said in the first episode of The Mandalorian and i found out some really interesting concepts about
The Mandalorian that show just how powerful it is when you give the audience less you can actually
give them more i can get you more credits for those of you who haven't watched The Mandalorian
the very first episode starts with us immediately meeting the Mandalorian as he is on a bounty hunt
this bounty hunt isn't a huge chase through some mountains and space fights and lightsabers there's
barely any lightsabers in this series great choice it's not fair instead it is a subtle
homage it's a subtle introduction to a character letting us know exactly who he is and what he
does it's not until three minutes and 15 seconds into the first episode this is almost 10 percent of the
way into the first episode he actually utters his first words for the film i can bring you in warm
or i can bring you in cold now this is actually really unusual normally writers will be trying
to get the character to spew forth as much information as physically possible so they
can actually get out as much character before we get bored of this situation but instead they
use action i'm going to keep coming back to this because that is really what they've replaced the
dialogue with instead they have made the character a character of action a character of doing and i
think that's incredibly important not only that it also raises the mystery around the character if we
don't know what they're thinking or feeling and we don't know what their plan is we want to know
overall the amount of words in the entirety of the first episode of The Mandalorian season one
is 1,597 spoken words this is the way now some of you might be thinking that's quite a lot of words
for a 40-minute episode of tv it's not it's less than half the average the average
word count for a tv episode of 40 minutes in length is actually 4,000 words
that equates to roughly 100 words per minute now this pales in comparison to the highest
word count per minute in television history which is Dawson's Creek with 213 words per minute
which makes it roughly 8,000 words for a 40-minute episode which is
a hell of a lot of words i mean i'm really kind of feeling sorry for the writer actually
so how many of the 1,597 words in the episode of The Mandalorian is spoken by the Mandalorian himself
he speaks a total of 497 words that's one third of the dialogue in the first episode well at first i
thought to myself well that does doesn't really make him very quiet he's not uh he's obviously
talking relatively often and given that he travels to multiple planets and he meets many many many
characters the other characters actually don't have too much to say so what can we digress what
can we get from that 497 words well in total in the first episode he actually speaks a total of 68
lines across the entire episode what that means is it's actually only 6.7 words on average per line
that he speaks throughout the entire episode what else did he say you try and come up with complete
sentences in six words it's pretty tricky thank you they've actually shown you who the character
is by the way in which the character chooses to speak what this means is the Mandalorian himself
has been given very short lines throughout the entire episode in fact this is reflected across
the rest of the season although he does say a little bit more in later episodes i think the
first episode really does grab your attention and really does sell what the Mandalorian is all about
what does having short sentences say about the Mandalorian well it says that he's not a man of
many words and when he does speak he speaks very directly very plainly and gets to the
point as quickly as possible kidding me right get out something else that's really interesting
in the use of dialogue throughout the film is how many questions go unanswered many many many times
throughout both seasons of The Mandalorian he's asked questions and i can tell you he
basically answers none of them you think there's really something to worry about
but these questions actually have a really nice effect on the audience what it does is it actually
opens us up to the idea that there is law there is history there is a culture and a system and
a texture to the Mandalorian and the universe that they live within oh is that a bounty park
and that comes back to the very core of The Mandalorian and what i believe
is one of the most successful elements of The Mandalorian and that is the actions that the
Mandalorian has i feel like the writers wrote all the dialogue out and then what they did
is they tried to replace as much of that dialogue with action as many times as they possibly could
now if you take a look at the beginning of the first Mandalorian episode you'll notice
that the Mandalorian asks for a taxi at this moment i need passage to the arts wow
instead of the Mandalorian responding to this taxi stand manager
he just flicks a coin across to him this action says everything it says
hey i don't want you to ask questions just do as i say and it also isn't understanding
the characters in the world are letting you know through this action that money speaks and that is
a really important element in The Mandalorian is that currency and money seems to open doors
and here's another time that the Mandalorian did something instead of responding verbally
did you catch them all quite apart from being just a cooler way of doing it
the Mandalorian could have just said yes it would have been shorter in screen time and it would have
efficiently responded to the man's question but instead him throwing the tags on the table
showed that he not only caught many more bounties than the one that we we had witnessed
save the theatrics but he again is a man of actions and not words he shows what he has
done he doesn't tell you what he has done i'm ending all of this the tree the text the jedi
i'm gonna burn it down so at just 10 words per minute the Mandalorian character lets us know so
much about the universe his background his own character and his moral code
more through his actions than anything else we get so much from the story
because again the directors and the writers have really taken the time to tell us the story
through the camera through the blocking and through the music do you want the chat or not
if you want to know more about composing in film and tv i've done a previous episode which goes
through that in detail especially it looks at how certain directors choose their music before
they've even shot a frame of film i believe and i think this has been well documented in film
that when you create a mystery surrounding a character or event we as human beings are
just so blasted nosy we just want to know what's going on we want to know the answers
razor crest am i right how much are they paying you is it true that you guys never take off your
helmets so when you create a character who just holds the information only gives you the bits of
information that you need at that exact moment it really does make a massive difference in
just how invested we become in finding out more about that character don't you agree
next time you are doing your own film writing your script
you get to the end of your script now go through that script and see how many lines
how many words how many things you can actually delete from your script and replace with actions
instead of words show don't tell this is such a powerful concept and done well can
really invigorate and make your stories magical if you enjoyed today's episode
check out the links below for more information on how to up your game on your next film