Lucas Weisman

• Strong set-ups are just as important as strong reactions.
  • In my film, my character throws out his brother’s sneakers. However, the idea that the sneakers had any value you to the brother was not properly established, and therefore the reaction of throwing out the sneakers was less meaningful.
• Documentary and fiction techniques can be combined
  • Work by Jean-Luc Godard and W.G. Sebald was neither documentary or fiction, but instead somewhere in between.
  • Documentary and fiction can be equally True as well as equally false
  • In film, documentary techniques can add a sense of realism while decreasing production costs!
• Suspense is of the utmost importance and is created by telling the audience more than the characters know.
  • Suspense is not surprise!
• Characters actually have to do stuff, they can’t just be thinking about doing stuff; in the words of Bill Ransom, “you must get literal before you get literary”
• Adjectives are the least descriptive kind of word—using an active verb and noun is always going to be more descriptive than the use of an adjective.
• The world is complex and great fiction addresses that complexity. there are no “good guys” or “bad guys”; only irony and contradiction.
• Time can be slowed up and sped up to control suspense.