Research: Flashbacks

Flashbacks

A flashback is a scene that takes the narrative of the film back in time from the perspective of a chosen character, often used to recount events which happen before the primary sequence of the story to fill in crucial backstory developing or giving a deeper insight into a character. 

Examples of flashbacks are in films and movies such as Bedlam, Star Trek, Robocop, Terminator, Old boy and other major hollywood movies. Flashbacks are often edited by stringing together a sequence of events with a white blur or whitish glowy effect around the video to make it distringusible as a flashback. Or the movement of the events would be very sporadic and glitchy to show the process in how the character is remembering the events.

 This is generally what a scene would look like when shown as a flashback, the white effect layered over with other colours gives the effect of a fog. Flashbacks are often used also when a character has amnesia and has lost his/her memory recently, relying only on spontaneous flashbacks to piece together their memory and the events that unfolded before losing their memory. In this case the fog type effect is a perfect way to convey a flashback as the fog represents the shroud in which the character is unable to voluntarily recall such events and so everything is a mystery.

 However flashback scenes do not always have to be edited a certain type of way, Oldboy does a good job of showing that as once the man is holding onto a hand he remembers the time he held "soo-ah's' hand in the past to try and save her. Oldboy simply uses a stock video after an event but has a clear distringuisable way of recognising that it is a flashback, the hand holding. I think incorporating flashbacks into our final movie is something that we should consider as replicating the effect itself isn't hard (you will see from my practical) and allows the audience to see things through the perspective of a character strengthening the connection between them making the movie that much more enjoyable and immersive.