Since exploring the concept of film worlds, I’ve been continuing this conversation internally every time I watch a film now. I knew films had worlds, and sometimes different films existed in the same world (eg Spy Kids and Machete), but I don’t think I had quite grasped the idea of how idiosyncratic a film world can be. It was in the excerpt of the reading by Craig Batty “Writing the Screenplay” that really started my thinking into how I could create my own world in a film. In the reading Batty says that: “A well-crafted world can create a specific audience experience. a particular tone and feeling that the plot cannot convey on its own”, which really got me thinking about developing my own project. Setting tone is a really important factor in creating a distinct world and is something I really want to focus on. I usually tend to use a darker tone in previous projects that I’ve done, when it suits. I do like making light toned pieces, but my interest always lies in darker toned films. Along with tone, aesthetic properties such as setting and production design are important to world, not so much production design in the script, but I think it’s important to have that in mind when writing and developing a storyboard and organising the actual production.
Having spoken a lot in class about various different film worlds, I thought of one type of film world hadn’t exactly been covered in our class discussions and that is films whose worlds are affected by drugs. In Batty’s reading he says that, “A world can belong to a particular character, too” and I think this is relevant to the subject of drugs and perspective. The specific world I want to touch on is that of Terry Gilliam’s 1998 film The Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The visual world reflects the disorientation caused by the drug use of the characters. Having the film be set in Las Vegas, the already over-the-top city filled with twisting lights and streets filled with visitors, it already offers quite a distinct visual world, but with the use of the hallucinogenics, through the perspective of the characters we encounter the surreal imagery to match their mental state.
The world is also an exaggerated view of capitalism. The only thing in Vegas that matters is money. In the scene where they are stumbling out of the convertible, hardly able to walk or talk, the employees from the casino happily lead them through the entrance. This is also seen in the lobby scene of the second hotel, a screaming policeman is met with no respect as Depp’s character strolls in mindlessly and is welcomed and lead to his room. In many other locations, policeman are usually higher up and treated better than a cheaply dressed, obviously intoxicated person such as Depp’s character.
But the world is also untrustworthy due to the character’s mental and physical state of narration and perception. This is why I don’t believe this film world could co-exist in other film worlds, because it is how the main character perceives his world, so therefore it is an untrustworthy world. The film is displaying a misshapen reality, so there is a fundamental mistrust in everything the audience sees.
Because this sort of surrealistic world is a personal taste of mine, it’s serving as quite an inspiration for the world I’m currently trying to develop for my project. I’m still in the very early stages of development, but it’s good to have a starting point of aesthetic and stylistic inspiration. After looking at the idea of confined worlds in films, it has really sparked my interest and I think I want to head down that path. In Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I think the world is confined to Las Vegas and the surrounding desert, almost as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist and I really like the idea of the world having clear boundaries and almost making the audience feel uncomfortably restricted in a closed off world.
After writing a draft of my screenplay for my project, I plan to use an excerpt of Batty’s reading to help me reflect on the world I’ve created and possibly lead to changes and improvements.
“How does the world affect the tone of what we see?
It is about internal logic: how does the world operate?
It is about the emotional experience of the audience: how is it generated by the world?
It is a vessel for theme and meaning: what stories can be told in this world?
And it is also about voicing a screenplay: does the world have its own voice, attitude or perspective?”
References:
Excerpt from: Batty, C (2013) “Writing the Screenplay” in A Companion to Creative Writing, Graeme Harper (ed) West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons (pp. 98-114).
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (1998). [film] America: Terry Gilliam.