Repetition as a design tool.

Repetition of a line of dialogue in a script is a wonderful tool for revealing character. Through the characters relationship to the line the storyteller reveals how that character or their situation has changed.  Think of Johnny Deep as Donnie Brasco. His first delivery of 'Forget about it' reveals his naivety and the potential risk he has taken in entering a foreign environment. As this line is revisited in the film it reveals the character's confidence in his deception and then at how lost and distant from his family he has become. The reveal comes through the actors delivery of the line and his relationship to it not through the line itself.

This technique of repetition and relationship to reveal change is of interest to the designer. Often we place colour, form and object in a design for practical reasons of creating believable space.  These are used to create a world of depth and reality or to act metaphorically.  It is important to be aware of characters relationship to this space, colour and object. Throughout the film this relationship can be utilised at critical moments to inform the story or the audience of character in an indirect way.

Often it is only in returning home that we see how far we have travelled. By comparing our past to the present we see the change.  The designer can serve this concept throughout the film in subtle ways. Through appreciating the relationship between character and space and the repetition of visual elements a designer can not only create space for staging performance but space that can serve the performance and the telling of the story.