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Despite the video being a visual medium, sometimes it’s what’s not shown that can substantially affect your story. Occasionally, what isn't there for the audience to see speaks louder than what can actually be revealed on-screen, forcing them to conjure up the possibilities in their head with unlimited budget and capability.
The calculated art of omission in filmmaking, where pivotal characters, critical moments, or even important objects are merely discussed but never shown, can add more depth to crucial aspects of your story. This technique of strategic absence forces the viewer to lean in, actively engage their imagination, and imprint their own interpretation onto the unfinished canvas. Rather than spelling everything out in concrete detail, the gaps are left purposefully open for the audience to fill in, making them an integral part of the storytelling process.
Today, we will explore examples of such impactful omissions, analyse why the missing ‘stuff on-screen’ can resonate so profoundly, and reveal how leaving certain elements unseen can in cinema and withholding information can be a powerful tool for expression. By not showing everything, directors allow the audience to fill in the gaps and create a more impactful experience.
At first glance, it may seem counterproductive to deliberately avoid depicting pivotal characters in a storytelling medium that relies on showing rather than telling. However, sometimes an unseen character's influence, importance and sheer presence can tangibly permeate throughout the piece despite lacking any concrete onscreen manifestation. When done right, their significance is felt through the words and actions of other characters, lending them an intriguing aura precisely because the audience must imagine the invisible character for themselves.
While keeping main characters perpetually off-screen is rarer in feature films, this technique occurs often in TV shows, allowing figures hovering at the periphery to take on a mythic, legendary quality in the audience's minds. Or it simply means you do not cast another actor.
Ultimately, keeping characters off-screen imbues them with a depth, mystique and symbolic importance that concrete depiction could actually undermine or make finite. Their very absence is what makes them eternally present in the audience's engagement with the story.
One of the most famous invisible characters emerged from the dark, outlier corners of David Lynch's cult classic and one of my personal favourite things EVER Twin Peaks.
FBI Agent Dale Cooper is summoned to the small logging town to investigate a murder and often speaks into his micro-cassette recorder to record voice notes (in 1989!) and observations to his apparent secretary, Diane Evans. Her replies are never heard, but Agent Cooper would frequently follow his remarks with phrases like "Remind me to tell you about..." or "I'll fill you in when I see you next, Diane."
This iconic tape recorder to man dynamic was even used as a literary device in a series spin-off book at the time, shown below with a wild fan.
Can you tell I like Twin Peaks? - Shown: Smiling Man holding book
In the original TV series, Diane was Dale Cooper's rock, his reliable right-hand woman who kept him grounded despite potentially only living in a tape recorder (anything is possible in this wonderful show).
It wasn't until 2017's impossibly fantastic anti-revival sequel series "Twin Peaks: The Return" premiered 25 years later that Diane finally emerged in fully fleshed-out human form, portrayed by the iconic Laura Dern. A rare moment of an unseen character's reveal surpassing decades of expectations and theories. Yet another reason why David Lynch is the King.
Whenever the friends congregated in Monica and Rachel’s apartment, they would frequently glance out the window and catch sight of this man who seemed to have few boundaries and no qualms about his nudist tendencies.
While it's aged like milk, the meanness of the running joke is somewhat tempered by the fact you never actually see the guy they talk about (except from behind in one famous scene). Nor does he ever have a name.
This glaring omission allowed viewers’ imaginations to run wild, envisioning eccentricity and absurd humour in an SFW way. Ugly Naked Guy became mythical and greater than any single actor could inhabit. The gang's reactions to his unseen antics were enough to inject his outlandish, free-spirited nature vividly into fans’ minds, all without any actual on-screen nudity.
Initially part of the script and even filmed with actress Ellen Pompeo, the character Naomi was ultimately cut from the final version of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. She was the protagonist Joel's ex-girlfriend who came before Clementine and played a role in complicating things further.
Director Michel Gondry felt her scenes hampered the film’s pacing and diluted its central focus on Joel and Clementine’s turbulent relationship. This led to her scenes being cut entirely and occasionally mentioned in passing.
Despite this, her ghostly presence is often felt and helps show how considerations of our relationship pasts can subtly influence present choices. Not bad for someone you never actually see on screen.
While vividly depicting shocking or intensely emotional events explicitly on-screen can impact audiences in the moment, sometimes restraint in storytelling forces it into the viewer's imagination which can ultimately leave an even more lasting imprint.
Strategically keeping pivotal, emotionally-charged moments unseen off-screen - whether tragic demises, heart-wrenching goodbyes, or long-awaited reunifications - steer the audience to recognise that the point of the story lies not in the event itself, but rather in its implications on the characters, its reverberations, and its thematic ripples expanding outward into the aftermath.
Spoilers ahead for Monsters, Inc and The Grand Budapest Hotel.
A true masterclass in how not showing the horror can make things a million times more horrific, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre stands as a totem of the power of restraint for maximising terror. Relying on the clever implication and the unseen rather than graphic violence to create a profoundly terrifying atmosphere.
By keeping most of the actual bloody killing off-screen, director Tobe Hooper forces viewers to envision the horrific deeds, letting their imagination fill in the gruesome gaps. This expert use of absence not only sidesteps gore but mentally multiplies the dread tenfold.
Ultimately, what we cannot see terrorises far more effectively than the visible. The far gorier sequels prove this fact, as none ever work as effectively as the far less violent original does.
The conclusion of Pixar's classic Monsters, Inc. represents another masterclass in the emotional resonance of visual omission. After an emotional thought to be forever goodbye to Sulley and Boo, the film's coda shows him trying to return to normal, only for the best cyclops ever, Mike Wazowski, to come in with a beautiful act of friendship, a chance to see her again.
Audiences expect a powerful reunion scene rife with sentimental music and drawn-out tearful hugs. Yet instead, Pixar poignantly denies viewers that predictable satisfaction. The camera stays fixed on Sulley’s expression as it turns to joy at hearing Boo's voice again.
This act of restraint allows the audience to project their own emotions onto the moment, filling in details from imagination rather than reactive observation. The omission instantly amplifies the joy of it coming together. Sulley's big smile reflects every viewer’s tacit understanding – no further explanation is needed. Demonstrating admirable directorial discipline, allowing absence itself to carry the scene’s dramatic weight.
I know this is the second week I'm mentioning The Grand Budapest Hotel, but I can't help it, OK? A personal frustration of mine is that the Wes Anderson discourse is so often focused on his unique style that it often misses the wider power and skills he has.
After bombastic gunfights and chases, the film mirrors an earlier scene: characters quietly riding a train stopped by authorities. Yet this time, protagonist Gustave is abruptly killed off-screen. The quietness of it all, with the matter-of-factness it's told with HURTS. It's so much more powerful than any dramatic musical cue and slow-motion gunshot could ever say.
It also reinforces one of the overall themes of the film, how the further we get away from a story, the less human the people involved seem to be. Gustav was ultimately another fatality of an oppressive government that killed without any care, another number on a long list. Agatha’s sparse yet palpable absence echoes the human toll of violence fading into history. While this isn't a directly true story, it's very much based on one. And the whiplash of throwing you at a further and further distance of the story is something I've never seen or felt another film do.
The Grand Budapest Hotel is ultimately a story of a man telling a story that's not even the most important story to him. The ultimate omission in this story is Zero's love for Agatha, another character who dies off-screen with a singular sentence explanation.
As with Gustave’s muted death, keeping her loss off-screen and undiscussed reflects the true fate of so many victims: not dramatized legends but muted, minimized names beyond headline-grabbing slaughters. The absence of closure and emotive release for both Agatha and Gustave’s demises serves to reinforce oppressive regimes’ capacity to strip away not just lives but dignity in death and visibility in history. In this way, Anderson’s masterful omissions through Zero’s selective narrative lens heighten the tragic thematic undertones by allowing the missing pieces to speak for themselves.
The sheer diversity of films explored here, from surreal memory erasure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind to the muted violence in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, demonstrate how omission and restraint can profoundly move audiences across all genres. While concrete visual stimulation clearly impacts us in the moment, sometimes leaving scenes and characters to the imagination creates space for the audience to engage with the piece directly.
Our brains instinctively fill gaps with images, longings, and understandings etched by our unique life experiences, crystallising impressions through our inner lens. My experience and interpretation of those scenes could be completely different from yours. In the hands of master artists, the precision tool of omission carves out negative space for collaboration between filmmaker and viewer, bringing imaginative presence to visual absence.
As visual storytellers, our responsibility is to apply our skills towards crafting narratives that speak to diverse audiences across the evolving digital landscape. Each editing decision presents opportunities to activate viewers’ brains and collaboratively build worlds through artful negative space. By leveraging the tools of visual absence and restraint, editors shape experiences that not only stimulate in the moment but leave lasting reverberations in the imagination long after the credits roll.
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