SPOILER ALERT FOR THE INCREDIBLES AND AS GOOD AS IT GETS. (Plots and storylines are not ruined, but details that may ruin your future your enjoyment of these movies are mentioned.)
There is a scene in The Incredibles where the Parr family is having dinner and a family squabble breaks out. If you listen to the filmmakers' commentary on the DVD, you will learn that the artists agonized over that scene. As they drew the different cells, the food on the table was moving about and they were trying to figure out things such as "Where does the bowl of broccoli go? How did it get from one end of the table to another?"
After much agonizing, they finally realized that no one but another artist would ever notice the broccoli leaping about the table, the ordinary viewer just wouldn't catch it. Even after listening to the commentary, I have to admit, I haven't been able to identify what food is leaping about the table out of place. I haven't reviewed the scene in freeze frame, extreme slow motion yet, but I have realized the filmmakers were correct. While the scene may have flaws that make artists cringe, as an ordinary viewer, I don't even notice them.
Now, there are other movies I've watched with flaws that take me straight out of the story. For instance, in As Good As It Gets, there is a scene where three people are talking in a car. The car is a convertible and the top is down. The driver decides to pull over to better listen to what one of the other passengers is saying. The camera switches to an exterior shot as the car pulls to the side of the road. When it does, the top on the convertible is up. That scene drives me crazy because of the flawed detailed.
There are similar flaws in other movies that drive me completely crazy.
The thing is, before I was trained in analyzing my own writing and looking for inconsistencies and editorial ripples and things that don't quite add up, I don't know if I would have noticed details like the one in As Good As It Gets. I also have to wonder if the makers of The Incredibles had it right, even though they weren't talking about writing, but visual images. Are there details that we, as writers, obsess over, that the ordinary reader will never notice when they experience the story?
There is a scene in The Incredibles where the Parr family is having dinner and a family squabble breaks out. If you listen to the filmmakers' commentary on the DVD, you will learn that the artists agonized over that scene. As they drew the different cells, the food on the table was moving about and they were trying to figure out things such as "Where does the bowl of broccoli go? How did it get from one end of the table to another?"
After much agonizing, they finally realized that no one but another artist would ever notice the broccoli leaping about the table, the ordinary viewer just wouldn't catch it. Even after listening to the commentary, I have to admit, I haven't been able to identify what food is leaping about the table out of place. I haven't reviewed the scene in freeze frame, extreme slow motion yet, but I have realized the filmmakers were correct. While the scene may have flaws that make artists cringe, as an ordinary viewer, I don't even notice them.
Now, there are other movies I've watched with flaws that take me straight out of the story. For instance, in As Good As It Gets, there is a scene where three people are talking in a car. The car is a convertible and the top is down. The driver decides to pull over to better listen to what one of the other passengers is saying. The camera switches to an exterior shot as the car pulls to the side of the road. When it does, the top on the convertible is up. That scene drives me crazy because of the flawed detailed.
There are similar flaws in other movies that drive me completely crazy.
The thing is, before I was trained in analyzing my own writing and looking for inconsistencies and editorial ripples and things that don't quite add up, I don't know if I would have noticed details like the one in As Good As It Gets. I also have to wonder if the makers of The Incredibles had it right, even though they weren't talking about writing, but visual images. Are there details that we, as writers, obsess over, that the ordinary reader will never notice when they experience the story?