Hello everyone
Did you know there’s an easy way to know when a character on TV or in a movie is about to die?
The character will be perfectly healthy and functioning well in their job, but within two or three minutes, that character will be dead.
There’s a tell…
Watch out for any character—usually a very minor character—who shows another character a picture of their child.
if a character shows a photo of their child…
This could be a photo pulled from a wallet or it could be a photo on a phone. Once a character has shown a photo of their child to another character and spoken a few words to characterize the child and show their love for the child, that character’s death is imminent. And typically, they will be dead within about three minutes (of screen time).
…that character is about to die
In most TV shows and movies, there is little need to show a picture of a child, unless the child is the subject of the show. Occasionally, a powerful person (a president or a chief executive) will have a picture of their children on their desk. In these cases, the photo is there to humanize the powerful person.
But the minor character showing a photo is another matter and it’s all about manipulating the viewer.
Manipulation
When a minor character dies—a character who has hardly had any time on screen, a character we know very little about beyond their job title—we typically wouldn’t care very much. Sure, intellectually, we understand that any death matters…but this is not a death that matters to us as viewers because we’re not invested in that character.
However, if we have just been shown that the character is a proud parent who is active in their child’s life, then the emotional resonance of the death is much deeper. We don’t simply see a death—we understand the profound loss that the child will be suffering. The death now matters and feels more consequential.
Why so fast?
So why do these characters die so quickly after showing the photo?
Because the character has to die before we, the viewer, forget that this person is a parent who is involved in their child’s life. If they die ten minutes (screen time ten minutes) after showing the photo, then since we’re dealing with such a minor character, we would have forgotten about them and their parenting, and the death won’t matter as much.
Until August
I’ll be back in August. Until then, if you see someone reaching for a photo of their child, scream at the screen. By showing the picture, the character is just guaranteeing their own demise.
All the best
Simon