From Flower Vase to Film Emperor in Hollywood

Initially, when filming "The Princess Diaries," Anson relied on detailed foreshadowing within a limited space to make the characters full and three-dimensional; it's the same now.

In the script for "The Butterfly Effect," the plot points come one after another, a dense barrage; and they are all dramatic, leaving no room to breathe.

Generally speaking, this is a typical narrative mode for genre film scripts, leaving the audience no room to think, avoiding exposure of plot loopholes to ensure attention; but at the same time, the acting space for the actors is also compressed.

However, that's not the case.

In such a script with great ups and downs, each plot point is full of dramatic tension, and naturally, the thread behind the dramatic tension is the acting space for the actors—

How to show the origin of these tensions, and how to bring the audience into it, making everything flow smoothly, that is the moment to test the actors.

If the actor's skill is not enough, and does not present enough context and detail, the audience will also have no room to think in the face of such an information bombardment movie, and after continuously accepting the bombardment of dramatic plots, they will often fall into fatigue, and the perception of the third act climax will decline—

Therefore, when watching commercial genre films, audiences often feel tired in the third act, or think that the third act climax is far below expectations, unless the ending can have a high-energy moment, otherwise the film will end in a steadily declining viewing experience.

Obviously, this should not be the correct way to open a commercial genre film.

It is precisely because of this that many commercial films later pursued "twists" in the ending, and some films even attracted audiences with the name of "multiple twists," using the impact of the twist to cover up the weakness of the third act climax.

But in fact, this is going in the wrong direction.

The correct way to open is to brew the emotions in place through the actor's performance and detailed foreshadowing in the plot bombardment space of the first and second acts of the film, and naturally release the energy at the moment of tension collision in the third act, allowing the "climax" to properly play the role of the climax.

Generally speaking, the more ending twists a movie has, the more it reveals its timidity, so that the "twist" becomes a dominant presence, and the power of the film itself is almost defeated.

Of course, there are no absolutes.

Among those classic movies that have stood the test of time, there are also works with ending twists, but the point is that they do not rely on the ending to win, and the emotional foreshadowing of the first two acts must also be in place, and the ending twist is a kind of energy explosion.

For example, "The Sixth Sense."

In its previous life, "The Butterfly Effect" had lower than expected box office revenue, and did not win too much applause. There were many reasons, one of which was that Ashton Kutcher's performance failed to complete the connection of the character. The movie was completely dragged forward by the dramatic plot. The foreshadowing before the third act was not in place, and the ending of the theatrical version was not explosive—

It wasn't until the DVD was released, and the disc included different endings of the director's cut, the impact of the shocking reversal completely covered up the shortcomings of the first two acts, and this fully exploded word of mouth, staging a miracle of reversal.

Now, Anson is trying to inject more energy into the first two acts of the movie—

In fact, the acting space has always been there, the key is how the actor interprets and interprets it.

Anson's simple interpretation in a few words immediately made Heath understand. A touch of appreciation appeared in Heath's eyes, "You have done an excellent job."

At this time, carefully recalling the performance of Anson and Rachel in this scene, you can taste more details, which makes it even more wonderful.

Moreover, learn by analogy.

"So he went back to the past again and again, trying to protect the happiness of everyone."

Sure enough, a genius is a genius. He doesn't need to think deeply and analyze it. A few words can naturally get him on the right track.

Anson's eyes lit up.

"Correct."

"Moreover, everyone has their own blind spots, and it is always easier to blame others."

"Just like Evan's first action."

"He himself was not sure whether the guess was correct, and blindly went back to the past to stop Keller's father. Just one action, one thing, and then the whole world was turned upside down, and everything went smoothly."

"This gave Evan the illusion that as long as he solves one problem, he can usher in happiness; at the same time, when faced with other difficulties and misfortunes, it seems easier to continue to condemn others."

"Just like a bug in a program."

Aside.

Rachel looked at Anson and then at Heath. She tried to keep up with the rhythm of the conversation, but found that the amount of information was too large. Even processing and digesting this content was already difficult, let alone thinking and giving feedback?

After all, Rachel is just a fledgling little actor now. Even her acting has just begun. It is really difficult to ask her to conduct in-depth thinking about the performance from the beginning.

Despite this, Rachel was not discouraged, and always remained focused and committed. Even if she didn't understand, it didn't matter, she would listen carefully and remember it first.

This is also a rare experience.

Heath was slightly stunned, and naturally developed associations from Anson's words.

"Tommy is the same."

From Anson to himself, the inspiration in Heath's mind quietly opened the gate.

In his mind, thoughts surged.

In fact, in "The Butterfly Effect," strictly speaking, only Evan has acting space. Other characters, including Keller and Tommy, are all tools, arranged in the correct position to output the correct emotions and promote the plot to complete the narrative. That's all—

This is not because the two screenwriters are not capable, but the result of the story's own concept.

Because in the whole story, only Evan is traveling through time and space to modify history, and the images of other people appearing in parallel time and space are fragmented and fragmented. They can only show a cross-section of a character's state.

In other words, neither Heath nor Rachel need to think about the story context and character arcs in the same way as Anson.

However, they still remained focused and joined the discussion.

Especially Heath.

Heath opened his mouth, gasped, and mumbled a few words vaguely, which were completely incomprehensible, to the extent that it was suspected to be alien language.

"...So, this is the reason for all the tragedies in this space-time."

The words finally became clear. Heath suddenly raised his head and broke away from his thoughts, looking at Anson with excitement and joy in his eyes.

"When Tommy learned that Evan and Keller were together, he came to Evan with a baseball bat to settle the score because he thought everything was Evan's fault. As long as Evan was eliminated, he would not fall into misfortune."

"But he didn't expect that Evan was also provoked by anger in the counterattack. He realized that Tommy was also the culprit who ruined his and his friends' lives. In the end, he overreacted in self-defense and accidentally killed Tommy and went to jail."

"Everything has a root."