Craft
Sound design is doing more than you think, especially when it is quiet
What you hear in a scene is almost entirely constructed. The choices about what to leave out are the loudest ones.
Yuna Park
Contributing writer, After the Trailer
Yuna writes about performance and structure, and takes television as seriously as film.
Contact Yuna through our contact page — mark your message for their attention and it will be passed on.
16 articles
On Screen
A scene is doing at least three things at once
Good scenes advance plot, change a relationship and reveal character simultaneously. Weak ones do one.
On Screen
Performance is mostly reaction, and the camera knows it
The best-remembered moments in film are frequently of somebody listening rather than speaking.
Craft
Most visual effects work is invisible, and that is the job
The shots that get discussed are rarely the shots that consumed the schedule. Removing things takes longer than adding them.
Craft
Production design is exposition you never have to listen to
A room can tell you who lives in it, how long they have been there and what they are pretending. That is a department, not a…
Craft
The script supervisor is the reason the film still cuts together
One person tracks every prop, glance, line change and screen direction across a shoot that happens out of order. The job is barely…
On Screen
Three-act structure is a description, not a recipe
Almost every story can be described in three acts after the fact. That is a property of the description, not evidence of a rule.
On Screen
Point of view is a decision the camera makes on your behalf
Whose knowledge you share determines almost everything about how a story feels. It is a structural choice, and it is rarely…
On Screen
Exposition is a delivery problem, not an information problem
Audiences do not object to being told things. They object to being told things by characters who have no reason to say them.
On Screen
Comic timing is a rhythm problem solved in the edit
Comedy on screen depends on duration measured in frames. The same performance is funny or flat depending on where the cut falls.
On Screen
Realistic dialogue is not the same as recorded speech
Real conversation is repetitive, overlapping and largely uninformative. Screen dialogue imitates its texture while doing entirely…
Craft
Grips build the machine the camera rides on, then hide it
One department moves the camera and shapes the light without switching anything on. Its work is structural, and the point is that…
Craft
Miniatures never disappeared, they moved to the shots you cannot spot
Building something small and photographing it remains cheaper and more convincing than simulating it for a whole class of shots.…
Craft
Dailies are an early warning system that also sets the look
The route from camera to a viewable image involves decisions about colour and compression made in the first hours. Those decisions…
On Screen
Subtext is not a hidden meaning, it is a gap the audience closes
A scene works below its dialogue when the situation supplies information the words refuse to. The technique is structural rather…
On Screen
Rearranging the timeline changes what the audience has to do
Telling events out of order is not decoration. It moves the work of assembly from the storyteller to the viewer, and that transfer…