Introductory Exposition

In a few years he's going to ask you "How come my girlfriends %^&#@ tastes so bad?"

Hey, you brought up bodily fluids...

Funny indeed!

Parkinsonsd said:

Sorry, I'm stuck and re-read this, saw how incomprehensible my post was and realized that I'm in desperate need of a beer. I can't figure out how to erase it now.

I'll tell you a funny story instead. As a Dad, you find yourself placed in all sorts of precarious situations with questions from the young'uns, and you take the time naturally to think about your answers to what you believe will be the tough questions, is there a God, why are we here, are we there yet.

But all you're worries are for naught. The toughest question is not why are we here, is there a God, or any sort of existential crap.


It's when your son, very seriously asks you "Hey Dad, you know how ear wax tastes so bad?"

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Cracked me up.

Having raised four kids, I can attest to the veracity if this story. Even so, raising kids is the singlemost fun and rewarding things we can do in life.

As for exposition, which your intial idea for a question at least apparently addressed, it is the bane of the screenwriter, who can rarely get away with none yet who is told he or he cannot include it. Well, "cannot" may be a little extreme, but the common advice is you dare not devote whole scenes to it. It has to be integrated, woven into your tale, so that the audience gets it but they are hardly aware they being exposed to it. This of course means dialogue.

A character may be explaining something to a cop, who is investigating a crime. "You remember his father, ran that auto repair shop down on Main? He was an alcoholic too."

Now WE know the suspect's father was an auto mechanic, used to have a shop "down on Main," was drank heavily. All quite expository. And, of course, should be relevant to what goes down later.

Lace it in, a snippet here, a snippet there can carry an enormous load of exposition. One line of dialogue can invoke an entire expository world by opprtuning the audience to conjure up visions of things past, however intuitive they may be. We don't need to slap readers or an audience in the face with it, not usually anyway.

One of my favorites was, "Hey, Dad, how far is up?"

Indiana Jones

does a great job of handling expostion.

The scene I've seen referred to the most is where the FBI guys come in and ask him about the Ark.

Indy goes into lecture mode and the two guys have funny reactions.
BUt it's a really cool scene because we see the character development of Indy. We see that he's a totally involved Professor and he LOVES the stuff. AND we sense that he wants that Ark.

We are being given the expostion BUT we are learning a history lesson JUST like the FBI guys.

Then in Last Crusade it's all done as a flash forward and we learn all those cool details that make Indy who he is. The rest of it is a very natural and expected flow of information from the father to son, and from character to character.

scripter1 said:

does a great job of handling expostion.

The scene I've seen referred to the most is where the FBI guys come in and ask him about the Ark.

Indy goes into lecture mode and the two guys have funny reactions.
BUt it's a really cool scene because we see the character development of Indy. We see that he's a totally involved Professor and he LOVES the stuff. AND we sense that he wants that Ark.

We are being given the expostion BUT we are learning a history lesson JUST like the FBI guys.

Then in Last Crusade it's all done as a flash forward and we learn all those cool details that make Indy who he is. The rest of it is a very natural and expected flow of information from the father to son, and from character to character.

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I agree, perfect cases of superbly handled exposition. The writer built in it, made it organic.

For dealing with exposition there are fewer better examples than Di Caprio's interview scene in THE DEPARTED and the stadium crowd scene in WHEN HARRY MET SALLY.

Treat exposition as you would a kid who thinks earwax tastes bad. It's all about tricking them into eating it and not just not noticing but actually enjoying it.

Make the scene visually interesting. Tell us in a way that is both interesting and involving to the audience. Conflict. Stakes. Suspense.

-XL- said:

Treat exposition as you would a kid who thinks earwax tastes bad. It's all about tricking them into eating it and not just not noticing but actually enjoying it.

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You're making me uncomfortable.

How about The Matrix for exposition scenes? Geez, they handled that superbly for the sheer amount of information being hurled at the audience. They didn't really let the dialogue go on for more than a page or two before a shift of scene or some interesting visual effect. Handling exposition is hard enough when it's straight information but when you're trying to explain The Matrix... I bet they went through a few drafts of that puppy.

Opening shot of Rear Window gives you so much information about L. B. Jefferies, all without a single line of dialoge.

Fantastic!

QTP

Parkinsonsd said:

It's when your son, very seriously asks you "Hey Dad, you know how ear wax tastes so bad?"

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There was an article in 'New Scientist' dedicated to answering a much more vital question: "Is it just a coincidence that the human finger is the perfect diameter to fit into a human nostril?"

Mac

Yep..

Mac H. said:

There was an article in 'New Scientist' dedicated to answering a much more vital question: "Is it just a coincidence that the human finger is the perfect diameter to fit into a human nostril?"

Mac

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Fits in the earhole well too -- just ask Parkinson's kid.

R