Film Courage: What are the right ways and wrong ways to introduce a main character?
Troy DeVolld, Producer/Author: I said earlier that backstory isn’t always story. If you are slavishly devoted to spelling out everything that’s happened to a person up to the point that you meet them for the first time, it’s a huge drag. You’ve saddled them with a weight that is so heavy, the explanation of themselves that you can’t just invest in whatever moment you’re introduced to them in. If you watch a Bond film and you’ve never seen the James Bond film before and the first shot you see is this guy jumping out of the helicopter on a parachute and I bet you’re wondering how I got here? Well my name is James and I went to school here and this happened and then one day somebody came up to me and said Do you want to be in a high school program for secret agent wannabes and I said sure? And it was okay but it took a long time and I wasn’t really good with a gun at first but now I’m amazing. I have a license to kill and then the parachute comes back, you would hate that. This whole thing about backstory and knowing everything about somebody before you see them is not a great way to introduce a character. Introducing a character during a moment in which they are vulnerable is immediately engaging. Look at shows or look at movies Diary of a Wimpy Kid…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Producer Troy DeVolld, widely regarded as a leading authority on the reality television production process, boasts some four dozen credits spanning THE OSBOURNES to Food Network’s BIG BAD BUDGET BATTLE and bestselling books REALITY TV: AN INSIDER’S GUIDE TO TELEVISION’S HOTTEST MARKET and AND ANOTHER THING: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO THE TELEVISION NOTES PROCESS. He’s contributed to or been quoted in publications like TIME and NEWSWEEK and been seen on TODAY and SHOWBIZ TONIGHT. He’s a 1996 graduate of Full Sail University and the ninth inductee into its Hall of Fame.
BUY TROY’S BOOK HERE – Reality TV – An Insider’s Guide to TV’s Hottest Market: 2nd Edition
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