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I'd love to hear everybody's pet peeves in movie and TV production.
(sh.itjust.works)
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I think this one is pretty common, but whenever there’s a disagreement, argument or debate that could be resolved in less than 10 seconds by one of the characters explaining themself in a single sentence, but instead they say nothing and or get interrupted right when they’re getting to the important bit. I know I know, it keeps the tension going, but the tension is so artificial and convoluted that I can’t help but scream at the TV “just fucking say it!!!”
The worst part of the interruptions is that they tend to be something that doesn't keep the person from just finishing the last few words of their sentence, and if it does they could just finish the conversation like 3 minutes later. But no, the moment is apparently ruined and they can't just accept a short delay to clear up something.
Even worse is when they say they can explain or that it isn't what is looks like over and over and explaining it would take fewer words.
Movie wife: "You are cheating on me!"
Movie: "It isn't what you think, I can explain! Come back honey, I love you! I can explain!"
Real life: "This is my sister who is hiding from her abusive husband."
Roger Ebert discribed this as an "idiot plot". I don't know if he coined the term, but i heard it from him first. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot_plot
I especially dislike the "There's no time to explain!" when there clearly is time to explain.
Like, you can spit out "Vampires are real and the head vampire wants to eat my sister" pretty quickly to get key information across. Don't need to provide the whole context.
Not a movie, but one time in a tabletop RPG one of the players was trying to say "There's no time to explain!" and the other just wasn't having it. After two back-and-forths he was just like "If you had explained instead of saying there's no time, there would've been time!" Was really funny to watch that play out live.
Oh, this one is great.
This might be my greatest pet peeve of cinema and television production.
I absolutely hate this.
" No, it wasn't my mother"
"We don't have to talk about it."
No f****** body would say that.
" Oh, who said it?"
That's the next line of a script in an honest dialogue that isn't fluffing up a lack of complexity, you pieces of s***.
Thank you so much.