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"Telling of the Legend", "The Campfire Story", CANDYMAN, DARK SKIES, INSIDIOUS, Professor Exposition, SINISTER, THE CONJURING, THE EXORCIST, tropes - August 23, 2022

PROFESSOR EXPOSITION

There is a trope character I like to call “Professor Exposition.” We often see Professor Exposition appear in horror movies. This is the character who explains to the leads (and by extension the audience) what is doing the haunting, perhaps a bit of backstory, and how to potentially stop it. He’s called Professor Exposition because this is a character whose primary story function is to deliver a pure blast of exposition, straight no chaser. Typically, exposition is a necessary evil, with an emphasis on evil, because exposition is boring, and it’s very hard to write and act this stuff in...

ON TITLES

The title is vital. It is the first point of contact between the script and the reader, and between the movie and the audience. When the audience comes to the theater and they look at the one-sheets and the marquee, the title is both the hook and the handle by which they shall make their ultimate decision: Which of these movies will they see? So let’s talk about titles. A good title accomplishes several tasks within just a word or few. The first task is to reflect the genre. We want to tell the audience what kind of experience they...

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