Thought bubbles

To my mind, the most interesting point in this account of the producers of The Blacklist are finishing off their mostly-in-the-can-already season of TV with a little help from animators) comes towards the end:

Did you want to channel the comic-book aesthetic specifically?

EISENDRATH: [...] In live action, you would have been able to read more of the emotional wheel turning in her head. We didn’t necessarily think that animation would be able to access her inner thinking, so we added a chyron.

BOKENKAMP: We realized, "Oh, wait! That’s within the rule book." Comics can do thought bubbles. That was sort of a light bulb moment for us. We realized that as we went along that we should take advantage of every comic book trope that we could think of, to help the viewer.

EISENDRATH: Maybe we should keep the thought bubbles when we go back to live action! [Laughs]

"We should take advantage of every comic book trope that we could think of, to help the viewer." Sounds so innocuous: chyrons signalling what the characters are thinking. What could possibly go wrong?1

Hopefully actors and screenwriters will join forces and reject the damn-fool idea out of hand.

[Via Scripting News Daily Links]


  1. I get that the producer is kidding. That's the sort of joke that risks getting into the wrong hands and turning into an unstoppable blight on our TV. Kill it with fire, now!