I am working on a script where I use VO as a thoughts and story sharing with another character. The question is: should I call the scenes I am showing a FLASHBACK or not. My character talks in NY but the story starts earlier in a different country and continues inNY… I don't know if it sounds clear enough. (
Screenwriting : VO and Flashbacks by Yelena Demikovsky
VO and Flashbacks
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From Script.com, Dave Trottier, the writer of "The Screenwriter's Bible" wrote this article titled "All ABout Flashbacks": http://www.scriptmag.com/features/flashbacks?et_mid=735837&rid=249273703. The article and links at the bottom may help.
Thank you! Yes, I know this site but it still doesn't answer my question. A character starts talking in PRESENT then continues on and off. Meanwhile the story starts a little earlier than she starts telling it and then continues until that very point when she starts telling it. Should I call those scenes FLASHBACKS or only those which happened a few days earlier and then stop calling ALL the other scenes FLASHBACKS since they have been happening just before that… She is not describing them. There are mostly her thoughts about her life in VO. Oh boy… I probably have been so unclear that I don't know how to explain it(((( THANKS EVERYONE!
No, don't call those scenes flashbacks. So if I'm understanding this correctly, you're opening the story about a girl, but a woman is narrating it. Then you're moving forward with the girl's life until you reach the point where the girl grows up to become the woman which is speaking. That's just simply telling a straight forward story from past to present, no flashbacks are needed. Now if you get to the present and then GO BACK to when she was a kid, then yes that would indeed need a "flashback" slug so we understand. I hope that helps.
Don't use Flashback if the structure is as you've described: a narrator in the present telling us a story that we then see from the past. This is a fairly standard approach in contemporary cinema -- though not necessarily recommended for a screenwriter's first spec script.