Some prankster posted this silly, yet ingenious, video
on Youtube; it's a trailer for slapstick Robin Williams cross-dressing
comedy Mrs Doubtfire, sinisterly recut as a psychological thriller. Mrs
Doubtfire could never be accused of being serious or dark in any way,
but with careful editing and some dramatic/ scary music and heavy
breathing on the soundtrack, the film appears 100% different to the
finished product. It adds yet another string to Mrs Doubtfire's bow as
the greatest film of the 90s.
It's
amazing how little you have to do to completely shift an audience's
perception of something, and shows how important it is to strike the
right tone to get your message across. There are tons of little things
that might affect somebody's reading of literature, from what they've
read in the past to their own life experiences, and you can never truly
know how anybody is going to take an idea or plot. I've written stories
and people have completely missed the point I was trying to make, or
reached an entirely separate conclusion. Mostly this has been my fault
because I thought things were obvious when they weren't, since the story
in my head is so much bigger than the words that make it onto the page.
It's hard to put yourself in a reader's shoes, coming at the story
fresh rather than having read it fifty times and edited it to death, to
put the right number of clues in to make your meaning clear, but not
overdo it and spoonfeed your message. Writing is difficult!
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