Foreshadowing

If the pandemic has given me anything, it was the gift of streaming.

Armed with Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Showtime and various other FREE for a month subscriptions, I have been able to stream my brains out over the past two years.

We have often heard READ, READ, READ, but in our high speed digital lives, streaming is also a very good way to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Always eager to learn, I’ve used my excessive streaming to study the tricks-of-the-trade. One of these is foreshadowing which I find myself deficient in: seemingly unrelated elements which give us a hint what is to come - A close up of the gun on the table, a cigarette butt with lipstick and so on. The garden variety foreshadowing is pretty heavy handed, but not all.

Recently watched Two Guns with Mark Wahlberg and Denzel Washington, and noticed a subtle and inventive example of foreshadowing.

In a steamy motel scene, a topless paramour takes an ornate ring off of one finger and puts it on a finger on her other hand. Much later in the movie, she repeats this maneuver just before she is executed for playing fast and loose with a drug cartel’s money.

My kudos to the writer(s) because the ring on which finger and which hand is THE clue to where big money is hidden.

For me, this sort of clever foreshadowing takes a film or script to another level and is something I need to get better at.