Hey Y’all,
I’m looking for abrupt tonal shifts in a story (movies in particular - so it’s easy to study). Kinda like the shift in the Wizard of Oz from B&W to color. Only the tone of the story. From mundane to fantastical. O
What can you recommend?
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I remember feeling an abrupt shift in Wall-E when he and Eve left the planet. I can’t remember if that was the First Act Turn or the Midpoint. It seemed like a very different movie aboard the giant, crowded pleasure ship, compared to the desolate planet.
Also, if memory serves, The Matrix goes through a pretty abrupt shift when Neo takes the red pill (First Act Turn). There were a lot of hints as to what was going on before that, but the audience gets to kind of experience things with Neo in the mostly-mundane world, until that sequence when Morpheus explains things and they wake him up. (Plus 3 out of 4 throughlines have a bump there; only the OS has a slide.)
Is that the kind of thing you were looking for?
Change in physics, mind, space or time.
Obviously, these coexist. With a jump in time, the mind of a character will be unrecognizable. Ed Harris and his younger counterpart in Westworld. This is magnified by have two different actors. Are we not two different people after the passage of time?
When talking about WOZ, I wonder if that tonal shift is reflected in more than just subject material: mundane to fantasy?
I’m reading a book that may become one of my favorites: Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu. In the beginning of this book, a few time shifts really reflect this idea of tonal shift.
Also, there are some significant shifts in space and mind as well. I’m only six or seven chapters in… but I feel it coming.
Without a jarring shift in time, space, physics or mind, it might need or seem to be gradual. Otherwise, it could be interpreted as madness.
The Harry Potter series shifts in tone from movie to movie or book to book.
In terms of mind, I think perspective must create a tonal shift if done correctly? No?
In the Westworld example, time brings about the change in one mind. This covers both. If we are talking about a change of space, two different people, then it wold be just as abrupt.
Well, there’s more there I think, but I tend to get confused the more I write.
My recommendation would be the book I mentioned above or any story that shifts dramatically in time, space, mind or physics.
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Thank you both. It’s all useful. I’m working with a client that had a beta reader tell him, the shift in tone from one section to another, jarred her. It had never bothered me and I knew that I’d seen movies where these kinds of shifts occurred and they don’t usually bother me, but I wanted to see if I could suss out why. It’s as @museful said: A four year jump in time and the character (who had just had a terrible thing happen to him (his daughter is missing) is in the middle of a swashbuckling fight (seemingly unrelated to the disappearance). So I’m trying to figure out if it’s a problem we need to deal with or if it’s just that reader…
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If it is at the beginning of a book, perhaps it could be a question of to prologue or to not to prologue.
In the book I am reading, the POV changes as well, so the 40 year time jump is more bearable.
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Is there a possibility that what’s happening is a Drama to Entertainment jump in the Dramatica Genre Grid, without going through one of Information or Comedy? If this is what’s actually happening, then from your description, it sounds like the best direction would be going through Information. (http://dramatica.com/theory/book/genre)
Not many questions that seem even remotely plausibly related to this section of Dramatica ever really seem to come up on these forums, so I think this corner is often forgotten. Just a thought.
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That section of the theory book always attracted me, but I have to admit that I haven’t applied it to my writing. In fact, I haven’t been doing much writing as of late.
There was another question on the board that I think might benefit from this information:
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Sympathy for Lady Vengeance ( directed by Park Chan-wook) changes from a quirky tone to a very dark, tragic one.
(This movie also has a “Fade to Black and White” version.)
Psycho has one of the most famous tone changes - an event that creates a completely different movie partway through.
Laura has a pretty huge shift as well - it remains very much the same movie but if memory serves my empathy for the detective completely changed at the big reveal point.
Rebecca has a big information reveal that changes the tone and direction of the movie as well - I remember feeling like it was a cheat.
The Crying Game has two shockers. I guess not so much a tonal change, but the first one is a very big shift in what you thought the movie was going to be about.
Topsy Turvy has a single story (I think) that changes POV between two MC’s - Gilbert and Sullivan - so the first and second half very deliberately feel like two completely different movies. I’d say it wouldn’t be Dramatica compliant, but it’s a Mike Leigh movie who I’d say often sets out to violate traditional structures.
I never saw the TV series Cop Rock, but as a police musical series the tonal shifts from drama to musical were said to be way too much to gather any kind of audience.
A Knight’s Tale had a similar kind of shift where a knights of old period comedy-drama suddenly broke with no warning whatsoever into a modern music video with a line dance to Bowie’s Golden Years. Which might be more what you’re looking for - it’s either brilliant in going so far so suddenly or just abominable in such a violation of the story world.
@museful, have a ball with The Three Body Problem - it does shift worlds and POV’s and narrative styles everywhere in absolute service, I’d say, to the journey it takes. Doesn’t necessarily make for a good movie though - it was shot two years ago but abandoned (so far, says Wikipedia) due to the bad quality of the first cut.
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No Country For Old Men has an abrupt tonal shift at the beginning of the last act, from tightly wound cat-and-mouse to something far more meditative.
If we were on a different site, we might call From Dusk Till Dawn the “trope namer” for these movies.
Full Metal Jacket
Most Edgar Wright movies.
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It could be hitting a personal nerve. A reader was repelled by a death in my mystery, then I found out that her best friend had been murdered in that manner. I wouldn’t go by just one feedback/reaction.
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Lolita switches over to her living a different life.
Little Big Man switches from him as an old man to a young man’s history.
Henry V switched from a play to a movie.
Momento switches to him being in charge following his previous clues.
The Searchers switched from the John Wayne character we assumed him to be (from past roles) to one that disappointed us for awhile with wanting her death for awhile.
I recommend watching Hudson Hawk. The tonal shifts are so abrupt it makes the movie nearly unwatchable – that and the fact that it is a terrible movie with a huge budget and star-studded cast.
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Chris, do you have anything on the Dramatica site that goes over Hudson Hawk’s skipping over dram genre? That was a fantastic part of the weekend workshops in the 90’s.
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There’s also “I Don’t Feel At Home In This World Anymore.” To put it in Jim Hull’s words, “the story’s Genres shift so abruptly from Entertainment to Drama that they rip you out of the experience.”
Source:
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Nope. It was such a mess (and UN-funny) and we didn’t bother at the time. It was more a lesson of what NOT to do – especially genre-wise.
I haven’t read it in a while, but what about Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World?
That is what I am interested in, more what not to do’s.
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Get Out has a big shift going into the last act.