Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Here's a lovely thing about everyone having cell phones and caller i.d. You can eliminate two lines of dialog, "Hello," and "Hi, it's [name of character]." Now you can plausibly jump right to, "So you're back with your ex?" or whatever the beginning of the scene is.

Cell phones are a lovely thing because your characters can be any nifty location you like when they use them. Of course, your producer may complain about phone conversations -- you have to shoot the scene in two different locations. Which is why so many characters "drop by" in the movies, as opposed to real life, where practically no one ever drops by.

Remember rotary phones? What a pain those were on screen. I know about them, because I've seen them in the movies, aight?

5:52 PM

2 Comments:

I always get a chuckle when I see answering machines on TV. Most people use voicemail now but the answering machines are great because you can hear a character's wants while a second character does something totally different.

By  Unknown, at 9:59 AM  

I remember them being such a bloody pain to actually dial the number when I was a kid. And this was way the Hell back in the days of seven-digit local numbers!

By  Dwight Williams, at 9:25 PM  

Post a Comment

Back to Complications Ensue main blog page.