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Character Sees something But others dont

J

Joe Butch

Any suggestions on how you would film such a scene?

I want the audience to know that the character sees something but other people do not see something.

One idea I had was a mirror or shattered glass/mirror showing the reflection he sees of his face being messed up but over the shoulder angle shows that it is normal.

Any other suggestions on how to shoot other shots that get this message across?
 
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The audience would see the normal face.

I agree a good actor would help sell this.

I still need to think of a few other ways to do it for other scenes if anyone has any ideas.
 
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ROC said:
Mirror is the only way... Otherwise, how would the character see it?

You're wanting the audience to be the same as other people, right?
Click to expand...

An example of a scenario would be the main character sees a ghost and warns the supporting actor to look out. And the supporting actor looks and it's just a normal man. Making the main character look nuts.
 
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Oh - check out how this was done in the Twilight Zone movie with the guy from 3rd Rock from the Sun in it - when he sees a monster on the wing of a plane.

I'd experiment with different lighting and even different angles for when the ghost appears and then cut to the character's reaction and then cut back to the other people looking at him weird and a picture-perfect looking normal person who was the ghost a shot earlier.
 
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Generally speaking, when you want to show that a character is looking at something, you first have a shot of the character looking, and then cut to a POV of what they are looking at. So you're scene would go something like this.

Shot of 'crazy guy' looking at something and being scared.

Shot of ghost-man.

Shot of crazy guy. "Look out jimmy, it's a ghost!"

Shot of Jimmy looking in the ghosts direction.

Shot of regular, non-ghost guy (or empty space, or whatever).

Shot of Jimmy turning back to Crazy-guy. "That's just a normal guy, jackass."

You could throw a master or wide shot in there as well, if you like, too.

Etc etc etc.
 
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hmm, well is the main character actually hallucinating or can he just see something the other one cannot?

If it's the former, I think the OTS might be confusing, not that it couldn't work, but I think it would be less clear.

But if it's the latter, that might actually be a better shot to subtly cue the audience. Does that make sense?
 
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Dreadylocks said:
hmm, well is the main character actually hallucinating or can he just see something the other one cannot?

If it's the former, I think the OTS might be confusing, not that it couldn't work, but I think it would be less clear.

But if it's the latter, that might actually be a better shot to subtly cue the audience. Does that make sense?
Click to expand...

Hallucinating but I want the audience to not know if what he is seeing is real or not.

lol @ this situation which makes it very confusing.
 
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Personally, I think it's important to avoid playing unfair tricks on your audience.

IMO, you can make it very hard for the audience to guess what's happening, but you shouldn't make it impossible.

It's like if you were writing a murder mystery and you've got the killers in a scene, alone, with nothing around them, and they are talking about how they don't know who the killers are. Now, that's an unfair thing to do to the audience because in that scene you've basically established that they aren't the killers or else why would they be talking about not knowing who the killers are.
Sure, your audience will be surprised(they never could have guessed) in the end when they find out that those two were in fact the killers. But you know what, they're gonna look at you and go "What the hell, dude? You tricked me! I never had a chance!"
 
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Im just guessing here, but I think of an OTS shots as the POV of an intimate OBSERVER. If your trying to show the viewer what the ACTOR sees in his mind then a POV is the right choice. If you want to show what EVERYONE would see then an OTS is good choice.

Regarding playing tricks...

You have many choices here, but lets settle on two:

  1. Give the audience information that some characters in the movie don't have
  2. Withhold from the audience information that some of the characters in the movie DO have.

neither is wrong, bu that is the choice your trying to make. Which is right for you depends on how you want to tell your story.

If you want to build a sense of "doom" or "dread" choice 1 works better.
If you want to cause "suspense", then choice 2 makes sense

Your particular setup is kinda vague and out of context, so Ill use a general example.

Here is the STORY:
An axe murder is behind the door with an axe, the woman cop is walking down the hall towards that door.

Suspenseful telling of that story.

We see a man with an axe enter the house. Later there is woman walking down a dark hallway, looking for axe murderer.... we knows hes SOMEWHERE in the house but we DONT know hes behind that door, though of course we can GUESS he is becuase of the way it LOOMS etc.. but we dont KNOW it.. SUSPENSE..

doom\dread telling of that story:
We see the man sneak in behind the door just as the woman enters the hallway. We know hes there, we know shes walking right into the trap, oh man, shes DOOMED..
 
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yummm chopped liver! Ill put that awesome brain of yours on a sandwich any day!

(100% innuendo free, I promise, no sarcasm either, oh heck you might read that as a "sarcastic remark and thereby negate my statement of.... wait, what was I saying.. oh dang it!, I cant win! I mean it in a funny, friendly way, nothing more I swear!)
 
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