Down and dirty character development...

Moviemaking is all about finding ways to give your audience constant clues about the character motivations of the people in your films. Lots of ways to do that of course, some obvious, some more subtle and clever.

Couple things I noticed with regard to the kinds of clues I'm talking about here while re-watching some classic of the 80's and 90's this weekend. I've argued in past postings that action movies often skimp on character development in favor of driving the action forward faster and with more regularity. I still believe this is true, but I also think it's worth clarifying that this does not absolve the action movie writer from the responsibility of developing great characters. You simply gotta pick the right moments in which to skimp.

Let's take a look at two classic military thrillers of the 80's and early 90's... TOP GUN and THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. One major screenwriting challenge these two movies both have in common is a TON of characters to service throughout the story. By the time Cash and Epps got around to fully developing Maverick, Goose, Charlie, Iceman, Hollywood, Slider, Viper, Jester, and Carole, there was very little time left to develop that one thing every single movie needs... an antagonist... otherwise known as, the villain.

Now true, the main antagonists in the film are Maverick's inner demons... but inner demons don't make for very photogenic movie villains, and so in TOP GUN, the main enemy faced by Maverick and his band of brothers are Russian fighter pilots... and they are literally faceless.

TOP GUN is about a lot of things, and really, aerial combat is among the least of them. We don't need to get to know the Russian adversaries in order to enjoy the story, in fact, I would argue the less we know about them the better. And so, with that in mind, in order to create intimidating villains that we would instinctively want to root against without the filmmakers having to spend a lot of time explainging WHY we need to root against them, the filmmakers employed some clever techniques. For one thing, all the American pilots wear individually colorized helmets with open face plates. In this way we are able to easily identify each pilot by his helmet, and by his eyes... the facial feature by which most humans first connect with one another.

Maverick's Russian adversaries, by contrast, have black reflective faceplates, unadorned helmets, and we never hear any of their radio chatter. The filmmakers basically turn them into flying robots with whom it would be virtually impossible for an audience member to connect or identify. They are a faceless, emotionless enemy... because that's really all we have time for, and in point of fact, those characteristics are exactly what we Americans spent most of the Cold War believing were the major hallmarks of our faceless enemies from Russia.

The writers of THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER (THuFRO for short) faced a similar problem as did the writers of TOP GUN... that of an absolutely huge cast of critical characters, plus one additional problem Cash and Epps did NOT face... an extremely complicated and detailed plot line involving the surreptitious theft of a Russian submarine. With all these characters and plot lines to service, THuFRO was going to need a lot of help quickly and efficiently crafting easy to understand Russian villains to pepper throughout the piece.

Fortunately for the writers, by the time THuFRO rolled around in 1990, the stereotype of the emotionless, truth-obfuscating Russian official and the bombastic, Folksy, vaguely Southern American policy official was firmly ingrained in the American psyche, and so building characters around that concept turned out to be deceptively easy.

The best example comes at about the midway point... Jack Ryan tries to explain to Admiral Painter (played by 2008 Presidential candidate Fred Thompson) that Marko Ramius intends to defect with the Red October and that it's simply a matter of helping him do that. Not so easy, says the Admiral... first we'd need to know what Ramius' plan is...

"Plan?" asks Ryan...

"The Average Russian don't take a dump without a plan, son."

And so one short, nicely crafted line instantly evokes the image of the scheming Russian.

But the writers of THuFRO were equal opportunists when it came to stereotyping their characters for quick and easy effect. There's a recurring series of scenes featuring an American National Security Advisor played by Richard Jordan, who does his own stereotyping for us... describing himself as the typical loudmouth, untrustworthy American politician by telling Ryan...

"Listen, I'm a politician which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open."

Later, that stereotype will be reinforced when, in a moment of frustration, Pelt shouts at his Russian counterpart...

"Mr. Ambassador, you have nearly a hundred naval vessels operating in the North Atlantic right now. Your aircraft has dropped enough sonar buoys so that a man could walk from Greenland to Iceland to Scotland without getting his feet wet. Now, shall we dispense with the bull?"

Only to have the Russian parry with "you make your point as delicately as ever, Mr. Pelt."

These little reminders of the character traits we already expect based on our own stereotypes and preconceptions about American and Russian politicians and soldiers of the period are peppered throughout the movie. Watch it again and I'm sure you'll find literally dozens that I missed.

One other thing about the movie I find interesting is the filmmaker's use of set and lighting design both to evoke mood, as well us to remind us in subtle ways where we are from one scene to the next.

The thing about the insides of naval vessels is they all look the same... small, dark, gray, and full of anonymous men and machinery. Given that throughout much of the film, we will be quickly cutting from the inside of one Naval warship to another, the filmmakers needed a quick and easy way for the audience to visually recognize an American ship from a Russian one.

And so, you'll note that throughout the movie, whenever we are inside an American vessel, the overall lighting scheme is blue... contrasting that with the Russian vessels, most notably the Kenevelov, which are primarily red. This gives our brains a down-and-dirty visual clue as to where we are at any given moment. Blue is good, Red is bad. (I can think of at least one other series of movies that identified good and evil through the use of red and blue color schemes... see if you can guess which one I mean and I'll give you the answer at the end).*

Oh come on Shears, you're out of your mind, I can hear you saying... this goofy color theory of yours is a coincidence at best? Maybe, but take a look at the Red October herself. Throughout the first act, before we know for sure that Ramius intends to defect, the lights in the Red October are indeed red, as my theory predicts. Only after it becomes clear that he DOES intend to defect, and not to launch his missiles on the United States as so many other characters in the film are arguing, does the fake "nuclear accident" occur... from that moment on, after we know for sure that the Red October is no longer a threat, the lighting scheme within the Red October is neutral yellow.

* THE STAR WARS SERIES (Bad guys (Vader, Dooku) have red light sabers, good guys (Luke, Yoda) have blue or green)