Tarantino puts a roadblock in between the audience and a resolution. But since he promised something interesting in the beginning, the audience feels obligated to deal with the roadblock. We sit and wait. The scene becomes very dialogue-heavy, and the suspense builds. The Gestapo Major sits at the table, opposite Lt. Hicox, and.
The French Barmaid brings over the Majors beer stein. Tarantino takes what otherwise may have been a long and monotonous scene, and makes it the highlight of the film. Because the audience is promised something interesting at the beginning, Tarantino is able to feed into our expectations, building them up.
We listen closely to the dialogue, eagerly awaiting or fearing a slip up. What is going to be the match that lights this barrel of gunpowder? Scenes with characters sitting in chairs talking to each other are almost never this exciting.
With the use of a hook in all of his dialogue scenes, Tarantino keeps his audience engaged, even if the dialogue is not immensely important in the overall scheme of the film. For example…. Reliance on dialogue in a film means the dialogue is responsible for developing characters, establishing the setting, and pushing the plot forward.
This can make the dialogue of such a film more of a utility than an aspect of its entertainment. Utilized as more of a tool, dialogue can become dull and boring. It can also erase the suspension of disbelief if the audience sees through the charade. Therefore, it is important to write scenes to allow a film to disguise the more utilitarian purposes of some of its lines. Tarantino is excellent at this technique. For one, his intelligence as a writer comes through in his characters.
They tend to be intelligent and witty. Because of this, the audience never has the opportunity to second guess their words or actions. Likewise, since Tarantino delivers a hook in all of his dialogue scenes, audiences are more likely to overlook or accept those lines. One reason for this is that often the audience is trying to figure out what is happening. As a writer, Tarantino is often a step or two ahead of his audience. I realize you were quoting him however you would have shown some class by editing the curse word.
Very interesting — I should listen to this interview. It may be useful both for beginner writers and for professionals. Your email address will not be published.
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Create unique characters which are very different from one other. Empower a hero with abilities to act. Physically gestures or any kind of physical activity or Mentally what happens in a characters head, choices and changes in personality which affect behaviour or Verbal.
The stronger the tension and higher the stakes in the scene, the more characters' words show us who they are. Let's can highlight a few traits in Tarantino's dialogues: High Stakes. There's always something at risk in each scene and we both as audience and writer should know w hat exactly. It creates tension and suspense especially if it's what we waited for, either a few or a dozen of minutes.
However, It's hard to spot this if the film has just started. You are probably aware of the three-act structure. In Quentin's dialogues this is often very clearly identifiable, the longer scene the more important it becomes. It helps to make long scenes more engaging and interesting and sometimes feel like a standalone short film.
Act 1 - characters enter the scene, revealing or foreshadowing happens. Act 2 - power shift, dialogue's topic change. Act 3 - the culmination, dramatic release or contrast. Each of those acts has it's own purpose and tone. Act 1 could be physical, Act 2 - intellectual, Act 3 - emotional. Just remember, there always should be a conflict, characters should argue, and it cannot just end - there's always should be a logical resolution of it Stories inside stories.
Characters in Tarantino's films often tell stories - either about their lives, anecdotes, some random stuff or with an intention to explain something to other character or subtextually threaten him or her. These stories often reveal us their authors and can be crucial to understanding a character's moral or origin.
If the purpose of this story is to threaten someone it also creates suspense and feeling that something inevitable should happen.
Humour and jokes, which includes visual jokes. The whole situation can be funny, or character can say something hilarious, like anecdotes. It's often very dark humour but it always feels very organic and real. More about this. How Tarantino Directs dialogue This section is more about directing style of Quentin Tarantino, but I think it is still useful for writers and I should mention it anyway.
Light is close up on heroes. It helps to highlight them better, shows a face and makes us concentrated on dialogue. The camera is making circles around characters which make us to see characters from different angles and also spot any movements around them. It also makes us engaged with what is happening on the screen - static images could be boring for ten-minute dialogue scenes. Foreshortening changes. As characters become mentally closer to each other we see closer shots, or sometimes they are separated and now shown together - depends on the mood, context and character's relationship.
Several mise-en-scenes inside one scene - characters can walk, drive, just move from one location to another. During that, they can change topics of the dialogue as well.
Which becomes very dynamic and interesting. A great example is the first scene with Vincent and Jules in Pulp Fiction. On the way to get a briefcase, they change location from car to multiple corridors and finally a room.
Usage of food in scenes. Characters are often eat something. It shows us characters' personalities and relationships between them - someone could eat a burger with hands, another using a fork and a knife.
Or when Jules takes a burger from the guy they were going to kill showing his power and dominance. Characters smoke a lot - works the same as food. We can notice who is smoking and who is not - who is boss and who is not, how characters respect each other. Visual jokes. Many jokes work by a similar principle of set up and punchline. Which is genuinely similar to reveal and contrast as discussed above. Sometimes they use foreshadowing which then strikes as the finisher. In Tarantino films, there are many types of visual jokes.
Or any types of accidental violence also could be sometimes considered as a visual joke - shock often causes a laugh if you like dark humour and scenes when people get hurt.
While not going into the reasons for that anger, whatever he felt in his private life drove him to tear into these characters and show a world comprised of evil and anger.
By the time he went to make the movie, he was in such a good mood that he had to return to the screenplay over and over to remind himself of what would be hateful. He had the titles, he thought he had the stories, but he'd burn out. Mostly because he was chasing fragments of movies he had just seen and not movies that meant anything to him or were born out of what interested him.
This kind of failure would derail most people, but for Tarantino, it became his driving force. That meant that whatever he sat and wrote next, he promised himself he would finish it.
But Tarantino says in lieu of going to film school, he sought out reviews from Pauline Kael on some of his favorite movies and filmmakers. Even when they disagreed, Tarantino understood her writing could make him reorganize his thoughts and made him sharpen his own skills. He also saw them as gateways to movies he had never heard about and used them almost like a guide to Hollywood.
So it's no surprise that to this day, he loves quoting her work, which is basically his Shakespeare. Tarantino explains:. I never, never bought it.
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