Today we spent class reviewing an outstanding variety of scenes that Sharif, our editing teacher, collected to demonstrate subtext. In the first and most blatant example, from Annie Hall, the characters’ meaningless chit chat about art and photography is contrasted with their real thoughts - Woody’s sexual interest in Annie and Annie’s self-consciousness - which is provided in subtitles to a very funny effect. In other scenes, the subtext was exposed in the characters faces or in the surrounding elements in the scene or even in odd blocking of the characters in the scene. Some of these scenes demonstrated the amazing ability of superb actors (well directed) to deliver subtext in unbelievably subtle facial expressions, often while barely muttering a word. Subtext comes through the character’s actions and can often make the dialog between the characters virtually irrelevant. The lesson to be learned is that good performances can often be obtained by directing actors to understand the motives of their characters and the subtext being conveyed in a scene. All this is really timely for the scripting of my second film, which is currently making its way from my head to paper, and will rely heavily on subtext. Great stuff, Sharif!