CHAPTER 11

TONE: NATURALISTIC AND STYLIZED APPROACHES

Taken together, the aesthetic and stylistic elements listed in the previous chapter (visual style, sound design, editorial style and performance style) establish the tone and credibility of the world of the film. They establish, in other words, the rules of your cinematic universe.

It’s important to keep in mind that film is a construct of reality—not reality itself. A great miracle of the cinematic art form is its ability to create a vast range of believable realities. The contemporary Paris represented in Jeunet’s Amélie is not the Paris represented in Mathieu Kassovitz‘ gritty and violent La Haine (1995). And yet both are believable, given the context of their respective worlds. David Lynch’s ...

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