All is Lost- A Cinematic Masterpiece

Whenever I am writing a script I always try and take advantage of film as a medium, and that is visuals. Writers too often try and come up with lengthy dialogue to tell the story, however when you do this you may find yourself being redundant and putting in unnecessary dialogue that has no real point to it . While dialogue is a very useful story telling technique, another way to tell the story is by letting the footage do the talking for you. As the saying goes "a picture is worth a thousand words" and this has never been more true in film. Typically we shoot at 24 frames a second, thats 24 individual pictures, I'll let you do the math. Using just the image and perhaps a soundtrack and natural sound allows the viewer to understand your story while at the same time have their own take to what is going on.

The trailer above is to the new movie "All is Lost"directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Robert Redford. Robert Redford is actually the only actor in the film. This film was covered in this month's edition of American Cinematographer and goes into the production process. There are only a few lines of dialogue and the screen play was only 31 pages long. In the article it talks about how that the camera man was never more then 10 feet away from the actor. This alone makes you feel like you are right there beside the character as well as makes the viewer feel like the character is trapped. The director said that if he were to get shots of the boat far away as establishing shots that it would give the feeling of hope for the character when in reality he is trapped and there really is no hope. Due to the lack of dialogue you don't really know who this character is, he could be murderer for all we know, but thats what is so great about the movie. You are able to almost become the character and shape him any way you want as a viewer.

Without even have seen this movie yet I am almost certain it is up for a lot of rewards for the sole reason of it going against the grain. This is so unusual for a feature film to have little to no dialogue and from the trailer it looks like it has been done well. This movie is on the top of my list to see and I can't wait.