Have you ever heard of the terms “Red Herring” or  “McGuffin”? These are just two storytelling terms used in movies and books to reveal – or not – plot points and characters in the story.

A Red Herring is something in a story that has no relevance to the story, except to make the audience wonder where it might fit into the plot later. Sometimes, the audience might not even notice it except as some background item or back-story, but usually it’s predominant enough to make the viewer/reader think that it has something to do with solving the puzzle that will be revealed in time.

In actuality, a “Red Herring” is a real herring fish that, once smoked, gets red in color and has a heavy fishy scent, thus it’s presence is obvious to anyone around. Sometimes a Red Herring in a movie is used just for fun, other times it’s a serious point in the story’s plot.

Agatha Christie,  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ["Sherlock Holmes"] and Alfred Hitchcock were known to use Red Herring techniques a lot to keep their audiences from realizing who the real culprit in the story was. Those storytellers were great artists at meandering and twisting a story along and the Red Herring wasn’t as obvious or annoying as are some in the more current movies.

M. Night Shyamalan (“I see dead people”) is the master of a well-placed Red Herring. “Shutter Island”, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, opens with a Red Herring when DiCaprio travels to the island in search of a missing inmate from an insane asylum.

Red Herrings are often found in a different form in situation comedies, particularly those from the 1960s-1980s where the audience is in on the joke: someone on the show over hears something in the wrong context, and the rest of the show’s 22-minutes is spent unraveling the error.

Movie terms are fun to discuss and learn more about, and when I first learned about Red Herrings in some college creative writing class I thought it was a clever idea. Lately, though, I just get annoyed because some movies use it so badly, or so obviously, that I can figure out that the object is meaningless within the first 10 minutes.

A McGuffin, however, is often the entire purpose of the movie. Unlike a Red Herring, which is to distract, the McGuffin might subtly surround the plot and the viewer might not be aware of it. George Lucas said R2-D2 was the McGuffin in “Star Wars: A New Hope” as the entire movie revolved around the good guys keeping the little robot out of the hands of the Empire, and Darth Vadar’s unyielding search to find the ‘droid.

Alfred Hitchcock is attributed as the first to popularize the term “McGuffin” in movie lingo. A McGuffin is used to put an object or plot element into the movie to distract viewers or move the plot along with the idea that this item is of importance, but like a Red Herring, it can turn out to be meaningless, or even ignored by the end of the movie. A McGuffin, explained Hitchcock, comes from a Scottish joke about someone basically telling another to “mind his own business.” The first asks the second about the contents in a box or package, and the second explains that it’s a McGuffin. “What’s a McGuffin?” “It’s a Scottish lion trap” “but there are no lions in Scotland,” “Well, then that’s not a McGuffin, is it?” In other words – it’s none of your business. “Mystery packages” or papers that are never explained are McGuffins that are often seen in movies.

“In fact, the specific nature of the MacGuffin may be ambiguous, undefined, generic, left open to interpretation or otherwise completely unimportant to the plot. Common examples are money, victory, glory, survival, a source of power, or a potential threat, or it may simply be something entirely unexplained.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin)

The big black bird in “the Maltese Falcon” is a perfect example of a McGuffin and more currently, in “Avatar,” the McGuffin is a powerful metallic-looking rock called unobtainium. The entire movie was about the bad guys trying to destroy the home of the good guys so the bad guys can get their hands on the precious unobtainium that the good guys could care less about. What is unobtainium? It’s never explained, although I’m not going out on a limb much to say we’ll surely find out in the sequel – [warning, as they say, plot spoiler]- since we saw at the end of the movie that the biggest bad guy was calmly let go with a firm “never return” dictate – a sure bet that he’ll be back.

Knowing about, shooting terms,  movie terms and plot points is a fun insider’s hobby for movie watchers. Let’s open up the dialog and hear your thoughts: What other Red Herrings and McGuffins do you know of in movies current, classic or obscure?

Leave it up to James Cameron to shell out almost 3 million dollars on new camcorder equipment. Recently, Jim Jannard announced that the Avatar director bought 50 of his company’s Epic-M cameras for production on his newest Avatar films. This puts James Cameron in the same camp as Peter Jackson who bought 30 of the cameras for his two-part adaptation of the Hobbit and Jon Schwartzman who announced he’d be shooting the latest Spiderman movie on the Epic.

Of course, you might be asking yourself why the director of Titanic would need 50 cameras to make two films when you and I can usually make do with one? Well, it’s hard to tell for sure but he’ll be needing two cameras for every rig since it will be shot in 3D, will inevitably use some as backup camcorders, and will be most likely using the others for his motion capture needs. That’s still a lot of camcorders so unless Cameron will be shooting 25 simultaneous 3D films, it is safe to assume that his new movies will be sporting some crazy new filmmaking technology. In fact, we already know that he is thinking about filming his next two Avatar installments at 48 frames per second which breaks the coveted 24 frames per second tradition. Though most of us would agree that 48 frames per second handles quick motion and panning much better, filmmakers are primarily using 24 frames per second as an artistic tool so I don’t see this going away anytime soon.  However, it could be welcome technology for 3D movies since quick panning in 3D can be hard for the eyes to handle at 24 frames per second.

If you want to check out some of the videos we took at NAB of the RED Scarlet and Epic cameras, take a look at these two videos on our YouTube page to get a glimpse of what James Cameron will be using.

RED Epic

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-2dbDj_IgI

RED Scarlet

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV2YyLBkaWQ

Ever since The Power of Love, which premiered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles in 1922, 3D film has been a reality. The film was shown in red and green anaglyph which meant that the viewer could see the effect by wearing glasses with different colored filters for each eye. Since that time, 3D has had various success. From 1952 to 1955, a string of 3-D movies known as the “golden era” of 3-D began with the release of Bwana Devil. Then, after three decades of decline, 3-D movies came back into the mainstream with IMAX and Disney Theme Parks making several successful 3-D films such as Honey, I Shrunk the Audience, Into the Deep, and Wings of Courage. Inevitably though, the technology declined again until 2004 when the animated film The Polar Express made 14 times as much money in 3-D than it did in 2D. Numbers like that couldn’t be ignored by theaters which started fitting their theaters for 3-D. With the success of Avatar, which became the highest grossing film of all time over 15,000 screens are expected to be 3-D ready by the end of 2010.

As much money as 3-D movies were making in theaters, home television and electronic companies started to wonder if consumers would also buy into the hype with their products at home. By 2010, many of the major manufacturers such as Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, Panasonic, and LG had made plans to introduce high definition televisions with 3-D capabilities by year’s end. At the same time, popular camera companies such as ARRI, Panasonic, Sony, RED, and Canon started releasing consumer and professional level camcorders and cameras that could shoot in 3-D. Even network television got in on the craze by introducing broadcasts of events in HD such as this year’s PGA Sony Open in Hawaii to viewers around the world. Read the rest of this entry »

Was it just me, or was anyone else that was surprised at the lack of statues taken away by Team Avatar.  Avatar won only three Oscars:  for visual effects (was there any doubt), and cinematography,  as well as art direction. But somehow I expected more, and apparently, by all the buzz, so did a lot of other people.

Some speculated that the Academy wanted to “show” Cameron that his highest-grossing movie of all times can be taken down by the least-expensive movie to ever be nominated – wrong.

Some speculated that the Academy wanted to finally give the “Best Directing” award to a woman – please – do we have to play the gender card?

In my opinion, there are two strong reasons why Avatar didn’t win more awards: Animated characters and Sci-fi. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t heard the buzz yet, I think we can all agree that this year’s CES conference was all about 3D. I was fortunate enough to meet with several manufacturers to see new products that are going to be released in 2010. The most ground breaking product I saw was Panasonic’s new HD 3D Camcorder. Videomaker’s own Matt York was on hand to speak during the Press event about how excited we are here at Videomaker to be part of the next revolution in digital filmmaking. We also got the chance to speak with Panasonic’s Vice President Bob Perry and John Landau Producer of Avatar – check out the video to see what they had to say after the event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLI4gbltkiM

In the last several years we’ve been bombarded with movies touting their amazing 3D visual effects. Despite being gimmicky, and the three-dimensional images appearing to be somewhat flat, 3D movies have been drawing people to the theaters in swarms. It is perhaps for this reason that so much energy is being put towards the development of 3D technology.

James Cameron, director of the ever-so-famous movie Titanic, has been adding to the 3D hype with his newest movie Avatar, set to release later this month. What makes Avatar unique is the use of a new stereoscopic 3D camera that James Cameron co-developed.

James Cameron’s stereoscopic 3D camera technology is similar to the traditional 3D cameras in the sense that they are both dual-camera systems. However, due to the advancements in digital video, the two cameras can now be placed closer together. The new technology also allows the cameras to rotate inward and outward in order to focus on objects at different distances, much like the movement our own eyes.

Avatar is rumored to have a more realistic three-dimensional look without the headaches caused by other 3D technology. It is also believed that Avatar and the technology used to make it will revolutionize the way movies are made. However, as revolutionary as it may be, movie-goers will still be stuck wearing those silly 3D glasses…for now.