The Screenplay: The Entrance

The first appearance of characters

The First Impression

The first time we meet someone, we form an impression of them, make a judgment, perhaps. This first impression fills a hole: where we know nothing of a person, we want to know something. But as soon as that hole of ignorance is filled, we think we know that person. And overcoming that impression, changing it in the light of further meetings or information, involves two acts: we must remove the prior impression, and we must then adopt the new impression. But to a certain extent that first impression lingers; the new impression lies over it, atop it, but the first impression still can glimmer through, its contours still apparent through the new impression.

For this reason, it is important to make our first impression an informed and (more or less) correct one.

For the same reason, it is important for us to make a true and useful impression on those we meet for the first time.

Nowhere is this truer than in tales in general; in dramatically-cast tales more properly; in movies specifically.

Character Introductions

In every tale, the talesman introduces us the audience to his characters for the first time. This is true even of those characters we have met before in other tales, for every talesman has his own view of the characters he tells us about, and every talesman will change his views of those characters, slightly, subtly, or boldly, each time he tells us about them.

In tales told in words, the talesman has a limited palette of tools with which to introduce us to his characters. For he has but words, after all.

Thus for the wordsmith, he can choose, broadly, between the direct introduction and the indirect.

Direct Introduction

The direct introduction of a character happens just the way we meet someone in person. A man appears; he looks a certain way and holds himself a certain way. He is dressed a certain way, and we find him in a certain setting. He does certain things, and says certain things, and from the sum of all these particulars, we build an idea of who this man is, and how we feel about him.

Indirect Introduction

The indirect introduction of a character comes about when we learn something of a man before we see him in person. We hear someone speak of him, or we read about him. We see the results of something that he did, and begin to form an impression of the man who did it.

Partial Introduction

Between the direct and the indirect introduction is the partial introduction when we gain only a partial view of a man and are denied the other parts of a meeting. We might hear his voice, but not see him. We might see his shadow only. We might see him from afar without being able to make out the details of his appearance, or without being able to hear what it is he says.

The Drama and the Entrance

In the theater, we meet characters in a double aspect, for we see them both as actors and as the characters the actors play. In some cases we have met the actor before, but not the character. Or we may have met the character but not the actor, for instance in a new staging of a play we have seen before, with a new cast.

The theater has always had its stars, and the best-loved of those stars were gladly greeted when they first came on stage in a performance. And they were applauded and cheered, which put the tale on hold; for those moments there was no tale, no play, only the star and his public.

So it made sense for the playwrights to design flourishing entrances for their stars, which would cover the applause, and allow the actor to acknowledge his fans and bring them back into the tale. It is also a byword that stars have big heads and will look over proffered plays with an eye toward only their own parts. A play that offers the star a grand entrance will appeal more than that same play with an insignificant entrance.

The Drama and the Movie

Now, film offers all the dramatic potential of the stage (saving only the direct interaction of the actor with the audience) and more, for in a movie the character can be introduced directly, indirectly, or partially. This comes of the fact that the film controls the eyes and ears of the audience to greater extent; it is almost absolute, except that some people in the theater can look away, talk over the movie, or be caught looking in the wrong part of the screen.

Therefore the screenwriter must consider carefully the entrances of his main characters, and what first impressions these entrances will create in the audience.

For Screenplays Not Destined For the Screen

For talesmen who are writing a screenplay as a proto-draft, he need not work so hard on his characters’ entrances, as all he will end up with is what he can do with words when he writes his final drafts.

(Composed on keyboard Tuesday, June 10, 2008)