Writing the Short Film, 3rd Edition

9

Visualization Strategies

In the preceding chapter, we highlighted the storytelling characteristics that transcend particular media, including film. In this chapter, we want to highlight the principal difference between film and other forms of storytelling— that film is a visual medium, and consequently, that stories told in film form must take advantage of the visual or the story may disappoint, or fail to reach, its intended audience.

This does not, however, mean that film has more in common with painting or photography. As a narrative form, it has more in common with theater and the novel than it does with a single photograph or painting. But when directly compared with these narrative forms, it quite quickly reaches the limits of that comparison. ...