More often than not, a script’s length is not enough to make the characters fully complex and three-dimensional. This happens because the writer is pressed for time to keep the story moving forward and to follow the central plot without many digressions. Exposition, then, is used to add backstory and reveal something about the characters’ pasts that would otherwise be impossible. Exposition comes in many shapes and sizes. Some expand upon a character’s persona; others elaborate the story and some of its elements. The following section will go over the many types of exposition and when they are often used.
Exposition Through Dialogue
The most common way to give exposition is with discourse. A conversation can offer important information about a character’s background.
Early in Little Miss Sunshine (2006), the family comes together in the exposition-packed dinner scene. That scene offers great backstory and explanation on the behavior of many characters: Dwayne (Paul Dano) doesn’t speak because he’s made a vow of silence as an attempt to show his devotion towards becoming a test pilot. Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker and a life coach, who’s been trying get a book published. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell), by far the person that gives the most exciting speech while explaining to Oliver (Abigail Breslin) why he tried to commit suicide, traces back to a ruined academic career and a devastating break-up with the man of his dreams, also revealing his sexual preference.
In L.A. Confidential (1997), a conversation between Sergeant Jack Vincennes (Kevin Spacey) and Lieutenant Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) reveals the reason why Exley became a cop: his dad was shot six times by a criminal who thought he was above the law. To the question “Why'd you become a cop?”, asked by Exley after his poignant discourse, Vincennes simply replies, “I don’t remember.” This dialogue separates both men, as their motivations to become cop were different, implying their opposing senses of justice.
In an early scene from Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), Captain Benjamin L. Willard (Martin Sheen) gets ups from his bed, approaches the window, looks through the blinds, and utters: “Saigon… Shit.” A two-word line is enough to present the location of the movie and Willard’s overall satisfaction about being there.
Exposition Through Mise-En-Scene
A less used but equally acceptable method is exposition through the creative use of décor and props. Any object that bares information on a character can be considered expository. A certificate on the wall may indicate that so-and-so is a lawyer or a doctor. Photographs can denote past involvement by a group of people.
In one scene from Danish short film The Charming Man (Der Er En Yndig Mand, 2002), Lars Hansen (Martin Buch) is shown applying for a job. While filling out an application form, he checks the “single” box, thus establishing his relationship status.
Filmmaker's Insight:
High Noon (1952)
Notice the grime and dust on the wall, where the flag was. This careful construct of the set implies that the judge has been there in that office for some time. But now that Frank Miller is coming, the judge is leaving. It may indeed be just a detail, but the grime and dust communicate something. Moreover, the judge's gesture indicate that the proceedings are serious and potentially dengerous. Thus, he is running away.
This is visual storytelling. The judge could have said something like "I've been in this town for five years... Now I must leave." But instead, this information is suggested through the eleborate mise-en-scène and his actions. This allows the dialogue to be more powerful by not being redundant.
Exposition Through Text
The most obvious type of exposition is through the use of text or title cards. This incarnation is purely expository and rarely dramatic.
A famous example is the static title card followed the crawling text in the intro to George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977). The title card first introduces the time and space:
The subsequent crawling text establishes organizations (the evil Galactic Empire) and characters (Princess Leia). For a movie this ingenious, these title cards are a welcomed device.
A simpler version of text exposition is “once upon a time” or “three months later.”
Texts are also preferred when exposition on a more formal matter is necessary. Quentin Tarantino makes good use of it in the beginning of Pulp Fiction (1994), when a title card defines the word “pulp.”
Exposition Through Narration
Narration is one of the most emotional ways to give exposition. Narrators can be either an omniscient, disembodied person that sees all, or they can be characters that exist in the world of the movie, sometimes narrating their own story, sometimes narrating others’ stories.
In The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Red (Morgan Freeman) describes how he sees Andy (Tim Robbins) – a technique that allows for a better scrutiny of Andy’s persona. If Andy were talking about himself, the narration would come out as awkward. But Red offers a third-person view that matches the one of the audience. Also, since Red had been in prison longer, he can impart knowledge about life behind bars and predict what Andy is going through:
RED: “The first night's the toughest, no doubt about it. They march you in naked as the day you were born, skin burning and half blind from that delousing shit they throw on you, and when they put you in that cell... and those bars slam home... that's when you know it's for real. A whole life blown away in the blink of an eye. Nothing left but all the time in the world to think about it.”
Note that the voice-over allows for a more poetic tone of the descriptions (“naked as the day you’re born” and “those bars slam home”). Writing narration requires talent. The writer must never be redundant to the point where he shows and says the same thing. Crafty narration enhances picture and elaborates the story.
In Billy Wilder’s The Apartment (1960), C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) opens the movies with a humorous narration about the population of New York, narrowing it down to the company for which he works and, finally, himself, disclosing his work hours and even salary.
Jane Campion’s The Piano (1993) brings a twist to the norm. The main character, Ada (Holly Hunter) is mute, but she’s also the narrator:
ADA: “The voice you hear is not my speaking voice – but my mind's voice. I have not spoken since I was six years old. No one knows why. Not even me.”
In all the films above, the narrators are also characters in the movie, thus having influence on the plot. The other type of the narrator is the omniscient or disembodied narrator, who’s not part of the filmic world, but that “knows all.”
Network (1976) opens with a lengthy exposition by a disembodied narrator. The 2-minute narration condenses more than six years of the character’s live. Observe how much information and backstory is revealed in so little time:
NARRATOR: “This story is about Howard Beale, who was the news anchorman on UBS TV. In his time, Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television, the grand old man of news, with a HUT rating of 16 and a 28 audience share.
In 1969, however, his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year, his wife died, and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share. He became morose and isolated, began to drink heavily, and on September 22, 1975, he was fired, effective in two weeks.
The news was broken to him by Max Schumacher, who was the president of the news division at UBS. The two old friends got properly pissed.”
Exposition Through Flashback
Another alternative is exposition through flashback, a method less used and quite often unwelcomed. Flashbacks can be powerful systems of exposition when done right. However, the overuse of this approach has eclipsed good storytelling in so many occasions that the safest bet is exposition through either dialogue or text.
Flashbacks should be used mainly to replace major story moments that cannot be reduced to a simple conversation.
Casablanca (1942), for instance, has a lengthy flashback that shows how Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) met, plus the romance they lived in Paris. There’s no way an exposition so long would be accomplished with such mastery through dialogue – flashback was indeed necessary.
Another possibility for flashback is when a character thinks something so intimate that he or she doesn’t talk about it. In The Silence of the Lambs (1991), a couple of flashbacks show Clarice’s (Jodie Foster) memories with her dad.
Exposition Through Music
Unquestionably the rarest manifestation of exposition and likely the one that will not be called for by the writer, exposition through music is often dynamic and exciting.
Notably, during the initial credits of High Noon (1952), the Academy Award winning-song Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling plays and introduces the plot:
Do not forsake me O my darlin'
On this our wedding day.
Do not forsake me O my darlin'
Wait, wait along.
The noonday train will bring Frank Miller.
If I'm a man I must be brave
And I must face that deadly killer
Or lie a coward, a craven coward,
Or lie a coward in my grave.
Remarkably, before any of the characters utter a single word, the second stanza from the song already establishes the premise: A deadly killer is coming in the noonday train, and the main character must kill him or die.
Final Words...
More often than not, expositions detract the progression of the story. Therefore, they must be used sparingly only when necessary according to the reasons mentioned above.
Film Trivia
During principal photography of The Silence of the Lambs, director Jonathan Demme and his crew were ready to fly to Montana to shoot the flashback of a young Clarice attempting to runaway, when, after shooting the dialogue between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), in which Starling mentions the runaway attempt, Demme realized there was no point in cutting to another location when the exposition worked so well through the actors’ acting and dialogue, so he canceled the flight. In this case, less was more.
The main purpose of exposition is to transform characters into 3-dimentional creatures by the elaboration of backstory. However, sometimes exposition can be used to foreshadow or justify someone’s skills or behavior. In Thelma and Louise (1991), Louise (Susan Sarandon) shows great fear towards going to Texas, a place that brings undisclosed bad memories to her. It is later implied (but never assured) that Louise was raped in Texas, which explains why she shot the man that was seconds away from raping Thelma during the first plot point. In this case, a later exposition validates an earlier act .
