Composition Resources
Movies Explain the World (Of Writing)
Nikki Mantyla
Movie clips are one of my favorite teaching techniques. For example, to emphasize the importance of audience in an argument, I love to show the rainy scene from Focus Features’ Pride and Prejudice in which rich Mr. Darcy makes the claim that poor Lizzy should marry him. His reason is that he loves her “most ardently” and the evidence is his agony.
But Lizzy says whoop-dee-doo.
Despite the complications of British accents, archaic phrasing, and speedy dialogue, we get the idea: claim, reasons, and evidence aren’t enough if we haven’t considered the audience’s values. Lizzy isn’t the type to swoon at money or any old declaration of love. In contrast, when Darcy comes back with a humbler-voiced letter addressing her objections, it’s much more effective at persuading her to trust him.
By seeing it and hearing it as a movie clip, we remember the concept better. Who’s going to forget that intense of a proposal gone wrong? And hopefully the next time we sit down to write, we’ll think more about our audience’s beliefs, opinions, objections, etc.
My goal with this article is along those lines: to use movie clips and the movie-making process (which I would argue mirrors any type of composition process) to present writing concepts in memorable ways. We know focused reading can expand our repertoire of writing moves; now let’s see how analyzing the rhetorical strategies of cinema can improve our understanding of ideas, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions—and translate into better writing from top to bottom.
Ideas
How often have you been enticed by the premise (the idea) of a movie, only to have it fail to meet your expectations? Isn’t it wild that an idea can have so much potential and then totally flop if that potential isn’t developed?
Pixar is a movie producer that really sets the standard here, refining their ideas until they hit peak potential. For example, the premise for Ratatouille—a rat who wants to be a gourmet chef—was first pitched in 2000. By the fall of 2004, the script still wasn’t palatable enough. As one entertainment news hound put it,
While individual elements of the film . . . were admittedly charming and quite entertaining, its narrative as a whole fell flat. You never really got caught up in Remy’s quest to become one of the greatest chefs in France. . . . [The director and his] story team were then sent back to their drawing boards with some very specific orders: Make the story stronger and make us really care about the characters’ struggles. (Hill para. 11–12)
The team had to completely revamp until they had a story and characters—fiction’s biggest idea ingredients—that would deliver. Pixar even brought a second director on board to come up with a new vision. The effort paid off: Ratatouille went on to win the 2008 Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.
Pixar believes that story is king, so they don’t settle for mediocre. Even with