A while back I wrote about how HEARTSTOPPER figured out a genius way to make texting work onscreen. So many shows and movies show people texting these days. Sometimes—like when the text bubbles actually appear onscreen rather than through cuts to the phone—it works. A lot of the time it feels like there's probably a better way to tell this story.
But in HEARTSTOPPER (and also YOUNG ROYALS) they end up using the process of writing texts as a way to take the audience on these little journeys through the characters' thought processes. And there's a kind of suspense built in as we wait to see what exactly they're going to send.
In THE LAST OF US 105 we meet Sam, a child who cannot hear or speak. And when he's communicating with Ellie he uses one of those cheap Magic Erase Boards where you can pull up the plastic top layer and erase everything you just wrote. It's a pretty classic end of the world touch to have Sam using something like this, very "there is nothing else left but classic old school pop culture stuff."
And as with HEARTSTOPPER, part of the drama is in discovering what each of them has written; basically the scene is a series of those texting ellipses that you get when the other person is writing, followed by the reveal of what they wrote.
But the thing I also liked is the way Craig Mazin worked with the board itself. In their final scene together, most of the time, we don't actually see the words on the page. Instead Ellie reads them, either as she's writing them or when she receives them from Sam, which makes the scene move faster, and gives the scene an energy and dynamism that it wouldn't have otherwise. And it's not just Ellie; Sam delivers gives great facial expressions which often are themselves all the communication we need.
There are only three moments in fact when we actually see the words, and they are the big emotional moments of the scene: the opening, where Sam asks whether Ellie is ever scared; Ellie's eventual response "I am afraid of ending up alone." And then when she follows up with what about you, we get Sam's heartbreaking question: "If you turn into a monster is it still you inside?", which ends up revealing what this was really all about, the bite he got.
Even though Ellie and Sam's situation is pretty unique, I think it offers some nice suggestions for how to do texting onscreen well.
First, Lean into the drama of the texting. Those "person is now texting" ellipses create suspense. Use that.
Second, Play around with the forms of communication. Sure you can just show the back and forth, whether on the phones or onscreen. But before you settle on that, take a second to brainstorm and see if you can find some other options, like having the characters occasionally say the texts out loud, or having the texts appear onscreen in different sizes, areas of the screen or forms depending on the emotion you want to convey. Mixing it up will almost certainly make the moment your interesting.
Finally, Think about how can you give extra punch to the most important lines. Again, size, shape or form could work here. But Mazin's solution is even more elegant: only show the "texts" that are most important. Simply by virtue of holding back for those moments, he gives them a greater importance. (Also, because they're handwritten they feel more personal. Is there some equivalent to be found in texting?)
