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Current Talk '24 I / Re: Happy 50th Anniversary, Night of Dark Shadows
« on: August 31, 2023, 04:50:10 PM »
Revisiting how Scenes 34 & 35 are scripted:
...
34 EXT - COLLINWOOD GROUNDS - QUENTIN'S P.O.V. - 34
EVENING
The sky is a magnificent canvas of colors, in
the F.G. is a large tree with huge spreading
limbs. HOLD on this for a moment and then
CUT TO:
35 EXT - COLLINWOOD GROUNDS - 1810 - QUENTIN'S 35
P.O.V.
SUBCONSCIOUS MEMORY CUT
For an instant the view from the window suddenly
takes on a completely different look. The picture
is now almost devoid of color with a kind of milky
look that makes it seem unreal. It is almost dark
and a heavy ground fog swirls and eddies about.
Suddenly, we notice that a figure of some kind
seems to be hanging from a branch high up in a
tree. FAST ZOOM IN. It is the figure of a woman
in a long dress, a rope around her neck, The
figure is no more that a bleak silhouette so
that it is impossible to tell what she looks like.
TRACY (O.S.)
It's almost like living in a
museum. Isn't it?
End of scene. Though there's more to the sequence...
... it's still the case that there aren't any differences between the way DC's and Grayson Hall's scripts are written up to this point ...
...
...and while it could possibly be late enough in the day to be close to sunset, the sunset as described in the script is not what Quentin sees when he looks out the window because what he actually sees, as can be seen in the next capture -
- is an overcast view (remember, it was raining when they arrived) with some spring-flowing trees in bloom and other trees getting their green leaves - and when things change over to the 1810 memory, things may not be in as sharp a contrast as they would be had Quentin seen the sunset as described, but as can be seen in this next capture -
- the 1810 memory is certainly of a decidedly bleak scene and as the script indicates, "almost devoid of color" - and it's interesting that after the camera does zoom in on the figure in the tree -
- one can tell that it's a woman (thanks mostly to the hair and style of shoes), but what's more interesting is that there are a few publicity stills for the film that depict a much more discernible figure of a woman hanging in the tree (one of which was obviously used as a basis for the A version of the NoDS poster ... - and a final point is that the dialogue that is scripted for Tracy at the end of Scene 35 is actually delivered off screen over a shot of Quentin at the end of Scene 34 just before the cut to the 1810 memory.