Notes on Notes: In the Theatre

Hi, Jacob Earl inveterate movie talker here. Do you find yourself talking all the time and driving everyone around you nuts for your whole life, like your mouth is almost controlled by a totally different person? Leaning over to your friend saying “she’s the actress from this other movie” or “Oh no they’re brothers” destroying the experience for your closest friends and family?

I find that I get these thoughts and I cannot focus on the next thing that happens unless I express them. In college I started taking notes in movies and I found it much easier to focus on whats going on. My brain registers writing as a kind of talking, and instead of leaning over and pointing out how this bit mirrors this other bit I can write it down and let that thought keep until I return for it. I also find that I can remember things better for some reason.

These are just guidelines but:

what should you be writing down while watching a movie?

  1. The Things That Are Happening In The Movie

Anything that is happening in the movie, as it happens. movies are a sequential medium, things happen one after another, purposefully. Remembering that they got to the city, then got the phone call, might be important. This can be tricky for some people though b/c they get bogged down noting every little thing that happens. There’s a feel to it. Big surprises, stuff that feels like it setting something up for later (music cues) character introductions, deaths, betrayals. Stuff like that. Movies are a text and texts are written in language. How does this movie use the language of cinema?

  1. Anything You Feel You Need To Say Out Loud

Theres a long history of talking in movies and theres nothing inherently wrong with that. Read the room if you can. But I like to think that a whisper is momentary and a pen is eternal — you’re essentially displacing that whisper to later when you’re talking with your friend afterwards about the movie, (Or if you went alone, to your letterboxd review) And you look smart b/c you have it on paper. If you do have a discussion with friends afterwards I find people get a kick out of seeing the thing they just said on a piece of paper you took out of your pocket.

  1. Cast of Characters

I’m bad at remembering character names so I usually write something like “Jane Lynch — The Mom “ so in my notes when I refer to The Mom I know I mean Jane Lynch and not her mom, who hadn’t been introduced at that point.

Practical Advice

Get a watch with a face that lights up (not a digital watch but a regular watch), a ball point pen that doesn’t click, and a small notebook of unlined paper. Gel pens are better than regular ballpoint b/c the lines cleaner. A watch with a face that lights up when you depress the crown is basically the perfect balance b/t a book-light (too bright, even with diffusion, usually if they’re portable enough they’re flimsy and unreliable) and waiting for the movie to be bright enough to see the paper by (movies are really dark now). If you exclusively watch movies at the Alamo Drafthouse — First, lucky, but second the Alamo is designed to allow you to write during the movie b/c you have to place orders at the seat, on little cards. so every seat has a great little light and mini desk. go to your local Alamo and take home one of their order cards and try and get a notebook about that size. Everywhere else you have to plan ahead a little. As the notebook you choose for this get bigger in size the easier it becomes to write in, but the more important it becomes for it to be hardback which is unsubtle and unwieldy.

  • A clipboard seems like a good idea but is too big for theatrical deployment, you really want to aim in size for something that can fit in a standard jean pocket, you don’t want people to think you’re smuggling in a flask.
  • a fountain pen is impossible to write with in the dark unless it has an ergonomic grip of some kind that identifies which way is up
  • pencils are good, but they have a couple problems for this application, a standard wood pencil will either scratch the paper or need to be sharpened. Or if its something nice and soft, it may smudge or wear down too fast. A mechanical pencil needs to be filled, may jam, and click as much or more than a ballpoint. I used to only use mechanical pencils for this but they’re just not reliable enough and can be distracting.

creating a system

  • This is only FOR you and only has to make sense to you. Take a shot on a random netflix shovelware movie and take notes like it’s a new Scorsese to get a feel for where your failings are, and work to those. Are you great at names? Where do you find yourself feeling bored? Can you hear musical themes? It’s easier to take notes on a bad movie, b/c if it’s poorly made it doesn’t sweep you up in the fiction and the questions sort of come unbidden like, “Why did someone make this” and “Why am I allowed to see this” and “what kind of psychopath would make this” which are also good prompts for a good movie but if you’re meshing with the production more you might not notice them.
  • writing in the dark is difficult verging on impossible but it gets a lot easier if you just don’t lift your pen off the paper. This becomes a problem if you can’t actually write in cursive but as long as you can read it or PUZZLE IT OUT you’ll be okay. Practice writing without looking at the page.
  • continuity is key. keeping a good feeling of where words are on the page, — overwritten is deleted UNLESS you’re writing alternately in pen and pencil. which is a lot to keep track of unless you’re watching a marvel movie. I keep track by using my thumb as a marker of how far down the page I am.
  • What is the final product here? to pay attention to movies more? To learn how movies are made? Are you writing a review for the local paper or the nerds on the forums? Are you just looking for a pithy joke to get cred? Trying to explain at your dad exactly why his favourite movie is bad? These are all legitimate reasons to want to take notes during a movie. It’s easy to get self-conscious and feel like this is a pretentious1 thing to do. There’s nothing pretentious about expressing yourself or taking an opportunity to learn something. Remember, no one is watching you. Unless you’re anxiously clicking a ballpoint all through a tense foreign thriller.
  • in situ notes might be all you need but maybe you’re more about the reflection afterwards. Devoting a page to a reflection/proto-review might be worthwhile. I find I understand a movie a LOT better after I bother my friends about it at pizza afterwards and essentially re-synthesize (i.e. steal) their good opinions. But maybe you’re on your own. Pop Culture Happy Hour or The Letterboxd Show probably has an episode on it, if it’s a new release. See if you agree (or more interestingly, disagree) with any of the opinions they lay out so you can see your own opinion clearer.

prompts

  • Bored: you’re not being graded on this. Finish the movie but write down “bored at -1:15:45” or whatever.
  • what was the director going for? Movies are made for money but that’s not the only reason. There was some impetus here, can you find any shadows of it?
  • Whats the plot and what other things (especially non-movie things) is the plot like? If it’s a repertory showing does it call forward to something from after it was released? Try not to fall too deep into TVTropes territory.
  • how fast are the edits? Where does it change?
  • how many different kinds of shots are they using? What are they avoiding? when? when does this pattern break?
  • why was this story told NOW? Is it a version of some other story updated for today, or is it created by this moment?

pitfalls

Sometimes you can get too involved in writing. This is more easily avoided by watching a movie in the dark, but if you’re watching it at home in a pleasant twilight you can spend more time looking at your notes than at the movie. Remember:

  • there is no output here
  • you are not being graded
  • you are watching a movie for fun or obligation, not to produce a page of notes.

  1. I’ll cover “pretentious” another day I hate the way people use claims of pretention to shut down self expression or the using of ones brain. ↩︎

Essay