What is a Red Herring — 5 Techniques to Mislead & Distract an Audience

[Music] today we're going to explore how filmmakers lie deceive actress sharon tate found dead and mislead the audience using a device called a red herring i'm telling you the dad's a red herring it's billy but if you think this only applies to murder mysteries we've got a twist of our own okay but here's the twist this is what is a red herring the term red herring dates all the way back to the early 1800s in the old days when they trained hounds to hunt foxes and they wanted to train a dog not to be set off by any other strange scent at all well red herring have a very strange scent indeed and they would drag one of these fish back and forth across the fox's trail the idea was that the dog had to keep going following the fox's scent no matter what but if it got diverted and followed the fish instead it was said to be following a red herring following a false trail and that's how the phrase is said to have started so what is a red herring in a story i don't know red herrings can be anything from a tiny clue to a character i am ours the great ours has spoken oh pay no attention to that man behind the curtain and even to the entire plot it's a way to intentionally mislead an audience for the sake of suspense surprise or subversion i see people they don't know they're dead [Music] but a good red herring can be difficult to pull off if it's too subtle or too obvious it won't work yo what is that a tattoo oh oh this it's my old high school team the plain view red herrings look at its swim so let's examine how master filmmakers craft red herrings we will be spoiling the following movies you've been warned [Music] red herrings are most directly associated with the mystery and thriller genre i suspect foul play which leads us to the most common type of red herring the classic whodunit when the perpetrator is unknown and everyone is a suspect good mystery writer will distract the audience with false clues to lead us away from the truth once the killer is revealed all other suspects are revealed as red herrings this is what we expect from a whodunit but this expectation can also become its own red herring based on a story by the undisputed queen of murder mysteries agatha christie murder on the orient express is a whodunit that presents a whole host of possible suspects what is going on and audiences familiar with the tropes of the murder mystery genre are on high alert for red herrings as they suss out the real killer it was my plan i recruited them but the twist is that every single suspect participated in the murder in this unique instance the real red herring is the expectation of red herrings there are no killers here only people who deserve a chance to heal one way to pull off a red herring is through an unreliable narrator [Music] since we see the story through their perspective it provides a great opportunity to twist the truth oh my god what are you doing in here you're in the wrong apartment your name's arthur right you live down the hall [Applause] we can see this in the others [Music] a haunted house story they're everywhere in which we eventually find out who is actually doing the haunting [Music] what happened they made contact we can't possibly stay in this house any longer it is quite clear that these beings do not want us to live here we know the woman went mad smothered her two children and then shot herself the usual suspect says a neo-noir thriller told in a flashback by a con man named verbal kint during an interrogation verbal you're not telling us everything i know you know something verbal tells agent cuion everything including how their entire operation was orchestrated by a mysterious crime lord named kaiser sose well i believe in god and the only thing that scares me is kaiser soze in the end verbal is released on bail just before agent kuyon discovers the truth mr kobayashi kobayashi kobayashi convince me and tell me every list back when i was in that barbershop quartet skokie illinois where's your head agent kuyan because you're stupid verbal because you're always so but i want to know who's the [ __ ] verbal is so say you think i just said this close to getting caught and sticks his head out and his entire interrogation and the entire movie was one massive red herring resulting in one of the most surprising and exciting twist endings ever and like that he's gone in our next type let's look at how a red herring can be used for an emotional effect saving private ryan begins with a man breathing in a military cemetery and when we flash back to world war ii and see captain miller we are meant to believe they are the same person if we believe captain miller survived his mission uh go on then perhaps this emotional breakdown means he failed to save private ryan what sir james [Music] earn [Music] i burn this [Music] so what does the audience gain from this sleight of hand the assumed failure to save ryan suddenly becomes a cathartic victory and it allows ryan to reflect on the sacrifice captain miller and his team made to keep him alive every day i think about what you said to me that day on the bridge i've tried to live my life the best i could i hope that was enough i hope that at least in your eyes i've earned what all of you have done for me without the red herring we might have hit similar emotional notes but they become much more powerful with a little misdirection [Music] our knowledge of real life events can also become red herrings tarantino plays on our expectations that hitler must live through the events of inglorious bastards and that sharon tate must die by the end of once upon a time in hollywood five persons including actress sharon tate were found dead at the home of miss tate and her husband screen director roman polyansky then he alters history oh i know you i know all three of you cachootem texts [Music] doing so he creates perhaps a more satisfying alternate reality where the wrongs of the past are righted everybody okay yes yes sharon everybody's fine are you okay yes i am thank you for asking that hello hello yes you can use a red herring in the casting and marketing of the film what's your favorite scary movie uh i don't know wes craven pulled a similar bait and switch with drew barrymore in screams [Applause] in psycho hitchcock specifically cast janet lee a huge star as marion crane our expectation then is that we will follow marion through the entire film so when she was killed off halfway through the shock was immense [Music] we can also talk about another type of casting misdirection centered on an actor's persona hitchcock cast young anthony perkins who is known for more wholesome boy next door roles well a boy's best friend is his mother this was designed to repel suspicion away from norman we all go a little mad sometimes and to make the eventual reveal all the more shocking as you plan your next project think about how you too can deceive and mislead the audience cast suspicion on an innocent character great story gets better every time you tell it use an unreliable narrator create an emotional catharsis use real history to subvert our expectations and add red herrings to your casting and marketing decisions in the description you'll get links to studio binders free screenwriting software to write your next script these are red herring you notice that it's not really red it's the same color this smoked hearing as the original fish but the eye has gone rather red and that's where red herring get their name from the redness of the eye well the phrase red herring means to set you off on a false trail if i say oh that's a bit of a red hearing it means that's off the subject you're trying to divert my attention from the real pointed issue

Channel: StudioBinder

Views: 642,675

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Id: 47ntBElzaWk

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 27 2021

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