EMOTIONAL EVENT
Emotional event isn’t necessarily a new idea in the acting world. A teacher by the name of Judith Weston, who’s method I have studied meticulously, was who introduced it into the world of directing.
It’s something that thickens scenes with emotional context— it’s what gets viewers engaged with the people they see on screen.
To put it simply, emotional events are when characters change in front of us. It’s a direct alteration to the circumstance of their relationship. In the case of our spot, we are witnessing a change in our nurses relationship to their career. In order for us to care about these nurses, we need to show a defining moment.
But we have limited time— short windows with our characters and transition elements... So What I want to do is find an emotional event that we can make common across every scene. One that coincides with our bait and switch VO.
To me, that key emotional event is when our nurses experience something that cements their higher calling. Where our nurses are made to realize that they will never quit— and even more importantly, moments that are inspired by their patients.
If all our scenes centre around the shared outcome of this emotional event, our characters realizing their desire to keep working, it creates a common thread which strengthens the bait and switch of our VO.
Let’s have a chat on this when we follow up, as I know it’s something that requires a bit of wrestling with each of our scenes. But I am confident that it’s this technique which will keep the voice of this spot strong and cohesive.