The Elements of a Scene: Suspense and Surprise

This is the seventh and last in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. This entry is about suspense and surprise.

When people think of suspense in movies, they tend to think of film makers like Alfred Hitchcock or big set pieces where you're on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen. All sporting events are built around suspense. Who will win? Will there be any memorable plays or blunders? Game shows and competitions are the same. Who will be voted off the island or eliminated? While the above are certainly good examples of suspense, suspense is actually at the root of any kind of storytelling. Suspense is anything that makes you wonder what will happen next.

If you've ever watched a story and guessed early on how it comes out, it's boring to sit through. Why bother to watch if you know what's going to happen? Audiences want to know what will happen, but not too soon. The audience is counting on the storyteller to keep it in suspense until the story's resolution.

Hollywood conventions usually mean that the audience knows in advance how the film will end, but doesn't know how the story will get there. Does anyone think that the bad guys will actually win in a Hollywood film? Who expects James Bond, Batman, Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter to fail at the end of a story? Who expects that the lovers won't get together or that the characters' problems will get worse? Unless the film is billed as a tragedy or based on a historical event known to the audience, these things don't happen.

How the good guys win, the lovers unite, and the problems are solved are up in the air and that's why the audience watches. Without being curious about what happens next, there's no reason to stick around.

The above scene is a small example of how suspense operates even in a scene that lacks overt drama. Pa Joad tries to buy bread. Will he get it or will the waitress kick him out? As the audience is invested in the survival of the Joad family, it cares about about what happens and waits to see if Pa will succeed. There is other suspense in that the truck drivers are totally silent during the encounter. What are they thinking? What will they do? The audience knows how Pa, the waitress and the cook feel about the situation, but what about those truckers?

Surprise is another quality that is attractive to audiences. Like suspense, surprises work against predictability. However, surprises have to be logical and fit into the world of the story. As David Mamet, playwright, screenwriter and director, says, "Make them wonder. Answer their question in a way both surprising and inevitable."

If a genii appeared in the above scene and made Pa Joad a rich man, it would be surprising, but not inevitable. It would violate the world of the story, where poverty and hunger are real and where there are no obvious solutions. A surprise has to be believable in the context of the story, or it alienates the audience instead of satisfying it.

In the scene above, it appears that the waitress is pressured into selling the bread by the cook. She bows to his wishes. The surprise comes when she sells the candy so cheaply. She's reached a point where she doesn't want to disappoint the children and while she's been penny conscious, refusing to sell a 15 cent loaf for 10 cents, resulting in a nickel loss, she now sells ten cents worth of candy for a penny, a 9 cent loss! She's gone further than we ever expected.

The other surprise is the truck drivers walking out without their change. As I said above, they are silent during the encounter and when one of the drivers calls the waitress on the price of the candy, he sounds gruff, not understanding. When they validate what she's done by leaving money to make up the shortfall, it's a surprise to both the waitress and the audience.

The elements I've talked about in this series are in every good scene and story. I don't claim they are all that's necessary, but they're a handy list: setting, personality, objective, motive, conflict, obstacles, resolution, business, arc, suspense and surprise. If any of them are missing, it's worth re-examining the story. The above scene is just three minutes long, the same length as many animated shorts. If screenwriter Nunnally Johnson can fit them into three minutes, animation creators have no excuse to leave them out.

The Elements of a Scene: Character Arc

This is the sixth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. This entry is about character arc.

People change. They change as they age and as they experience new things. In drama, the conflict is a crucible for altering the main character's view of the world and him- or herself.

Using Casablanca as an example, the Humphrey Bogart character starts out emotionally dead due to a failed love affair. His past political activities and his way of relating to others have both been frozen. When he is forced to confront his lost love, he undergoes a painful transformation. By the end of the film, he is once more alive emotionally and committed politically. The thaw that takes place over the course of the story is the Bogart character's arc.

As John Truby writes in The Anatomy of Story,

“Drama is a code of maturity. The focal point is the moment of change, the impact, when a person breaks free of habits and weaknesses and ghosts from his past and transforms to a richer and fuller self. The dramatic code expresses the idea that human beings can become a better version of themselves, psychologically and morally. And that’s why people love it.”

Sometimes, the inability to change is the point of the story. If you are familiar with the film From Here to Eternity (based on the novel by James Jones, screenplay by Daniel Taradash and directed by Fred Zinnemann), the three main characters, played by Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra, are all incapable of change. As a result, each loses something due to their unwillingness to bend.

Within the larger film of The Grapes of Wrath, the main character arc is that of Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda. Over the course of the film he is exposed to how his family and people like them are treated. As a result, he goes from being concerned only with his family to a larger class consciousness.

In the scene above, the protagonist is Pa Joad, trying to buy a loaf of bread. But he has no character arc. He leaves the scene with the same mindset as when he entered it. The arcs in this scene belong to the antagonist, the waitress, and also to the truck drivers. She starts out resisting Pa's request and slowly awakens to the Joads' situation as she hears Pa's explanations and sees the children staring at the candy. Like Tom in the larger story, she achieves something of a class consciousness as a result of her encounter.

The same can be said of the truck drivers. They start out resolutely neutral, saying nothing during the conversation between Pa and the waitress. After the waitress lies about the cost of the candy so that the Joads can afford it, the truckers are also moved to declare their solidarity with what's gone on by refusing their change.

Character arc is a problem when it comes to characters who are part of a series. An arc implies a change of worldview, yet a series character can't change without losing the very qualities that make the character popular in the first place. Homer Simpson can never wise up. Regardless of what he might learn in an episode, he has to forget it by the start of the next if he's to stay Homer Simpson. No real person could live Homer Simpson's life without getting smarter or getting killed.

But if a story is self contained, a character's change or lack of it is the whole point.

The Elements of a Scene: Business

This is the fifth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about business. Business is what performers do in a scene besides delivering dialogue.

An awful lot of animation, especially TV animation, has degenerated into talking heads. All the audience sees on screen are shots of characters talking. The animator spends a lot of time figuring out where to put in an arm gesture or a head bob to keep the character alive while the dialogue is delivered. It's boring for both the animator and the audience.

It's better for everyone if a character has something to do in addition to speaking and the obvious thing is to give the character something to do that relates to the setting or the meaning of the scene. Business is something that is usually not in the script and is the creation of the director and the actors in working out the staging of a scene.

The above scene is in a roadside diner and there are obvious bits of business as a result. The waitress clears dishes off a table. The fry cook works at the grill. The two truck drivers eat and drink throughout the scene, giving them something to do while Pa Joad makes his request, as they say nothing the whole time that Pa Joad is present.

There's nothing particularly inventive in this, but it does provide action for the characters. Where business in this scene gets interesting has to do with Pa Joad and his children.

In buying the bread, Pa Joad takes out a change purse and there are two bits of business relating to it that help to illuminate his personality and situation. He produces the change purse around 1:24 and when it appears that the fry cook is being charitable, giving Pa more than he can pay for, Pa snaps the change purse shut at 1:34. That action helps to communicate Pa Joad's pride. He knows he's poor but he's determined to pay his way, not take a handout. When Pa decides to accept the whole loaf, he digs deep into the change purse for a dime from 1:39 to 1:45. That visually shows how little money is in that purse and how broke the Joads are.

The children have no dialogue for the entire scene and yet director John Ford is very skillful at giving them business. Ford has made a conscious decision that he's wants the audience to focus on the girl and not pay much attention to the boy. Note that at 0:21, when he brings the children into position outside the diner, he partially obscures the boy's face with the window frame and leaves it in shadow while the girl is facing the camera and is not obscured. That becomes more obvious at 0:27 when the camera moves closer.

When Ford finally focuses on the children, starting at 1:06, the boy is hidden behind his sister for part of his entrance and then immediately turns his head to look at the candy. By almost never giving the audience a clear look at the boy's face, Ford has successfully brought him into the scene without him taking attention from what Ford wants to focus on: the girl.

When she walks in, she grabs her father's arm and looks around. Those gestures say that she's nervous and needs the physical reassurance of her father's presence. Her nervousness is explained by how she moves her head. The audience senses that this is a new experience for her; she's never been in a diner before. When she spots the candy, she grabs her father's arm with both hands, a subtle expression of her excitement. After the bread is purchased, she goes over to her brother and puts her hand on his shoulder. Ford has used touch to communicate both her nervousness, her excitement and her closeness to family.

There are seven characters in this scene. That makes it tough to stage. How do you keep the audience aware of everyone without creating visual confusion? Ford does it by cutting to characters in various groupings and also does it by making characters more or less prominent by the business they engage in. Everyone in this scene has actions to perform; nobody just talks. That's a lesson that animators should keep in mind.

The Elements of a Scene: Conflict, Obstacles and Resolution

This is the fourth in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about conflict, obstacles and resolution.

There are three types of conflict: character vs. character, character vs. circumstances, and character vs. self. In the past, these were often referred to as man vs. man, man vs. nature and man vs. self. What's important is understanding that without conflict, there is no drama.

If Pa Joad walks in and asks for a 10 cent loaf of bread and they sell it to him, the scene is over. Furthermore, we've learned nothing new about the characters or the world they live in. Conflict by itself is valuable for what it reveals.

The other important thing to realize is that there can be more than one kind of conflict in a scene. The more levels of conflict there are, the more interesting the scene and the more information gets revealed. In the above scene, we clearly have character vs. character. Pa Joad wants to buy bread and the waitress doesn't want to sell it to him. Pa Joad is also in conflict with circumstances. His family has been thrown off their land, they're poor and they're traveling over a thousand miles in a truck that's little more than a junk heap. Finally, we have character vs. self in the person of the waitress. She could have chosen to quote the accurate price for the candy, knowing full well that the Joads could not afford it, but decided instead to lie so that the children could have a treat.

There is also a character vs. self conflict going on with the truck drivers. They know that the waitress has lied and sold the candy at a discount. They could choose to pay their bills and leave, but they decide to endorse the waitress's action by not accepting their change.

Obstacles are related to the type of conflict. In a character vs. character situation, each character is the other's obstacle. The waitress stands between Pa Joad and the loaf of bread and Pa Joad stands between the waitress and her having a good time with the truck drivers. The circumstance of poverty is Pa Joad's obstacle. With more money, he'd have no problems. For character vs. self, it's a character's conscience that is the obstacle. The waitress has to struggle with charging the correct amount and disappointing the children, or making an economic sacrifice so that the children can be happy.

The conflicts here illuminate the characters. Pa Joad will not take no for an answer but will also not raise his voice or make threats. The waitress and the truck drivers have a hard shell, but there is humanity underneath. Ultimately, they recognize that others are struggling and decide to help.

The resolution of this scene is that Pa Joad succeeds and the waitress does not, but she is touched by the actions of the truck drivers. The resolution of any scene is not a foregone conclusion; it must come naturally out of the events of the scene, but still keep the audience wondering what will happen. There is no shortage of bad news for the Joads in this film; they are treated poorly on many occasions. Because of this, the outcome of this scene is uncertain in the eyes of the audience. It could go either way. It is one of the few scenes in this part of the film where the Joads get some relief from their troubles.

The Elements of a Scene: Objective and Motive

This is the third in a series analyzing a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about the concepts of objective and motive.

These two things are the motor behind every actor in every scene. An objective is a concrete thing that a character wants to accomplish. The motive is the reason the objective is important. The objective is the what and the motive is the why.

The example I always give my students is that if the classroom is on fire, our objective is to get out the door. Our motive is to stay alive. In the scene above, Pa Joad's objective is to buy bread. His motive is the well-being of his family members. That same motive is what causes him to ask about the candy and then to purchase some for this children.

The waitress's objective is to sit down next to the truck driver and hear a dirty joke. Her motive is pleasure. The cook's objective is to cook whatever is ordered. His motive is to earn a living so that he can survive. The truck drivers' objective is to eat. Their motive is to keep going so that they can also earn a living and survive.

It's important to understand that a single motive can lead to a variety of objectives. If a character is motivated by the desire to get rich, the character could get a gun and rob people, study hard and become a brain surgeon, marry somebody rich, or buy lottery tickets. Each of these objectives might satisfy the character's motive, but we would judge the character differently based on his or her objective. Someone who works hard and benefits others, such as a brain surgeon, is more admirable than someone who robs people or takes no action beyond buying lottery tickets. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "action is character," meaning that what characters do to satisfy their motives determines who they are.

I often refer to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs as a good tool regarding motive. If you're writing a character or trying to understand a character that you're performing, the hierarchy is a way of determining a motivation. Those items lower on the pyramid have to be in place before a person can worry about things higher on it. In addition, the things lower on the pyramid are common to every person alive, regardless of location or circumstances. It's one of the reasons that Chaplin's tramp character was so popular with audiences; anyone could understand his need for food, shelter, security (from the police), and love.

The Grapes of Wrath is dominated by the lower three rungs of the pyramid. The family has been evicted from their farm and they have to struggle to find food and shelter. They are victimized by police and by big agriculture and all these things are a threat to the survival of the family. Their motive is to stay alive and together. Their objective is to get to California, where they hope they will find work to allow them to do that.

The Elements of a Scene: Personality

This is the second in a series analyzing the elements in a scene from The Grapes of Wrath. For this entry, I want to talk about personality and how it affects the scene's action.

The act of buying a loaf of bread is not particularly dramatic; it's not the kind of scene that performers fight to do. Yet, we learn an awful lot about Pa Joad, played by Russell Simpson, through his attempt. First, he is polite. While his conversation is with a waitress, not a profession high on the social scale, he always ends his sentences with "Ma'am." He never raises his voice to her, even when she doesn't cooperate. He is also persistent. While the waitress keeps throwing roadblocks in his way, he doesn't give up. He explains the reasons for his actions and provides as much detail as is necessary to move things forward.

While he is quiet and deferential, he is also proud. When the waitress tries to get 15 cents out of him for the loaf and he can't afford it, he asks her to cut off 10 cents worth. When Bert, the fry cook, tells him to take the whole thing, Pa raises his voice for the only time in the scene. "No sir! We only want 10 cents worth." While he is poor and struggling, he doesn't want charity. He wants to pay his way.

The last thing to say about Pa Joad is that he is altruistic. He is not buying the bread for himself, but for his mother-in-law, who has no teeth. Later in the scene, though we know he's counting every penny, he spends a penny on his children. While he has spent considerable effort in the diner, none of it has been on his own behalf.

The waitress is a very interesting character. She knows the truck drivers by name and sits next to Bill. Her question, "Heard any good etchings lately, Bill?" requires some explanation. In the early 20th century, if a man invited a woman up to see his etchings, it was an invitation for sex. In this scene, screenwriter Nunnally Johnson has used the audience's familiarity with the use of the word "etchings" to have the waitress ask the truck driver if he's heard any dirty jokes lately. The construction is clumsy, though; how can anybody "hear" etchings? Johnson couldn't have her ask about dirty jokes directly as the censors in the Hays office would have cut the line. By using a euphemism, Johnson could count on the adults in the audience picking up the meaning without saying anything explicit that the censors could object to.

The line is important as it marks the waitress as somewhat vulgar and low class.The audience doesn't have high expectations of her and her subsequent actions confirm the audience's opinion. When Pa Joad makes his request, she has multiple reasons why she can't give him what he wants. When Bert says to give Pa the bread, she objects to Bert, too, saying that they'll run out before the bread truck comes. When she gets up to go get the bread around 1:01 in the clip, she is clearly not happy. When she returns with the bread, she's still trying to get full price for it. She is stubborn and clearly doesn't care about Pa Joad's problems.

Only at 1:38 in the clip, after Pa and Bert have tussled, does the waitress give in. Interestingly, she says, "Bert says to take it." She won't take responsibility for what's happening. She only takes ownership of a charitable act when Pa inquires about the candy. When she's called on it by the the truck driver, her response is a surly, "What's it to you?" She doesn't want to appear soft. Only after the truck drivers don't take their change, does she warm to the idea of people helping others.

The truck drivers say nothing while Pa Joad is present. However, director John Ford does keep them in the action. The truck driver near the cash register swallows uncomfortably when he looks at the children's poor attire and their hungry stares at the candy. The drivers exchange knowing looks when the waitress says that the candies are two for a penny. Bill calls the waitress on her charity in an accusing manner, but the drivers are clearly sympathetic to Pa Joad's plight as they endorse the waitress's actions by leaving extra money.

Imagine this scene if these personalities were different. If Pa Joad became frustrated and started yelling, I doubt that the truck drivers would sit passively during the confrontation. If the waitress responded sympathetically to the information about the old lady with no teeth, Pa Joad would have gotten the bread a lot sooner. Given the waitress's attraction to Bill, what would have happened if Pa Joad flattered the waitress and flirted with her? Would she warm up to him or be repulsed by him? How would the scene play out if the fry cook agreed with the waitress that they couldn't spare the bread? How would everyone react if the children were bratty and made demands for the candy, rather than looking at it silently?

If you change the personality of any of these characters, you have a different scene. The actions that occur are the direct result of the characters' personalities. If you're in story or in animation, you've got to know who the characters are if you're going to have a scene that makes sense.

Addendum: For contrast, here's another diner scene with an uncooperative waitress. It's from Five Easy Pieces. Jack Nicholson is as persistent as Pa Joad, but as you'll see, not nearly as polite. These two clips are good examples of the term "character driven." The personalities of the characters determine the outcomes of the scenes.

The Elements of a Scene: Setting

I'm going to do something different for several entries. What's above is a scene from The Grapes of Wrath, based on the novel by John Steinbeck, screenplay by Nunnally Johnson and directed by John Ford. The scene is only 3 minutes long and not central to the plot of the film. However, it is like a one act play that has all the necessary elements for drama.

I became aware as an animator that a good performance depends very much on the script. Good actors with a bad script are fighting an uphill battle. There are many elements that have to be present in order for a performance to work. I eventually composed a list of these elements that can be summarized with the clumsy acronym spomcorbass, and I want to examine this scene in light of these elements. They are:
Setting
Personality
Objective
Motive
Conflict
Obstacles
Resolution
Business
Arc
Suspense
Surprise

In the past, I didn't pay much attention to setting, but I've come to realize how critical it is. Too many animated films use setting as the basis for the background visuals, but ignore its other aspects. Setting is not only time and place, important though they are, it is also a social hierarchy and the expectations of the characters. Setting isn't merely a geographical location, it is a cultural context as well.

The above scene is set in a roadside diner off Route 66 in New Mexico. Based on the waitress's familiarity with the truck drivers, they are regulars. This scene is all about food and money, and practically every shot has a signboard in the background advertising something to eat and its price. In animation terms, the layouts never let us forget where we are or what the scene is about.

Culture is both invisible and arbitrary. It is invisible to those living within a culture as it is simply the way things are done. It's what's considered normal. However, as soon as a person confronts a different culture, the arbitrariness becomes apparent. There is more than one way for people to organize their lives.

While I'll talk about business in a later post, everybody, with the exception of Pa Joad and his children, is behaving in way consistent with the cultural nature of a roadside diner. The waitress is clearing tables, the cook is cooking and the truck drivers are eating. The invisible expectation is that the customers will only order what's on the menu and that they will pay the stated price. Pa Joad can't fit the culture's expectation of how to behave in a restaurant for economic reasons. He needs groceries, not a prepared item, and he can't afford to pay for the whole item. While this is a working class establishment, his request clearly marks him as someone beneath them. His request breaks the accepted pattern of behaviour associated with the setting, which creates the conflict that drives the scene.

While the scene is not central to the plot, it is central to the film's theme. What's more important, the system or the people within it? If people are suffering, shouldn't the system change? In this scene, there are hints that people can support each other in spite of the system, something that's developed later in the film.