The Art of Foreshadowing in Your Story

Foreshadowing is one of the most hidden and yet widely used concept in writing for film. foreshadowing is the art of giving hidden clues to the meaning inside the story. Now I can give you many examples from various movies, but instead I am going to give you many examples for one movie. A movie with some of the best examples of foreshadowing I have ever seen.

The movie is called "Falling Down" and it is about a man, burned- out on life, taking a walk through L. A. on his way "home". The man, Bill Foster, faces many situations from gangland hoods to golfers. On the other side of the coin a cop, on the last day of his job, finds out about him, from the clues left from seemingly unrelated crimes, and trys to stop him.

The first use of foreshadowing we see is a billboard of a woman with a little cartoon man spray painted between her breast, with the caption, "Help me". This is used later on in the story by the cop to find out who Bill Foster is. Another image used many times in the story, in verbal as well as visual, was the word D-FENS. It was the license plate on Bill's car and it is also said by the Korean shopkeeper. D-FENS is the key word that helps the cop track Bill down.

The next set of examples is more obvious. The first is when Bill takes the baseball bat from the shop keeper, the one he used for defense. Bill uses the bat to defend himself against a couple of gang members, who claim they were defending their turf. Next example Bill takes a gym bag (a gym is where people go to learn to defend themselves) full of guns from the gang members, who shot at him and missed as they were again trying to defend (There's that word again) their turf. Final Bill uses the guns to defend (Do you see a pattern forming here) himself against big corporation, at a fast food restaurant, a fascist, at an army surplus store, and even some rich golfer on a golf course.