What would you say is the best way to initiate a daydream/flashback?
john2006mad
Visit my first amateur movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U8q5PucXc0
Not at all, if you can avoid it.
I think the style of the movie will help dictate the best way to do it.
Some examples:
Highlander - the difference in time frame is so obvious that nothing further needs to be done. To a lesser extent this could be done with fashion, a newspaper headline or change in haircut.
Waynes World - Silly and obvious hand gestures and sounds.
Momento - Flashbacks designed to disorient and also provide clues. I think they simply had black every once in awhile.
A lot of other movies just say "5 days ago".
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
I think rjschwarz said it well: there's no 'best' way full stop of doing something: context is all.
Another method of transition is a white out + accompanying sound effects.
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There's daggers in men's smiles
Zoom in on an item of jewelry or something and then zoom out again to find a younger actor wearing that same jewlery or item. The audience will understand this to mean a younger version of the same character in most cases.
Another really common way is to have the character narrate something that happened and overlap the narration into the flashbacks a bit to establish the connection. The same trick then works in reverse to undo the flashback. This is common in tv detective stories as it's one of the least subtle ways (the least being "5 days ago" written on screen).
You might want to make the flashbacks in black & white or some other skewed color to help seperate them.
RJSchwarz
San Diego, CA
RJSchwarz
well basically the whole idea of the movie is the flashbacks ....
john2006mad
Visit my first amateur movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U8q5PucXc0
yeah, momento did an excellent job with that. If your whole story involves flashbacks, then i would suggest watching a few good movies that are based around them and figure out how, and why they did them.
