Creating Original Characters, Themes, and Visual Metaphors for Your Digital Short Film

This chapter is from the book

Developing Digital Short Films

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This chapter is from the book

This chapter is from the book 

Developing Digital Short Films

Learn More Buy

Using Metaphors and Symbols to Tell Stories

Movies themselves are metaphors for how humans experience life on a deeper level. Creating a unique language of metaphors and symbols for your film is a big part of being a visual storyteller. Symbolic images help us to understand abstract concepts that cannot always be translated into words. I use the word metaphor to encompass metaphor, symbol, motifs, and leit motifs for the remainder of this book to simplify things.

Metaphor = Action/Sound. Visual or auditory representation of a separate action, experience, or idea. A character blows out (action) a candle in a bedroom to show death of a loved one.

Symbol = Object/Sound. Visual or auditory representation of another object. The candle (object) is in the shape of a ballerina to show grace and beauty.

Motifs = Collections. Collections of related metaphors or symbols used to represent a related concept. Lights or flames going on and off to show life or death states throughout a film.

Leit Motifs = Repetition. The repetition of identical metaphors or symbols to represent a greater concept. The color of the candle is gold (valuable color), along with other gold symbolic objects and activities in each scene to show the overall concept of what is valuable in a character's life.

Figure 2.20 When my main character accomplishes her plot goal of completing her vision quest, she tattoos herself with a symbolic brand she saw in her shamanic journey. This symbol helps us see that she has undergone a great transformation. What types of symbols or metaphors can you include in your story to show whether your characters achieve their plot and theme goals?

Where to Place Metaphors and Symbols in Your Story

Metaphors and symbols can be used to develop plot, theme, and character in deeper ways visually. As a filmmaker, you need to create a unique metaphorical language in your story. You may want to practice taking different storytelling techniques in this book and seeing how you could apply them in metaphorical ways. If you want to show character history, you could have the character doing a metaphorical scene activity from the past, such as a martial arts meditation. You may want to place certain symbolic objects in key scenes, like pictures from exotic travels. The following list will help you think of ideas on where to place metaphorical activities or symbolic objects in your story to help develop plot, theme, and character:

1. Objects/props. Household items, flags, T-shirts, games, art in room, statues, furniture style, shape of windows, magazines, pictures, weapons, wall hangings, books, instruments, pets, cars, people, houses.

2. Music/sounds. Background sounds, songs, atmospheric music bed, music in scenes, street noises, weather sounds, sirens, people crying/laughing/ screaming in the next room, weird unexplainable sounds, heaters, equipment, natural sounds, animals, event sounds. Conceptual narrative sound design and auditory metaphors are covered in Chapter 7, "Narrative Sound Design."

3. Color. The color of everything in the frame may mean something. Refer to the color section in this book to explore some meanings associated with each basic color. Carefully choose colors for everything in each scene, including for costumes, sets, lights, cars, hair color, makeup, props, sky, fur, and weather. If your theme had a color, what would it be? Chapter 6, "Mise En Scène for the Twenty-First Century," covers the use of symbolic color in more detail.

4. Words. Heard in dialogue or appearing on sets or otherwise onscreen (pop-up bubbles to indicate thought, subtitles, and so on). Posters in the background, titles, onscreen text with background info, poems, fables, stories inside stories, signs, subtitles for slang, graffiti, product names on packages, license plates, bumper stickers, billboards, song lyrics, street names, character names, location, event lingo, speeches, slang, vocabulary, dialect, cultural misinterpretations, multiple meaning for some words, word puzzles, T-shirt sayings.

5. Sets. Location as character. What does the setting say about the mood of each scene? A conversation in a junkyard has a different context than one at the top of the Eiffel Tower. National monuments, natural settings (swamps, waterfalls, caves, rivers, ocean, desert), cities with different personalities, small-town local flavor, visual themes, types of businesses, geographical themes, amusements parks, clubs, bars, graveyards, temples, stores, abstract interpretations of the Internet, art galleries, circus tents, fantasy places.

6. Character types. People who represent the theme or plot to the extreme (positive or negative, even an extreme mix of the two). Costumes, stereotypes, fashion preferences, cultural backgrounds, accents, jewelry, uniforms, piercings, tattoos, hats, clothes, masks, T-shirt sayings.

7. Lighting. Colored lights, light sources, brightness, lighting subjects specific to metaphor. Good characters may be in bright light, whereas evil characters may be darkly lit. Quality of light (time of day as a metaphor). Glowing around certain characters, face-lighting strategies to evoke emotion, source of light (sun, spaceship, flaming building) as metaphor, spinning ambulance lighting in room to represent emergency situation.

8. Staging. Placement of characters and metaphoric objects inside the frame to represent relationships. Where are your characters in relationship to each other metaphorically? You could have three characters who form a love triangle standing around a fire to represent a secret affair about to be uncovered. What metaphoric items surround the characters? Are they talking while walking through a field of sunflowers or in between cactuses? What metaphoric objects could you place between characters to show relationships or emotional states during a scene? Two characters on opposite sides of the frame with knives hanging on the wall between them may represent conflicting emotions. How could you use a series of staging metaphor shots to show relationships? In Citizen Kane, one of Kane's marriages dissolves in front of our eyes as, in a few quick match cuts, Kane and his wife sit farther and farther away from each other at bigger and bigger dinner tables.

9. Fables. How could you interject little stories into scenes to show plot, theme, or character? You might want to have just pictures of parable characters or allude to them visually through stuffed animals, statues, paintings, cartoons, or drawings on the set. Try to think of new ways to incorporate parables visually into your films. Perhaps you could make your own little cartoon fable to play on a TV in the background during a scene. You might make up your own original Aesop-type fable, which the characters could discuss, see in a play or on TV, read in a book, hear about in dialogue, or be relayed by a magical object. In the Crying Game, the theme of how you can't change your basic nature is developed by the characters talking about the frog and scorpion fable in each of the three acts. The frog agrees to give the scorpion a ride across the lake, but then gets stung.

10. Symbol dictionaries. You may want to start collecting resources for metaphors, such as symbol or dream dictionaries, to help you tap into universal subconscious visual metaphors. Listed here are some examples of symbols and possible meanings. Record your own favorite symbols and what they mean to you for use in your films.

Figure 2.22 I/O Error. In this short film by Michael Dougan, he uses the metaphor of twin boys to show the theme of how two opposing sides of a person cannot coexist peacefully. One boy is good, and one is evil. Triplet actors were used for the little boys, and compositing techniques in post were used to duplicate the adult actor who plays the grown men.

Figure 2.23 During the opening shots of Citizen Kane, we are drawn up to a point of light as we get closer and closer to the window of the room in which Kane is dying. When he dies, the light goes out. This is a good use of metaphoric lighting to represent story events. How could you use a similar technique in your story?

Figure 2.24 This symbol, worn around the neck of a character, was created by taking an ahnk and turning it upside down to show strange religious beliefs. The shape of a flying saucer was laid over the cross to symbolize alien creators. How can you take two symbols and combine their meanings and shapes to make a unique one for your film?

1. Numbers. Sacred geometry is universal and will help you plan story elements using numbers as metaphors. You could have a character say he has seven (often associated with being lucky) dreams about an upcoming event. Or use the corresponding geometry and shapes when constructing your scenes, such as having seven colored stones on an altar that a character uses to pray for things.

2. Juxtaposition. Show the audience one metaphor or symbol, then another, and have them draw a third separate conclusion from the two. Chapter 8, "Preproduction Story-Editing Choices," covers in depth ways to use juxtaposition.

Number	Symbolic Meaning
1	Number "1," top of group, circle, wholeness, center, unity, oneself, independence, single purpose, universe, equality, seed, stable, father, intolerance, stubbornness
2	Partnership, duality, indecision, balance, 2 sides, opposites, relationships, root, mother, indecision, indifference, making choices
3	Third time a charm, things always come in 3s, 2 failures to 1 success, triangle, harmony, freedom, completion, relationship/balance, holy divinity, power, God's halo
4	Square, strength, stability, Mother Earth, heart, 4 directions, 4 elements, grounded, clumsiness, dull
5	Human body, 5 senses, stars, leaves, communication, nature, footprints, regeneration, vortex, authority (five-star general/sheriff star) spiral/transformation (the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz begins as a golden spiral (based on 5) to symbolize transformation).
6	Structure, balance, order, function, time, weights, intuition, practical
7	Magical, God, spiritual, cycles, excellence, myth, luck, musical harmony, crystals, rainbow, chakras, religion, virgin, dreams, voices, sounds, higher self, levels
8	Renewal, death/resurrection, nourishing, resonance, cosmic breath, chessboard, moon phases, limitless growth, goddess, traveling between higher and lower worlds (spider), atom groups, natural vibration
9	Completion, spiritual awareness, pregnancy, gift, highest attainment, ocean, horizon, ultimate extension, worship, essential elements, cosmic ruler
10	New beginning, high honor, whole family, perfect, top score
11	Master number, mystical, gateway, higher dimensions, higher consciousness

Figure 2.25 According to Norse mythology, horses could understand the will of the gods. Odin rode an eight-legged stallion called Sleipnir. The eight from our number chart symbolizes the ability to go between worlds (like spiders with eight legs). This combination of number and symbol works well for this myth. How could you combine established metaphors to create original ones? How could you use your digital tools to create new visual metaphors? It would be interesting to see an eight-legged 2D or 3D animated horse.

Figure 2.26 This Bigfoot biting the head off of a raven (death) could be a metaphor to foreshadow a close brush with death or a metaphor for overcoming the fear of death.

Using Visual Metaphors to Show Character History

Metaphors and symbols are a great way to develop your character history. Go through your character history questions and see how you could show the important points using metaphors.

Figure 2.27 Clocks are sometimes shown going haywire when something in the film world is out of synch. What other types of ordinary symbolic objects or metaphors could you play with visually to show the state of your film world changing?

Using Visual Metaphors to Show Backstory

Metaphors are great to develop the backstory for your film without having to explain everything.

Using Visual Metaphors to Show Character Traits

Metaphors are great tools to use when developing character traits.

Figure 2.28 This sacred Bigfoot cave has symbolic paintings on the walls that tell the history of the clan (to develop backstory information).

Using Visual Metaphors to Show Character States

Mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and intellectual states of characters should be expressed through metaphoric and symbolic cues. An object may be present in the scene to symbolize a character's state or the character may say something that gives us a clue.

In Transit, the Venice hotel room has clothes all over the floor, symbolizing how messed up Emmy's life has become with Oscar. She has a black eye, too. These visual clues let us know her character state in the scene. In the Baden-Baden scene with her husband, the hotel room is perfectly neat—with separate twin beds symbolizing the state of their marriage. How can you use symbols like this to show us character states in each scene?

Figure 2.29 This Bigfoot finally snaps one day during a date and punches a hole through a tree. How could you show your characters having uncontrollable outbursts or overwhelming emotional moments that cause them to change suddenly in your film?

Using Visual Metaphors/ Symbols with Nature Shots

In the animated short Transit, we see subtitles of what happens to the characters at the end. When the information comes up about Emmy being missing and her body never found, an ominous shark fin glides by the floating suitcase in the water and then the suitcase sinks. This symbolizes foul play is involved in her disappearance; after all, sharks can eat people and leave no clues. A puddle of blood then forms on the surface of the water, letting us know that Oscar killed her, cut her up, and threw her body overboard in the suitcase. All of this information is conveyed with simple text on the screen and a shark fin moving around a symbolic suitcase covered with travel stickers from the places they had visited together.

Figure 2.30 Mutant bugs and snails in a toxic waste dump cave could be used to show the dangerous effects of chemicals on living organisms.

Using Metaphors and Symbols to Show Theme

As discussed earlier, metaphors and symbols are great ways to show theme in subtle ways. You could turn your characters into animated animals or use some of your digital tools to invent new types of metaphoric characters. What other ways can you use metaphors and symbols to show themes in your film?

David Lynch is a master of cinematic metaphor. All of his films, and the TV show Twin Peaks, are worth studying for how they handle metaphor in bold, simple, and original ways. He is particularly good at creating personal metaphors and symbols. An opening scene in the film Fire Walk with Me takes place at an airport (new beginnings); this sets up the whole film. A dancing girl in a red dress comes out and does a quick pantomime, but says nothing, as the three detectives carefully watch. Later on in the car, one detective asks the more experienced one what the dancing girl meant. Below is a chart breaking down the metaphors and symbols of the "dancing girl" scene. The audience would never understand the meaning of this symbolic language unless the characters explain them, which makes the metaphors a personal creation of the filmmaker.

The theme of the movie is that in the search for meaning, you cannot know everything and nothing is what it seems, which is wonderfully illustrated with the use of visual metaphors and symbols. Detectives as characters are metaphors for solving a mystery, such as solving life's mysteries, which is part of the theme of the film. Theme and metaphor are often tied together very closely in visual stories.

This scene is interesting because of the original use of metaphors and symbols. If the film would have started in an office with the detectives talking about the case, it would have been flat, uninteresting, cliché, and boring. The startling use of personal metaphors in this film pull us into the story, much like a puzzle we need to solve to understand what is happening.

Figure 2.31 This bluescreened character is floating over a motion graphics timeline animation of his life as a dream. How could you create an original dream sequence in a film using digital tools? Maybe you could build a surreal dreamscape in a 3D or 2D photo collage, and use bluescreened characters flying or drifting over areas.

Creating Film Puzzles with Metaphors

Films are like puzzles and people like to try and figure things out in their heads. What was "Rosebud" a metaphor for in Citizen Kane? This is the dying Kane's last word at the start of the film, and the rest of the movie is a search to discover who or what Rosebud was about. Film geeks continue to argue about the true meaning of "Rosebud" whenever the subject comes up.

How can you put a puzzling aspect in your film to make it more engaging? Can you ask some type of visual question or create a visual puzzle? In Memento, the main character is trying to figure out who killed his wife, which gets pretty messy and confusing because he cannot remember anything for more than 10 minutes. Polaroid pictures serve as the metaphoric puzzle pieces this character uses to try and put his past back together. The answer to both these film puzzles are still not very clear even by the end of the films. Sometimes it is more interesting not to solve everything for the audience and let them figure it out for themselves (or continue to question).

Figure 2.32 Metaphoric Puzzles. Orson Wells gives us an extreme close-up of Kane's last word, "Rosebud," which serves as the mystery puzzle to be solved in the film.

Film Puzzle Ideas to Get You Started

Working with Positive and Negative Theme Charges

Another way to work with metaphor and theme is to play back and forth between negative and positive manifestations throughout the film.

Different characters often represent different perspectives on the same theme. If you are doing a theme on loyalty among gangsters, you could have one super-loyal gangster, one who is playing two different crime families against each other, and some people who go back and forth between loyalty and disloyalty. What happens to these characters shows us your theme. If the super-loyal character gets rich and the two-timing one dies horribly, loyalty is a good thing. If the super-loyal gangster gets killed and the disloyal one wins the big prize, loyalty is not important or is even a bad thing in your film world.

Characters themselves can be great metaphors for themes.

The main character in Kafka's Metamorphosis wakes up one day as a cockroach. How can you play with transforming your character types to showcase your theme better? Digital tools and animation techniques make it easier to turn characters into bugs or other metaphoric creatures. Harvey is a 10-minute short film from Australia with a character that is literally sawed in half (3D effect) looking for his better half or ideal relationship (a great use of visual metaphor with digitally enhanced original character design). How could you use DV effects or 2D/3D animation to metaphorically show your characters in a new way?

What type of metaphor can each of your characters represent in your film world? What do the characters do for a living, how do they dress, what kind of cars do they drive, where do they live?

Themes sometimes represent best dreams or worst flaws. Who is destroyed? Who grows? What special quality in the protagonist helps him achieve his goals? In Lily and Jim, both main characters want a relationship, but both of them have pretty ineffective communication skills (worst flaw and theme).

Using Visual Metaphors to Develop Theme

The theme, or unspoken moral message of the story, needs to be carefully handled. You must make sure the audience gets the theme on some level, but not be too preachy (a delicate balance). Metaphors provide a great way to communicate theme while telling your story visually.

You can use existing metaphors or create your own original visual metaphoric language for your film. Suppose that you are doing a film on the theme of greed. You might have all the really greedy characters wearing green, talking about money, clinging cash registers in the background, characters using greed-type slang such as "time is money," people in the background chasing blowing dollar bills, or a lead character counting his money as he delivers his lines. The best approach for developing visual metaphors and symbols is to create a list of possible ideas and then see which ones you can play with without being too obvious or preachy.

Figure 2.33 A character falling into a bottomless pit could be metaphoric for diving into the unconscious. The theme of my film is that every living being has a specific purpose. The theme goal of my protagonist is to find her purpose by learning to trust her intuition. Showing her falling into a pit is a good way to symbolize going deep inside to find her purpose and trust the hidden parts of her intuition.

The opening shot of the film Memento shows a fresh Polaroid picture as it develops. It takes a moment for viewers to realize that the film is rolling backward—the picture is becoming less clear the longer we watch it. This is a great visual symbol for the theme of the way we reconstruct memory and how what we remember fades and changes over time. This whole film is told backward in short memory bursts because the main character can remember things for only 10 minutes at a time. Polaroids are the way this character keeps track of who people are and what he thinks is happening. The opening shot tells us a great deal about the character, plot, and theme in a stunningly original visual metaphor that is both simple and deeply complex at the same time.

When you really understand your main characters, metaphors, and theme, it is much easier to develop the events in your story and write your script. Building up original characters is like creating new beings in the world who start to take on a life of their own inside your imagination. Creating strong metaphors and themes will make your story deeper and help you choose visual designs that fit the ideas you are presenting.

Figure 2.34 Ezzie stole a video cell phone from a camper and likes to crank call the speed dial people and scare them with her big furry face and ferocious roar. Sometimes during the film, she calls different people on the phone and asks for help or advice, or does something silly. This helps show a connection between the Bigfoot film world and the human world. A Bigfoot using a video phone could be interpreted as a metaphor for the way technology is trickling down into the masses and changing our lives in unexpected ways. This idea could be used as a subplot device in an animated series where the character steals a different phone each week and talks to a new cast of speed dial people. How could you incorporate a unique digital storytelling approach in your film as a symbol or metaphor for theme? Maybe your character could consult his PDA–playing DV video clips you create to show a higher power guiding him through the story. What other digitally enhanced gizmos could you use to tell us a story in a new way?