Foreshadowing

Here’s an interesting story telling technique, call it a treat for the observant or a feast for the Sherlocks in the audience, but they popularly call it foreshadowing.

Used widely in movies and popular television series, it is a great way to enhance to enhance your story.

So what exactly is foreshadowing?

Like all things, this is best understood with the help of an example. In the very first episode of Game of thrones, Ned Stark’s death in the hands of Joffrey Baratheon looms ominous! Remember when Ned and his company find the carcass of a dead direfwolf (the sigil of house Stark)? And the direfwolf has antler marks on its neck, implying that it was killed by a stag (the sigil of house Baratheon). Didn’t see that coming did we?

Foreshadowing is this. The clever laying out of clues, a kind of forewarning even, about what’s in store.

But most of us don’t see it the first time, and may even mistake it to be as redundant or unnecessary. Many of us find these intricacies only on watching the movie a second time, or a third, or maybe never.

Then why should you incorporate it in your film you ask?

Because it supports plot twists!

Take Avatar for instance. Remember the scene where Jake Sully fits into his Avatar body? He cuts loose of the paraphernalia and runs out of the base excitedly, implying that he doesn’t care about the mission and acts on his own. This was clearly one of the forewarnings of changed loyalties because it would confuse the audience if a thus-far subservient Jake suddenly turns tail and takes the other side!

If you think about it, it’s like building the way for a character to act out of character! Something that makes the audience say- I should have seen that coming!

It’s far more engaging!

The next question that arises may be why foreshadowing when I can use flash-forwards or flash-backs to justify my plot twists?

It’s because those ways are like throwing the answer at the face of a lazy audience.

But by planting little clues in the form of symbolisms and metaphors, you are in fact allowing the audience to think, which a growing number of them seem to be liking these days!

Also, foreshadowing supports flash-backs and flash forwards, like in many lion-turned-mouse-turned-lion again movies. Take Theri for example, the scenes in the first half of the movie where Vijay does not want to get into any trouble foreshadows his tragic past!

Build your characters to foreshadow

What distinguishes a rich script from an ordinary one? It’s the detail in characters.

Detailing serves multiple purposes, one of it being that it provides you with multiple foreshadowing opportunities. How you ask?

In the movie ‘24’, you see Saranya Ponnvanan asking Surya not to chew gum, this serves two purposes here. It’s establishes her as a nagging mother, and provides the gum for the scene where the key gets stuck to the chewing gum on his shoe.

And that Is how you extort a way out of the character to tell your story!

Which means completely researching your character and knowing them inside out, up until the point where you how they would react in any given situation, to help you build you enhance your foreshadowing ideas!

Happy filming! ☺