), this same character depth is
enhanced by a temporal depth as well, as a woman in
her 80's delights in the memory of her first moment of
love. As a result, the film spans her entire adult life,
focusing on two moments, more than half a century
apart, in each of which she has her own fully
developed inner space.

A second way in which depth can be understood is in

terms of the depth of emotion the film inspires in us.
Exceptionally, I will illustrate this point with an
example drawn from a recent documentary,
entitled Black Ashes (directed by Shukhrat M.
Makhmudov, Uzbekistan, 1997, 10 min.). This is a
film about lambs who are separated from their mothers
when they are three days old, and sent off to be
slaughtered for their fur, which is highly priced. In the
final scene of the film, the lambs are driven away on a
truck; one of the mother sheep runs after truck, though
her instinctive quest is utterly hopeless. Here again, we
have a perfect interplay of simplicity and depth, with
depth in this case referring primarily to the depth of
feeling the heartbreaking scene evokes in the viewer.

The lambs are separated from their mothers and

loaded onto a truck.

The back of the truck is closed and the truck

drives off with its cargo of three-day-old lambs,
leaving the flock of mother sheep in the distance.

One of the mother sheep follows the truck.

 The mother sheep continues following the truck
as the lambs huddle.

The mother sheep gives up, then resumes her

hopeless quest, and finally runs off in another
direction. The truck, now filmed from behind,
continues transporting the lambs to their
slaughter.

Yet a third way in depth can be understood is in terms

of underlying meaning, or openness to interpretation.
Two examples from Possum will be useful in this
context.

A scene in which Missy teases her autistic sister Kid,

ends with Kid biting Missy on the leg. Missy chooses
to tell their father about it, and as the father is tending
to the bite, with Missy sitting on his bed, her brother
stands in the doorway watching and he and Missy
exchange glances.

In commenting on this shot, director Brad McGann

described it to me in illuminating terms as a "reflective
moment, creating cinematic space within which the
viewer can register subtext."[34] And the subtext here
is what Missy's eyes say:

 "I rule the roost, I have Dad's sympathy and

affection"
  "I'm the one with the power in this situation"
 "Kid is in serious trouble now"

And yet another facet of this subtext is the slight

overtone of an incestuous relationship, as the father
tends to the bite on his daughter's leg, with her sitting
on his bed. Here, once again, simplicity and depth - the
latter this time in terms of underlying meaning - are in
perfect balance.

The same is true of the film as a whole in which Kid is

not only an autistic child but a representation of the
wild, untamable side of human nature. She is also an
outsider. And just as she can be seen in relation to
three different layers of meaning, so can her father,
who is at one and the same time: the father of an
autistic child; that side of human nature that seeks to
repress the wild side; and a represention of society in
relation to an outsider. These layers of meaning might
be lined up as follows:

KID FATHER

father of an
an autistic child
autistic child

layers of a representation
a representation
meaning of that side of
of the wild,
in human nature
untamable side
Possum that represses the
of human nature
wild side

an outsider society

Wind is another example of a film which lends itself to

more than one interpretation, thereby giving the viewer
an opportunity to use his or her decoding skills for
constructing alternate frameworks of meaning,
depending upon whether the story is seen for example
as concerning a specific historical period, such as the
Second World War, and as involving internal strife or
occupation by an enemy.
At the same time, the story design of Wind is
remarkably simple, and the very simplicity of the story
leaves the viewer sufficient space to ponder the film's
possible meanings. In this way, Wind exemplifies yet
another perfect interplay of simplicity and - in this
case - interpretive depth.

Summary in schematic form to the top of the page

parameter when in balance when out of balance
causality/choice  in responding to  characters
one another or to behave as
situations at hand, though
characters freely programmed
choose to do what  characters
they want to do acted upon
 initiative/response by forces
model often in beyond their
play control (are
 choices made by reduced to
characters have the status of
consequences helpless
puppets)

consistency/surprise  characters remain  characters

consistent with a behave
central core that either
defines them but predictably
their actions are or out of
never forseeable character

image/sound  dynamic interplay  all

of image and significant
sound events are
 verbal dialogue-
communication based
kept to a  sound (other
minimum when than
other means are dialogue)
available plays a
 at pivotal marginal
moments, sound role in the
events make storytelling
things happen
character/object  dynamic interplay  no particular
of main character attention
and some object focused on
charged with objects or
meaning physicality
 balance of  character's
interiority and inner being
physicality is in no
 an object has a significant
storytelling way linked
function to objects

simplicity/depth  story is simple  story too

and clear, complicated
allowing the or confusing
viewer time and  viewer
space to reflect reduced to
upon and spectator
participate in the rather than
construction of participant
the story  film is
 depth as inner nothing but
space within a surface
character
 temporal depth
 depth as depth of
feeling within the
viewer
 depth as
underlying
meaning or
openness to
interpretation

Short films cited to the top of the page

Avondale Dogs. Gregor Nicholas (New Zealand, 1995, 15
min.)

Black Ashes. Shukhrat M. Makhmudov (Uzbekistan, 1997, 10

min.)

Cat's Cradle. Liz Hughes (Australia, 1991, 12 min.)

Coffee and Cigarettes. Jim Jarmusch (USA, 1986, 5 min.)

Come. Marianne Olsen Ulrichsen (Norway, 1995, 5 min.)

Death of the Rat, The. Les Films de la Commune (France,

1973, 3 min.)

Eating Out. Pål Sletaune (Norway, 1993, 6 min.)

Immediate Departure. Thomas Briat (France, 1995, 14 min.)

La Carte postale. Vivian Goffette (Belgium, 1997, 16 min.)

Menos Nove. Rita Nunes (Portugal, 1997, 12 min.)

Ouf! Rudolf Mestagh (Belgium, 1994, 14 min.)

Possum. Brad McGann (New Zealand, 1997, 15 min.)

The Beach. Dorthe Scheffmann (New Zealand, 1996, 8 min.)

The Peach. Christine Parker (New Zealand, 1993, 16 min.)

The Price is Right. Daphna Levin (Israel, 1994, 17 min.)

The Sheep Thief, Assif Kapadia (UK, 1997, 24 min.)

Two Men and a Wardrobe. Roman Polanski (Poland, 1958,

15 min.)

Two/Out. Kriv Stender (Australia, 1997, 12 min.)

Wind. Marcell Iványi (Hungary, 1996, 5 min.)