Orchestration

An old friend moved cross-country and left me with a bunch of film books that I’ve been flicking through recently. I really like this idea of orchestration from Lajos Egri’s ‘The Art of Dramatic Writing’;

When you are ready to select characters for you play, be careful to orchestrate them right. If all the characters are the same type – for instance, if all of them are bullies – it will be like an orchestra of nothing but drums.

Maybe one of the reasons ‘The Wire‘ is so successful, is that the characters are so perfectly chosen – so perfectly orchestrated.