Off-Screen Stories

27 Jul 2024

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I recently watched the first season of an extremely popular HBO show, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. It’s not the first time this has happened. This made me notice a dimension of visual storytelling that I’ve never considered before.

I think we can put stories into two buckets:

1. Stories that take place mostly on-screen.
2. Stories told mostly in dialogue, so they mainly take place in the audience’s head.

It’s probably more of a gradient if we really think about it, but hear me out.

Category 1 - WYSIWYG

… or What You See Is What You Get.

In some series and films, most or all of the story takes place visually.

On the most extreme end of the spectrum in this category are silent films and productions with minimal dialogue.

• The Artist
• Drive

Movies and series filmed as visual spectacles, VFX-heavy action movies, ones with cinematography, production design, costumes as their primary appeal, can also be bucketed into this category.

• Annihilation
• Barbie
• Ripley
• Cruella
• 1917

I think a greater proportion of movies fit into this category than TV series do, due to their limited runtime. Of course, there are exceptions.

These stories generally all take place “in the now” and don’t depict characters talking about faraway lands or reminiscing about other time periods.

Category 2 - Off-Screen Stories

… or “tell, don’t show”.

Consider The Wire, season 1 of Game of Thrones, and earlier seasons of The Expanse. Huge proportions of their runtimes are spent in shot/reverse shot conversations. Such shows are often known for rich world building that may not necessarily be seen by the audience.

Some drama films benefit from information strategically revealed via dialogue. Think of Marriage Story, or courtroom dramas such as Anatomy of a Fall.

Movies based on plays, such as Rope, understandably leave more to the imagination due to the limitations of their source medium.

Bottle movies are the on the extreme end of the spectrum.

• Twelve Angry Men
• The Man From Earth
• The Guilty
• Locke
• Buried
• Reservoir Dogs

These movies wouldn’t be what they are without their almost completely verbal storytelling.

Audience Appeal

I think these two types of visual media best fit two types of viewing styles:

1. One audience demographic prefers to “watch things unfold” on screen (Category 1).
2. Another type of audience prefers to get lost in fictional settings and “live” with characters for drawn out runtimes (Category 2).

I lean towards the first kind.

The show that I didn’t like much, which inspired this post? Game of Thrones. I felt the same way about The Wire season 1. I appreciate both shows for what they are and the fan following they managed to gain. They’re just not my type.