What sort of abrupt endings or basic scene changes seem understandable? One of the most famous is awakening from a dream. Our hero is swinging from vine to vine when suddenly one of them snaps off. He is plummeting toward the rocks far below, when we hear a mother's voice calling "Andy, are you still in that bed? Come on! You will miss your bus." The vines and the rocks were in his mind and don't matter now.
In story-telling, another abrupt change is a scene shift. In print, we might read "Meanwhile, inside the fort…" or "Back at the farm..." or "At the same time, in the Defense Department meeting…" We realize that while one thing is happening in one place, something else is going on in another place. In the most professional stage production I ever saw, a lonely young woman in a dark and dirty alley sang a poignant song. At its end, ZAP! We were immediately taken to a sun-dappled glade that was mostly due to lighting changes.
In life, abrupt changes can come from a heart attack but the locale is what it was. When I watch The Closure, an abrupt change comes when the heroine, an expert interrogator, is talking with her husband or her mother and the heroine suddenly looks up and to the right, often with slightly squeezed eyes. We know that a chance remark has just triggered The Closer's mind into seeing how the murder was committed and by whom. We know that she will pick up her purse and make apologies for suddenly leaving and leave. But again, unlike story scene changes, the location is more or less continuous.
Any sudden emergency can happen and make enormous changes in a flash. Last night we watched a news video of a line of parked cars and a section of railroad tilt and then fell into the earth, softened and weakened by too much rainfall. A tsunami or a bomb or an earthquake can rearrange things very quickly and dramatically. A meteor or falling debris from a plane could change the scene instantly, too.
On modern urban streets, various sorts of car or truck crashes can change things in an instant, too. I once saw a scene on Candid Camera where a young woman was given a new job at a desk in a bank. Suddenly, a sports car came through a specially built pivoting wall and stopped right beside her desk. The driver asked, "Is this the drive-up window?"
So, the best I can tell you is "Stay alert!" "Be prepared!" "Be ready for anything!" but also, of course, hang loose and stay relaxed and don't get uptight.
--
Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety
