Show versus Tell II

October 5, 2009 by Jerry

show_vs_tell_ii

In his Wall Street Journal review of “The Informant!” the veteran film critic Joe Morgenstern wrote, “More often than not, the extensive use of voice-over narrative means the filmmakers didn’t know how to dramatize their story without it.” Morgenstern knows whereof he speaks; professional writers consider voice-over narrative as a form of cheating, and audiences find it unrewarding. The positive counter to this narrative device is to relate a story primarily with action or, as it is more commonly known, to show versus tell.

In a previous blog on this same subject, you read about two other otherwise excellent films, “Milk” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” where a reliance on voice-over to advance the plot interrupted the action and therefore diminished the dramas’ effectiveness. That same blog demonstrated the effective use of voice-over in “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” because filmmaker Woody Allen deployed it as commentary on the characters rather than as narrative. The voice-over in “The Informant!” is also effective—Morgenstern called it “the movie’s main strength”—because of how filmmaker Steven Soderbergh used it.

In a story based on a non-fiction book of the same name, Matt Damon plays Mark Whitacre, an executive at Archer Daniels Midland, a multinational food processing corporation. The central thrust of the story concerns how Whitacre became an informant for the FBI to expose a global price-fixing scheme at ADM. As the scandal unfolds, Damon’s character, as New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis observed, “natters on about ties, polar bears and butterflies.” Ms. Dargis then went on to agree with Mr. Morgenstern about the voice-over, by calling the nattering, “a brilliant screenwriting device that hints at an inner duality.” So in “The Informant!” the device is used to define character rather than as a substitute for action.

A presenter’s character is defined by the effectiveness of the presentation story, and the story is made effective by showing not telling. Rather than merely talking about your business, its products or service, show it in action by illustrating it with examples, analogies, and case studies.

Show versus tell.

Filed under: Blogs, Content
Tagged:

Comments

If you want to interact, please leave a comment...
and, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!