{"id":1871,"date":"2018-08-03T07:13:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-03T07:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/?p=1871"},"modified":"2018-08-03T07:13:15","modified_gmt":"2018-08-03T07:13:15","slug":"shut-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2018\/08\/03\/shut-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Shut up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn\u2019t always follow that every writer likes every piece of great writing but, come on, you can\u2019t fail to love every brilliant second of Trainspotting\u2019s script by John Hodge. Only, I was into that film, entirely and completely engrossed from the opening half a second.<\/p>\n<p>And specifically the opening half a second where there isn\u2019t a word. Isn\u2019t a sound.<\/p>\n<p>I know it\u2019s only half a second, maybe 20 frames at most, but the silence is completely arresting. For that one fraction of a moment you\u2019re seeing a street scene before feet come down out of the top of frame and Iggy Pop\u2019s Lust for Life bursts in. Take a look:<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Opening Sequence - Trainspotting\" width=\"440\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BLMxoDZDHDk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>Choose life, eh?<\/p>\n<p>Then I suspect few people have ever compared Trainspotting to Gerry Anderson\u2019s UFO, but here goes. Watch the famous title sequence and see what I\u2019m seeing.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Gerry Anderson&#039;s UFO: Opening Titles (1080p HD)\" width=\"440\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/8CvURidpkCY?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>The far future of 1980. And the far past of camerawork focusing on a woman&#8217;s backside. Anyway.\u00a0After the Century 21 Television sting, it\u2019s silent for what seems like an age but is actually about a second.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s\u00a0a punch. Maybe because it&#8217;s a little different from the usual, but I think there&#8217;s more to it than that. I think that silence is a hugely powerful punch.<\/p>\n<p>I think silence can also make you hold your breath. There&#8217;s that recent horror film A Quiet Place where you have to shut up to survive, for instance. I&#8217;ll never know how effective it is because it&#8217;s horror and I&#8217;m a wimp. Then there&#8217;s a noisy thriller in cinemas right now \u2013 I don&#8217;t want to spoil it just to make one small point \u2013 but it features a single moment of silence and that made me jump.<\/p>\n<p>Flashback 22 years to the first Mission: Impossible film.\u00a0If you&#8217;ve seen it, you remember the very long silent scene as Tom Cruise steals a list from a PC in a CIA vault. Forget the hanging off buildings and aircraft he does in the later films, this\u00a0silent scene is excruciatingly tense. I love it.\u00a0If you&#8217;ve a little while, take a look at this\u00a0short video analysing the scene and its production. I can&#8217;t show it to you\u00a0unless I point out that its clips from the television version of Mission: Impossible are from the forgotten 1980s remake instead of the 1960s original, mind.<\/p>\n<p>Also, this is a YouTube video so in the midst of interesting detail it gets childish for a moment or two. Silence would&#8217;ve been better.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Mission: Impossible Vault Heist - Art of the Scene\" width=\"440\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uR9NsufQUdo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m conscious that for a piece about shutting up, this week I&#8217;m showing you an awful lot of audio and video clips. But I think this is all using the same\u00a0muscles you do in writing. I think video editing is like drafting. I definitely think\u00a0a film is finally written in the edit suite.<\/p>\n<p>Which means I am a fan of sound and film editor Walter Murch.\u00a0He works on everything and talks about it too. Of the very, very many lectures of his you can find online, here&#8217;s an excerpt where he talks about silence. It&#8217;s about the effectiveness of it but does also cop to how sometimes sheer production frustration can create art.<\/p>\n<div class=\"jetpack-video-wrapper\"><iframe title=\"Walter Murch @ Aberystwyth University, Wales, March 2017\" width=\"440\" height=\"248\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z9FD-P3Nj5I?start=4196&#038;feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;ll shut up now. And get on with some writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It doesn\u2019t always follow that every writer likes every piece of great writing but, come on, you can\u2019t fail to &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2018\/08\/03\/shut-up\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[1221,215,956,1387,208,585,1383,1381,1382,490,441,1380,1385,1384,387,1386],"class_list":["post-1871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-selfdistract","tag-drafting","tag-drama","tag-editing","tag-effectiveness","tag-film","tag-mission-impossible","tag-punch","tag-quiet","tag-quietness","tag-screenwriting","tag-scriptwriting","tag-silence","tag-trainspotting","tag-ufo","tag-video","tag-walter-murch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-ub","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1871"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1874,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1871\/revisions\/1874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}