Tuesday, November 20, 2007

What's the Word?

Here's an odd question...
I'm doing some research for a book and I'm wondering if there is a screenwriting term for those scenes where everyone is happy and things are going well, but somewhere else something bad is happening to a character that everyone cares about? For example - recently on Brothers & Sisters the entire family was celebrating and dancing but in the corner of the frame you see someone answering the telephone. You see a look of fear and dread come over this person's face.
There's no term for the scene. If you rack focus from the foreground to the background, well, that's a rack focus. If everything's in focus, then it's deep focus.

I'd call it "ironic counterpoint." But I'll ask my blog readers.

Readers?

2 comments:

  1. "Counterpoint" is a good enough term for such things.

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  2. Great website. Very interesting posts. I have bookmarked it for future exploration.

    www.ithappenedinplainfield.com

    ReplyDelete