Calling the Shots

Copyright 2020 by Gary L. Pullman

In The Annotated Poe, the observation is made that Edgar Allan Poe's work has suggested storytelling techniques that filmmakers have adopted in dramatizing their scripts:

. . . his influence in the history of cinema has been profound. He has since the early days of motion pictures provided filmmakers with subjects, while influencing the development of cinematic theory and technique (21).

For example, Poe “anticipates the technique of cinematic montage, in which brief shots are joined together to form a sequence that compresses space, time, and information” in order to accelerate “the action of the story, propelling readers towards its climax” (43).

In addition, Poe pioneered the narrative equivalent of alternating close-up shots, distance shots, and extreme close-ups combined with sound effects:

Poe depicts Metzengerstein in close-up (the “agony of his countenance'”, pulls back to show him from a distance (“the convulsive struggling of his frame”), and then supplies an extreme close-up (“his lacerated lips, which were bitten through and through”). The rapid shifting of the images quickens the narrative pace, which the ensuing cacophony of sound—the shriek of Metzengerstein, the clatter of hooves, the roar of the flames, and the shriek of the wind—further intensifies, thus providing a running start for the horse's final bound up the stairs” (34).

There's no reason that the cinema shouldn't return the favor, as short story writers and novelists adopt some of the camera angles that directors and cameramen (and women) have found most effective in filming horror movies.

In doing so, the writer simply adopts the strategy of using description to depict in words what the camera would show in images. In writing, the writer is also the director and the cameraman (or woman); the writer, therefore, calls the shots.

Here are a few examples. (In the descriptions, specific references to characters and situations have been deliberately eliminated in the interests of describing more generic scenes. The video clips are more specific, suggesting how particular writers, actors, directors, and other filmmaking crew members have depicted such situations.)

The extreme closeup is called for when “specific facial expressions” indicate that action “that might scare . . . a character” is about to occur or “has happened.”

Here's the same scene, from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), captured in the “camera” of descriptive writing:

Behind him, above the immense fireplace and its burning log, a mural of stylized girls in triangular skirts adorns the wall. To the left, Art Deco windows are set in the wall, beneath a mounted moose head; a table; chairs; twin candles in matching wall sconces. But decorative features are indistinct, pale, ghostly images, suggestions, more than realities. One's gaze is drawn to and fixated upon him. His high forehead, his winged eyebrows, his staring eyes, his parted lips command absolute attention, allegiance, devotion, as does his stance, exuding confidence and power. As I approach, his features remain the same; he does not blink, does not stir, does not change. Nearer still, and his eyes, his gaze, without altering, expresses, in its stillness and intensity, in its indomitable and unchanging will, in its immutable and insistent being, a demonic essence, at once both terrifying and mesmerizing, inescapable and compelling.

A point-of-view shot captures a character's own visual experience, showing what he or she would see in a particular situation, letting the reader view the scene as character sees the action.

The opening scene of John Carpenter's Halloween (1978):

Movement, a march, a cadence measured and purposeful, past a jack-o-lantern flickering from the fire inside; past dark foliage shapes; past the shadows of leaves upon a wall white in the darkness, to a scene framed by a window: inside a teens locked in an embrace kiss, frantic, until they hear a sound; they break, listening. Then, they run upstairs, excited. Movement, march, cadence, in reverse, back past the leaf-shadows, the dark foliage shapes, the fiery carved pumpkin, to the front yard. Up. The second-story window is illuminated, then dark. Around, through the darkness, to the door through the windows of which shows the kitchen. Enter. Light. Stove. Sink. Open a drawer, remove a knife, huge and sharp of edge and point. Dining room: table, candles, chairs, sideboard, shadow of a chandelier upon a wall. Hallway. Living room: television, rocking chair, sofa, pole lamp. A staircase, leading up. The teenage boy, walking downstairs, exits the front door, closing it behind him. Up the stairs, past a painting, framed and hanging on the wall, into the darkness. Cast-off clothing on the floor: jacket, bra, panties. The corner of a chair. Through a doorway, she sits, naked, the teenage girl, running a brush through her hair. Behind her, the bedding is in disarray, disheveled with the remnants of her lust. She brushes her hair. Turns. Screams, covering her breasts with her hands, modest now. The stabbing of the knife. Her fall, a collision with a dresser and the floor. Down the stairs, through the darkness. Ceiling lights, the foyer's hardwood floor, the door, opening upon deeper darkness and car lights. A man and a woman, hurry through the night, toward the house, their parked car abandoned. The mask is pulled away, and the killer, bloody knife in hand, their eight-year-old son, a clown, is revealed, is born, this Halloween.

The over-the-shoulder shot is used either to suggest that a character is conversing with another character or that another character is following the character shown in the shot. This camera angle focuses on a single character, emphasizing him or her, but implies that one or more other characters, although unseen, are also present. It can also set up a shock; for example, “the character could turn around and look possessed.”

Grace Newman learns something about herself in this scene from The Others (2001):

Seated on the floor, her back to the door, covered in a heavy, white voile veil and bundled in a matching dress, her young daughter, the puppeteer, has gnarly, old hands; an aged face, half-hidden beneath the ectoplasmic veil, attempts to deceive, but the pale, shocked thirty-year-old redhead in the black dress is not deceived: she knows this person, this thing, is not her daughter. The mother chokes the old crone, the impostor, the changeling; yanks the veil from her; and sees—the child in the dress is her daughter, after all. The child stares at her mother in disbelief, in terror: the stranger, her mother, this mad woman who disowned her, has tried to kill her!

The establishing shot, “usually shot at a distance” is 'a wide shot” that sets the scene by showing the site of upcoming action. Such a shot may be devoid of characters; if characters are present, they are merely window dressing, part of the scene itself—unless and until the “camera” (the description) zeroes in on them, picking them out from the crowd.

Stanley Kubrick's establishing shot is the sequence with which The Shining begins, as Jack Torrance drives to the Overlook Hotel:

A dark blue lake, a green island in its midst, parallels a two-lane mountain road meandering, a gray ribbon, or a snake, through a forest thick with shaggy conifers, passing no other cars for miles and miles. Wide, open land stretches away, before the mountains' jagged, snow-covered peaks. The car looks like a toy, as it follows the sweeping grandeur of the terrain. Up a slope, tight against a cliff on the right, a sheer drop-off on the left shored up by a retaining wall, the yellow VW rounds a curve, and the highway seems to open up, wide. Finally, another car, a white limousine—stalled, it seems—is seen; the VW swings past, leaving it behind. Ahead, a tunnel plunges through the mountainside beneath the pines; for a few moments, the VW disappears, then emerges, passes another stopped car, on the left shoulder, continuing to pursue the highway between the towering cliff on the right and the plummeting drop-off on the left. Passing another car—the third in what seems forever—the yellow VW now travels along a stretch of road cut into the steep slope of the mountainside itself; gone, for the moment, are the cliffs; all is mountainside, green with grass and stands, but no forests, of pines. In the distance, craggy mountains loom. Another car, a canoe on top, passes, and then, there is snow on the mountains and the roadside. At the base of a mountain decorated with fields of snow, a hotel sits, immense in itself, but tiny compared to the mountain rearing behind it, into the clear, dark-blue sky. Finally, the yellow VW has arrived.

The wide shot is similar to the establishing shot, but the wide shot focuses on the characters and can lend a sense of depth to the action' all the characters and objects are in focus and perspective, so this shot equalizes rather than highlights characters, objects, and actions.

Another clip from Halloween includes a wide shot:

A young woman in blue denim bell-bottom jeans and a light-blue blouse, hands in pockets, mounts the steps leading from a suburban lawn to a broad porch. At the entrance flanked by windows, she rings the doorbell, leans left to peer into the window, turns, and leaves, back across the porch and down the steps. She crosses the front yard, passes the porch railing and the fiery jack-o-lantern seated there, walks down the side of the house, with her shadow on the wall, and is lost to the darkness. She emerges from the night, approaching the back door, which is open. She hesitates. Steps into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. Passing through dark rooms, she climbs the stairs to the second floor, and is swallowed by the darkness. To her left, at the top of the stairs, light shines around and beneath a closed door. She approaches, down the hallway. Illuminated by ambient light, her face is a picture of curiosity. She opens the door, and her eyes widen. Laid out in the bed, her arms extended so that her corpse forms a cross, a woman lies, dead; a headstone propped behind her, against the head of the bed, reads, “Judith Myers.” A pumpkin, lit by candlelight, grins on the night table beside her. Gasping, the young woman covers her mouth in her hands and backs into the wall behind her. She turns, and the body of a young man, suspended upside-down, swings through the doorway beside her, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. She retreats, and a cabinet door opens to reveal a blonde woman her own age, blouse open, breasts revealed, staring at nothing. She flees into the hallway, crying, distraught and terrified, leaning against another room's doorjamb. A white mask appears in the darkness of the room beside her. The masked man emerges, and a butcher's knife plunges, ripping the sleeve of her blouse. She turns, falls over the staircase railing, onto the steps, and slides down the stairs. The masked man follows, standing at the head of the stairs for a moment, framed by the light of the room behind him, where the two female corpses are posed and the male body is rigged. Not dead, the young woman rises and steps forth, into the darkness.

The high-angle shot looks down on the action, making characters, objects, and settings seem small and insignificant, thus heightening their vulnerability.

Breaking Bad: Crawl Space (2011), directed by Scott Winant, alternates between high-angle shots and low-angle shots. The low-angle shots show a man in a crawlspace; these shots alternate with high-angle shots showing a blonde woman in the house, looking down at him.

A man on his hands and knees tears frantically at a sheet of plastic. He turns over, clutching bundles of cash. A blonde woman peers down at him. He demands to know something. Taken aback, the woman shakes her head. Lying on his back in the crawlspace, he kicks his heels, dislodging dirt, yelling up, through the opening in the floor that connects the crawlspace to the house. She gasps. In the crawlspace, he looks desperate. She closes her eyes, makes a response. He stares up at her, disbelief on his face, as asks more questions. Frightened, she explains. He puts his hands atop his head. She apologizes. He rants, clenching his fists. She kneels, looking down upon him, concerned. He rolls onto his left side, hands covering is face, whimpering. He rolls back onto his back, weeping and sobbing. She looks down, pity on her face, and makes a comment. His wailing turns to laughter, and her rolls onto his left shoulder, then onto his back again. Looking both concerned and frightened, the blonde woman backs away from the opening to the crawlspace, into the hallway. Elsewhere, a woman in dim light paces back and forth as she talks on a cell phone. The blonde walks along a hallway, past the door to a kitchen, and picks up the receiver to a telephone on a kitchen counter accessible from the hallway. She starts to talk, walking away, down the hallway. In the crawlspace, among the bundled cash, the man continues to laugh, as the view of him, framed by the opening to the crawlspace, becomes more and more distant, suggesting he is insignificant, alone, vulnerable, and trapped.

A shot similar to the high-angle shot, the bird's-eye view shot also looks down upon a character. Thanks to the bird's eye view shot, which looks 'straight down . . . usually [at] a setting” or a “place,” a character appears “short and squashed,” which makes this shot “effective in a horror movie” in which a character's movement is being tracked or as an establishing shot.

The low-angle shot is the opposite of the high-angle shot, looking up to another character, object, or aspect of the setting. This shot can suggest a character's lack of power or authority and can indicate confusion and “disorientation.”

The low-angle shots showing the man in the crawlspace alternate with the high-angle shots showing the woman in the house, looking down at him.

A shot similar to the low-angle shot, the worm's eye view shot also looks down upon a character. In the worm's eye view shot, the angle is even lower than that found in the low-angle shot. The angle in the worm's eye view shot is so low that it could be a worm's vision on things. This angle makes “things look tall and mighty” and can show a character “walking around a house” or some other location, without giving away the character's identity.

The canted-angle shot sets a character at a diagonal, tilting him or her, and suggests “imbalance and instability,” especially if it is combined with a point of vie shot. The canted angle shot implies that “something strange is about to happen.”

This example of the canted-angle shot, from Cindy Kaye's Dutch Angle: The Movie (2016) could be described this way:

A closed door at the end of a hallway, like the door frame, the vase of flowers at the in the hallway, near the door, the walls, and the corridor itself, tilt to the left. Another door opens, and a boy leans out. He looks at the door at the end of the hall. He starts toward it. The lights go out. The lights come back on. They blink, off and on, off and on. The boy turns left at the end of the hall. The lights go out. When they come on again, he is walking down the stairs to the first floor. The lights continue to blink off and on. At the bottom of the stairs, he turns left. The lights continue to blink off and on. Through an open doorway, the boy is seen lying prone, on the floor of a chamber that appears to be a dining room: it is furnished with a table and chairs and a cabinet full of dishes, but, there is also a made-up bed in the room. The lights go out; they do not come on again.

By deciding on the elements you want to include in a situation and the envisioning it as a scene, you can write descriptions that have immediacy, drama, unity, and coherence. At the same time, such descriptions will appeal to readers' senses, heightening verisimilitude, and facilitating the identification between the reader and the characters involved in such situations. Such descriptions guarantee that the scene you describe will have characters in conflict, thematic significance, narrative purpose, and interconnection with previous and subsequent scenes as well as a cause-and-effect relationship with other scenes in the plot.

It helps, when writing short stories or novels, to plot them meticulously, even to the storyboarding level that Alfred Hitchcock used in planning his movies' plots and the way action would be presented and appear on the screen. His care about details of audiovisual storytelling are one of the reasons for his great success and the respect he received and continues to receive. Best of all, the techniques he used, one of which was calling the shots well before filming a movie, are available to all storytellers and to storytellers of all kinds.